While I agree that nobody has said that it does seem to be that the only way to make this work is to live in the midwest.

Meat is expensive. I'm not sure if it is the same in the States but chicken breasts in Canada are more expensive than steak. Again I think the people who claim this is possible are thinking of a diet that would be very low on meat.

I think I have done a pretty good job of not bringing in my spending habits. Now it is possible that my spending has made me completely unrealistic about what is normal but if that is the case then I'd like to know which of the following items is considered luxury?

1) Living alone / urban / not a sketchy area / not in the core but also not in the suburbs.
2) Three year old entry level Japanese car.
3) Health insurance.
4) The ability to go out and meet friends in a public venue and consume at a reasonable pace. No excessive drinking but also no loitering. 3-4 times a week.
5) The ability to buy clothing so that while you might not wear name brands at least you look somewhat stylish and have clothing that is not going to give away poverty instantly.
6) The ability to pursue getting laid and dating.
7) Being able to make a snap decision and just buy a coffee,bottled water, energy drink, or sports drink if you have a desire without it being a concern.
8) The ability to buy a book if I want to read it rather than wait until I can get it from the library long after it is no longer relevant.

If you could tell me which of these are outrages that would be helpful as I think that they are all pretty reasonable.

Guys,

I'll admit to a bit of hyperbole but, it seems to be the only way to get concepts through to a lot of people. $30 K a year won't get you that much even in the Midwest. I ran some additional calculations (mortgage amounts):

$2,500 per month (30K/year) of income(after tax) only qualifies you for a $86,000 mortgage (approx) 30 year fixed to buy a home. That amount would not be sufficient to buy a median priced home in almost any place in the US including the midwest*. This mortgage amount has a 5.5% APR assumed which is below the typical historical rate you can get on a mortgage.

I was also assuming that the person who got this mortgage didn't want to get a interest only or negative amortization loan. Those types of loans can afford more house but, you can easily become upside down on the loan. Therefore refinancing becomes, at best, extremely difficult. Plus, VERY low maintenance expenses for the house.

*midwest I mean places like (Green Bay, WI or Fargo, ND or Ames, Iowa etc...) Not expensive or more desirable areas like Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, etc...



They are pretty reasonable. However, a lot of the people who have responded to this thread aren't fully acknowledging these circumstances. It's much the same with the fact that a number of people won't acknowledge that full time work typically has your employer pay for various benefits like health insurance. The non-working individual now has to pay for those costs.

Just taking your Green Bay, WI for an example:

$54,900: 4 Bedroom/2 bath 1531 sqft

$69,400: 4 bedroom/2 bath 1405 sqft

And there are actually lots of cheaper options availabe (around $30k) if you are willing to live someplace smaller or needs more work but both of those houses seem respectable at first glance to me. Not to mention, you would be living close to the greatest shrine in the world: Lambeau Field! That has to be worth something!

Shoe,

The $54,900 house is very likely a short sale (distressed property):

Description
Priced below FMV for quick sale!...

Which likely means that there will be additional tax liens or other hidden strings attached to buying this home.

The $69,400 is a self admitted fix up home:

Description
Very nice for the price! Just bring paint and flooring....Two year warranty offered to owner occupant. Being sold `as is`.

I wonder how much paint, flooring, and other repairs need to be done to that home.

Both homes come with some "interesting" conditions to be priced at such a low. I believe the saying "let the buyer beware" comes into play. However, your point about being close to Lambeau field is totally valid. If you can get tickets...(I believe the waiting time for season tickets is several years.)

Absurd -- no-one earing $30k/year has to wear anything near a $3000 suit. If we are comparing like with like then the guy wearing the $3000 suit will be used to spending $200-$400 on a night out and so if he suddenly stopped working and we extrapolate these entertainment costs over the extra free time he now has he would obviously end up spending more than when he was working.

Anyone wearing a $3000 suit to work would obviously laugh at the proposition of living on $30k/year for the rest of his life.

Good points -- I missed that in the description. Cheaper ones I had looked at were in obvious disarray from the pictures. I think if you went up to the $85k-$100k range you mentioned, you could just buy a house for cash and live off $900k. You could go higher but each additional dollar you spend would increase your risk obviously.

Also, not having a mortgage/rent payment will free up a lot of money for food and entertainment.

Agree on the tickets, I have been on the waiting list for ~15 years and will probably need to will my spot on the list away when I die. However, Brown County residents do have a special allotment just for them -- so it might be easier to get tickets living there (i'm not sure how much easier).

doubt it: http://adventuresinvoluntarysimplici...ne-my-job.html

was a lawyer.

I just meant one isn't going to spend a lot on expensive work clothes. $3k is definitely hyperbole but looking presentable at work is more expensive than looking good in day-to-day life.

The initial outlay might be more but the amortized cost of a suit is considerably less than the cost of social clothing which has a much shorter life and which has to be on a less frequent rotation.

Also I think this is only true if you define non-work clothing as a t-shirt and jeans which isn't a look that works for anyone over 24. One of the assumptions is that the guy actually wants to get laid on a regular basis which means actually having some style. Once you start putting effort into your appearance the cost of casual clothing goes up considerably.

Why would an unemployed millionaire want to take out a mortgage? The whole point of a mortgage is to facilitate home buying for those that don't have the money upfront. Over the life of a 30 year mortgage at 5.5%, a borrower will pay over twice the amount of the loan and this doesn't include taxes and repairs. Further banks dont treat investment income the same as wages.

People who dont have wages but a ton of capital almost always rent or purchase outright.

Don't you guys have any common sense?

I could do better because I know what I'm doing but even unsophisticated investors can lock in 5% aftertax with minimal risk. Maybe its more difficult in this record environment of Fed Funds of 0 but all that means is you wait 12-24 months.

So 5% of 1 million is $50k annually aftertax. You can rent 1 br apts in cities or 3br / 2bth homes in most suburbs of those cities for $1100-$1500 / month. Thats $16k / year or 1/3 of income. The remaining $34k works out to almost $3k / month for addl expenses. You can dress well and eat steak everyday with the remainder.

The real threat which no one has mentioned (and no its not expensive protein) is inflation. If youre not saving the excess in your early years, the buying power of that $50k in twenty years will be greatly reduced.

Assuming 4% across the board inflation, prices we know today will be higher by a multiple of 2.2x in twenty years. If inflation is higher, say 6%, the multiple becomes 3.2x. Therefore you can view the purchasing power of your $50k income in year 20 as $23k in the event of 4% inflation or $15k in the event of 6% inflation. Even the morons can see how this is a huge problem hence my original point about hedging yourself to a variable interest rate.

In conclusion, if you want a decent standard of living as elaborted by others, and you end up hedging at 5% fixed, youre probably going to have to go back to work at some point. If youre good and investment well, then you have decent shot.

That is a completely absurd idea of return/risk.

If the APR on the loan is lower than the expected APY on your investments, wouldn't you prefer to invest the money? IO loan?

Guess it depends on how good we are at investing and how low a rate we can get on the mortgage.

Yes of course, assuming you net out the taxes and other costs, however the reason banks exist in the first place is that they are able to borrow more cheaply by having better credit and by borrowing short and lending long.

Owning a home either outright or through a mortgage raises your short term cost of living in return for an appreciating asset. Thats not a logical tradeoff in this situation. Thats the point.

Inflation was discussed considerably. That is actually where the $30k came from. To be generous we gave the individual a 6% ROI which after removing 2-3% for inflation so that you keep adjusting the principle and ~20% for taxes you are left with about $27-28k but to be generous we made it $30k.

-----------------

Also someone mentioned you could get a pet as one of the possibilities. My GF took in a stray cat at her shop about a year and a half ago. It ate a piece of string -- the estimate for surgery is $2000-2500. She is going to be fine but only because we could afford to pay that. My parent's dog had vet bills on at least a few occasions that that were $500+ on top of the normal yearly stuff. Hairstylist's dog got hit by a car -- saving him was close to three grand. On two occasions I have had to pay vet bills that were about a grand for friends who couldn't afford it. Another friend had three vet bills for her cat that totaled about $2k in three months. Unless you just plan to not give a **** about the pet owning an animal when you have a $30k budget is out of the question.

Not necessarily. My inlaws raise their own pigs, then have them slaughtered for meat. They store the meat in their freezer and consume it over the course of many months. I can assure you it's not inferior to regular store-bought pork.

Doing the same thing with beef is completely legitimate. In fact, we've talked about doing it (splitting a cow 4 ways or so within the family), but I don't have the freezer space (yet) to take on that kind of commitment. I already have more frozen wild alaskan salmon than I can handle taking up my freezer space.

Anyway, I know this is kind of nitty, but I just wanted to point out that buying a large quantity of high quality meat and then freezing it for later consumption is a perfectly legit thing. In other words, frozen meat is not necessarily inferior. And if you're buying it directly from a farm or ranch, it's often a great deal, too.

Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You're trying to compare small farm, personally raised pork... to store pork? If so, that is completely ridiculous.

And yes, frozen meat is inferior. To suggest otherwise is rather... silly and demonstrates a basic lack of knowledge.

Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference in a blind taste test.

This argument describes nothing except how most people are ******ed.

Wait, now you endorse personally raised meat? Weren't you in the Henry camp of how bad it would suck to live like that, just barely surviving? If so, which is it? Or would it suck to live like that but as a consolation you get to feed your animals whatever you think will make them the most delicious (because lets face it, some home raised animals are not properly fed or cared for and taste pretty meh).

No. I'm of the assertion he's comparing two entirely different things. The idea is extremely simple. The problem is that most of the people in this thread suck at thinking.

You take a piece of meat. Cut it into two parts. Cook one and eat it. Take the other and put it in the freezer. Defrost it at some later time, then cook and eat it. The fresh one will taste better.

On your random strawman tangent. I think that if I raised pigs, they'd be delicious. Assuming of course I didn't bludgeon them to death due to living on a pig farm. I wonder if home fed pigs get fed slop near slaughter, since that makes them kinda icky or if some grass-fed beef noob will chime in about how much more delicious they are than regular beef.

Also, here's where you'd fail logic 101: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

An Ode to Refinement
I always appreciate people who are themselves capable of appreciating the subtleties of texture and taste. It is that simple approach to meat that deeply disturbs me: steak... cow's a cow! Where's the beef?! Lets go to Arby's!

When will such people realize that getting lost in the intricacies of the senses and the complexity of the world around them is a far greater experience than their love of those uniform "dumb cows"... It is not simply a matter of improving one's tastes or the direct experience of a sense (generally a combination thereof, at best a moving symphony of the whole), but of refining one's mind into a state wherein truly deep contemplation and reflection is possible, nay, constant and natural.

It is the simple man who likes the simple steak. Woe to him, for tomorrow he will awake in his stupor still convinced that all cows are equal and the true joy is in the fulfilling of a simple desire -the filling of an organ- perhaps never realizing the beauty of the experience and the deep texture of his life. His mistake is in the organs he chooses: this gland or that need more important than progressively wrinkling with experience.

Clearly, he must be ******ed. Grape brained, no use for extra surface area.

If you threw him a rope, he'd probably just gnaw on it. So, what's left to do but point and laugh?




Anyway, can we all at least agree that well-raised small-farm meat can be acceptable for daily ingestion even if it is quite unfortunately frozen before cooking? Buying a basement freezer and buying your most expensive ingredients in bulk to drastically cut down their price seems like a no-brainer even for someone with a higher income.

Here's my assertion: Initial quality of meat matters far, far more in the end result than freezing/not freezing it at any point.

All else held equal, sure I'll take the fresh meat. But good meat that's been frozen can still be very, very good.

I would think you'd agree.

I'm glad you made a self-evident assertion that has nothing to do with anything and derails the discussion. Thanks!

Someone said, "oh you could buy a big cut of meat and freeze it and cut steaks off," which apparently everyone thought sounded like a horrible idea and an example of barely squeaking by in life.

I'm just saying... it's actually not a bad way to go.

why not just buy a 300k house then rent two rooms out to people for ~600 each? Then over 50 years you have 28.4k to spend a year, with no mortgage or rent to worry about