How are we going to get this back to our shanty we live in? Car has already been forsaken. Caloric consumption isn't enough to sustain any sort of strength. Perhaps we can join a commune of likewise impoverished, but retired people to help each other carry half sides of beef on public transport?

^^was actually thinking co-op was a good plan for similar reasons but edited out of this post. I figured it would meet the same resistance everything else has, cultural differences, expectations, social circles, etc, etc. Who wants to live in a 300K house with two random people for the rest of their life?

How's your wife going to respond to that?
My impression as well. Mis-communication?

Very silly to talk about steaks when discussing the costs of cooking vs eating out. A plate of spaghetti that might cost $10 in a restaurant would cost you a fraction of that amount.
Any Asian rice based dish would be considerably cheaper. $9 fried rice = 25 cents if cooked in your kitchen.

Having roommates -- even if you are the landlord -- is rather loserish after you pass university age. We agreed that living alone would be one of the minimums.

Also I find it difficult to reconcile how people who claim this is possible earlier insisted that you can get your own place for $500-700/month with the idea that I could now get $600/month for a bedroom in a house with shared commons.

Math pls. I already know you're lol wrong. But I wanna see you epic fail.

What will it take to convince you that eating at home is cheaper than going to a restaurant? Are we REALLY arguing this?

I think for a family of four this is obviously true. For a single guy I think it might still be true but that the difference is not as much as people believe and that when you calculate time and effort even using minimum wage that restaurant might actually be less expensive.

You have to take into consideration that unless you do a lot of planning there is going to be a lot of waste when cooking for one.

The reason people think it is cheaper is because they make big batches of stuff and then eat multiple times which is a lower standard of living. I don't want to have spaghetti in meat sauce five times in one week.

They are comparing different qualities of food. While there are a lot of horrible restaurants that charge money for basically heating up and assembling prepared food eating at those is a waste of money and stupid. Yet when people cook at home that is exactly what they are talking about. I've actually had someone tell me that taking a processed frozen chicken burger and covering it in Ragu and mozzarella is cooking chicken parm. Well obviously that is going to be cheap to make but also rather disgusting to eat.

Chicken Parm would cost me about $8-10 to make at home. I can get it downstairs homemade quality for $7 at the food court and at a reasonably decent restaurant for $13-18. If you assume it would take me at least an hour to make it and the minimum wage is $10.25/hr it is less expensive for me to go to a restaurant.

Cheaper is simple and not what was stated. Fried rice for 25c? GMAFB. If you want to argue that a single person who enjoys shopping/cooking can save money, that is reasonable. But don't resort of rampant hyperbole and epic failure of logic to make a case.

You realize that fried rice is salt pepper oil green onion and seasoning and rice right?

Plus tip. Plus $2.5 coke...

I don't know where you eat fried rice, but I've never seen it without egg and other ingredients. Then again we're over budget purely based on what you listed. So whatev.

You're right. I forgot about egg and tomato.

That's pretty ridiculous. How many post college guys hang out with friends 3-4 times a week?

Read better books?

Not sure if this has been mentioned but I've seen a few custom built homes made for exactly this situation. Basically a 2 story with the only staircase to the top floor outside and with a kitchen on each floor. Granted I'm not sure how common this is and having it custom built could be way out of budget in most places.

Isn't that... a duplex?

People in college have school and possibly a part-time job to deal with. That not only takes up time but also gives them an opportunity to socialize and interact with people in class. They also tend to have roommates which again gives them social contact. For someone who is not an introvert the isolation of being at home all alone is pretty bad. Of the handful of people I know who do not work we all go out six or seven days a week. This doesn't mean we go and get wasted / party every day. It is more of a meet a friend for lunch or get some drinks with a friend after work but it involves meeting people in a public venue and consuming.

To answer the question though with students I'd say even with school the average is between two and three times a week except during the end of semester crunch. In the summer students who don't work tend to go out at least four to five times a week. Obviously there are students who never go out and spend all their time playing WoW but I don't count them.

Not sure what that means. The whole point is that current books are not available from the library. Current doesn't mean bad especially since I wasn't thinking of fiction when I wrote that. If you mean better as in read the canon or core philosophy books then yes those are available but while that is fun sometimes a steady diet of Kant doesn't do it for the vast majority of twenty-five year old males. Mind you reading itself doesn't do it for the vast majority of twenty-five year old males either. Part of the problem with this is that as much as people keep accusing me of importing my values into this the opposite is actually happening -- people are assigning introvert values to the hypothetical. While being an introvert is likely the norm on 2P2 it is certainly not the norm is society.

I'm aware of their existence but they also tend to cost a lot more than $300k. I went to an open house for one of these a while back unaware of what it was and the asking price was over $700k. Real estate though is something I've tried to avoid since the US market is too different from Canada. To make it simple I've just assumed that rent would be $700-750 or if they purchased that it would consume $150k of the million. That allows me to just work with a nice simple 6% ROI and not have to worry about US real estate which seems considerably less expensive than my options.

where did you get your money from henry?

A combination of sports betting and investing.

The meat argument is rather ******ed. Yes meat deteriorates when frozen but unless your butcher kills the animals himself it's most likely been frozen at least once. Besides that meat doesn't even deteriorate that much. I bet that most high net worth individuals eat frozen meat without even realizing it. And almost all restaurants, except the high end ones, will serve meat that has been frozen. There is this 'fresh' fish scam where grocery stores have been selling 'fresh' fish at a premium vs the frozen fish because it's fresh. Except that the fresh fish is thawed frozen fish.

Note that I do agree with the "it can't be done" camp because it would be rather miserable living on $30k. I know it can't be done with €21k in western (civilized, lol) Europe unless you have a job to prevent you from spending too much.

Maybe, I have only seen them in one part of New Jersey so I wasn't sure if it was common everywhere.

For someone who mocks financial illiteracy. I substituted 1m dollars for 1 million pounds and 30 thousand dollars for 30 thousand pounds.

Maybe you should read before you mock. I was just changing currency's, it was still the same percentage off the total, eg 3& of the sum.

I think this would go on forever, i think you can summarize by saying you could live on that salary if you had to but basically you probably wouldn't be content with just doing it.

I have earnt less than the 30k before but then you are always developing yourself i guess and going upwards in the world? To just accept one salary all your life would be pretty hard and i think most people would try and spend the money to elevate their income.

Much of this isn't true, at least in my part of the US. If fish sold as fresh was ever frozen (and frozen means < 27F) the retailer can get fined. Top graded beef should never be sold as frozen. From any reputable retailer, fresh is fresh is fresh.

A bigger problem with fish is that it is very frequently misidentified and the purchaser is not getting what he thinks he is getting. In my area most common problem is pacific rockfish (genus sebastes) sold as red snapper or true cod. Misidentification of salmon species is common as well. Some inferior flatfish will be sold as halibut or petrale sole. Certain species of shrimp will be sold as lobster. The list goes on, and it doesn't help in the least that wide regional variations in names for species are very common. If you aren't in your home area, there is a good chance that the fish you are actually ordering isn't what you think you are ordering, especially when it comes to shellfish.

However, you wouldn't acknowledge the difference in purchasing power. 1 million pounds > 1 million dollars is the equivalent of 1.6 million dollars > 1 million dollars. It does make a big difference.

nm