We've already been over this. You wouldn't want to live that way and that's fine. But to think others cannot be happy on such a budget is ridiculous.

If people need to be told what to for 8-10 hours a day to be happy with their lives and could not find anything to do with that time no matter what their budget, that is what I find sad and to be merely surviving.

And anyone can be happy in any location. Some people prefer the midwest over the coasts and vice versa. If you wanted to, you could retire on a sailboat and sail all over the Caribbean if you wanted. The possibilities are endless.

As for me, I'm just glad I don't live in Lamecouver. I saw that place featured on the Olympics once and I could not imagine trying to just merely surviving in a cold miserable place like that. (kidding btw)

This doesn't mean anything and isn't even tangentially related to what I said. Your comments in this thread are naive and either 1) out of touch with reality 2) nonsense. The above is a clear example of the latter. Random $10-20 expenses are insignificant to someone who has an income to support this or can afford debt. However, with an extremely tight budget and no possibility of increasing your expenditures, tiny oversights become issues that make it impossible to continue. How you make the original claim is purely out of ignorance and a lack of understanding.

Miscellaneous has already been budgeted for. We have already shown completely legitimate budgets with breathing room. No that does not mean you cannot just go spend money whenever/wherever/however you want. At the same time there is hardly anything that you won't be able to do on at least on a semi-regular basis. Some people might choose to spend more on golf and less on other forms of entertainment for example.

Anything that is important to you, there will be plenty of money for. You just need to focus on spending money on what you value and avoid spending money on things that don't bring value to your life. Most people with money just blindly spend on everything, not realizing how little value they get out of many of their expenditures.

You guys are assuming people even want to go to movies, I think I have been to 1 movie in the last year, and Henry says he never goes to movies but apparently if we were retired we would be doing this every day so our budget is shot?

No one is claiming they can live your lifestyle on $30k year, and that is not the point. That also doesn't mean you are better or any happier than someone could be on $30k/year.

You don't have the option of going to a movie on a whim. It has to be saved for. That is the point. The idea that you can sustain on 30k with an absurdly restrictive budget can be proven down to ~10k when you start culling virtually anything and foisting stuff onto society.

Using Henry's guidelines of a fairly reasonable "lifestyle", no one can do this sans in extremely remote/cheap areas and moving abroad.

I think something people have not given enough attention to is that there is a major difference between being poor and choosing to be poor. Going without and making hard choices when you have no choice is one thing. Life sucks but you deal with it. That is very different than life sucks because I'm lazy and too socially awkward to have employment without hating it.

There is also a big difference between being poor and choosing to be careful with your money. There is a big difference between than that and "choosing to be poor" as you like to call it.

There is but this isn't a case of being cheap. Cheap people can afford things but choose to make their life worse / harder so as to horde money. In this case the individual is choosing to be poor since once he decides to be unemployed and live off passive income from the $1M he no longer has the ability to afford stuff.

Take the example of Jay above with his no vegetables (sans 8 ounces of carrots) and 1lbs of reconstituted meat per week.

Is that even remotely reasonable? I think I just spent 10 bucks on 5 hours of food, and it consists of bread/milk/cereal. Oh btw, I live in the ex-Soviet Block. GLHF trying to argue that bumble**** North Dakota is cheaper.

Actually, I'm going to dinner and a movie on a whim tonight (that will include alcohol at dinner, as well as an IMax movie). As I've mentioned before, my annual income is only $20K.

Yeah, and you don't conform to the criterion above in any fashion. Thanks for sharing though.


Miser projection ITT.

lol poor.

$200,000 house paid off at 40 and $1 million Roth IRA at retirement, eating better than 80-90 percent of average US person.

I can see nobody here is good at personal finance 101.

Interesting. I wonder how our hypothetical person is ever gonna make it to "retirement" to utilize his Roth considering he's already retired.

As if I'm going to be doing the same things at 65 than 25, i.e. "retired", and that I won't have enough to contribute $3,000 every year. (both incorrect assumptions)

This is a good point. Scrimping, saving, and coupon clipping are totally doable, but at some point you're gonna realize "**** this, I have a million ******* dollars in the bank".

whats our yearly budget 30K$?

1k$ rent including utility bills each month will get you a decent place where im from (Sweden)

500$ for food each month this may be a bit much since i hunt and gather some of my food supply myself but im not willing to do much sacrificing when it comes to food.

lets say i spend 50$ each day seems reasonably some days maybe 20$ is enough and then you spend more another day. this would includes coffe,movies,wining and dinging etc
1500$ each month . 3000 X 12= 36K$

no health insurance, no dental care. government provides health care.
most likely would not buy one even if they didnt esp having 1M$ to cover unlikely worst case scenarios.

there is no money for a car unless you want to cut down into an already semitight entertainment budget. the same goes for vacation.
The main problem as i see it is i would have to cut down too much of my travelling compared to how i live today OTOH i like to spend my winters surfing in central america and 3k$ is more then enough per month when all i is spend my days in the water anyway and a beach hut is like 200$ a month. I enjoy good food i like to study and read books and listen to music and i do alot of sports. these are important to me and mostly cost free.
I also like fast cars and high tech electronics. these are not as important and im not sure how much negative impact , if any, having to cut down on these sort of things would have on my life.
All in all i would need atleast 36K$ and prolly closer to 50K$ yearly before i would consider this.

If i were to guess about the future then who knows, maybe we will have robots smarter then the humans living today and thus doing all the work humans dont want to do (i.e in this scenario money can become worthless or close to worthless and we will see a change towards time and reputation based economys) or maybe projecting to live 50 more years from today is a gross underestimate. this sort of considerations would complicate things further so i just leave them out of the equation.

What criteria is that? All you said in the above post was that a person with $30K can't do simple stuff I do on $20K.

I just don't know why people keep insisting that you can't afford cheap **** with $30-$40K. Trust me, you can afford beer, chips, power bars, movies, etc. Can you quit arguing the contrary so we can just move on. Why not argue that it's hard to dress well, go out to nice clubs, eat at nice restaurants, etc? I don't think anyone would argue with that.

Live alone -- no roommates and no renting out part of the home. In a major city (for the sake of simplicity a city that can support at least two major sports teams MLB / NBA / NFL / NHL). Actually live in the city somewhat near the core and not out in the fringe or in a burb. Own a car that is less than six years old. Do something fun that involves leaving the house at least five out of seven days. Dress so as to not look embarrassing. Be able to buy small stuff when you have a craving without having to fret over it.

No one is arguing that you can't afford it sometimes just not with sufficent frequency for someone who has 24 hours a day 7 days a week to kill. Affording a six pack every week or ten days is very different than being able to afford beer 3-4 times a week.

The last two days have actually been a good exercise for me in understanding what life would be like for our hypothetical individual. I offered to help out with a project and as such I have been trapped in a light industrial / business office since Friday. I can leave but only for 15-20 minutes at a time so no restaurants, no clubs, nothing that even comes close to being fun. I had $300 on me Friday and I have less than $80 now and I did nothing other than kill time while watching over a machine. People who think they can live off $30k while paying for the staples of life and filling up about 100 hours a week of dead time are on crack. Unless you are happy watching TV, screwing around on the internet, and playing video games for the majority of your life it can't be done.

Also with respect to criteria the place has to have rooms. No studios. Be at least 800sqft. No in the crime district of the city.

Can you seriously stop mentioning 30-40k, that has no place in this discussion just like sub-saharan africa. Its as ridiculous to conclude that you'd have 40k as it would be that you could double your million every year.

If someone wants to argue mathaments on this, I'll be happy to put my money up.

$30k was being super generous and would require a ~8% ROI which is unrealistic for the type of person who would jump at this. Realistically we should be talking about $15-20k.

$30-$40k is whats reasonable given "tax free" municipal bonds.

Using my formula from several pages ago, I get that a 5% (real) ROI gives $50,177.40 per year (pre-tax).

Edit: I forgot to mention that I used 60 years. For most American's, they could spend more money between now and 65, since at 65 you start getting SS. Also, if someone is in their 30's or 40's, they'll be able to spend a lot more. There's also other strategies that may do better. For example, maybe you spend $200K right off the bat and buy a house, to save money on rent.

I do. Although it is a studio. However, for the same price I'm paying, I found plenty of 1 bedroom apartments in the same location. It's not in an area with much crime.

Check.

Check.

I definitely dress so as not to look embarrassing. Since I'm a student, I probably only go out 2-3 times per week. Aside from that, I do eat out just about every day. With an extra $10K-$20K a year, I could definitely leave the house everyday.

Check.

True, but it's not that expensive to buy beer and a lot of restaurants are not that expensive. It wouldn't be a lavish life, but it's far from isolation and poverty.

I think it's understandable that you spend a lot more than our hypothetical person. You've already said you live in a really expensive area (even more expensive than a lot of major US cities it seems). Also, you have a lot more money that $30K a year, so you're accustomed to dropping a good amount of money on a regular day. That's awesome Henry, and I hope to be able to do the same in 5-10 years.

I know I spend more money than most people but that isn't the point. I am doing nothing other than sitting and watching a machine work so lifestyle is out. So far I bought two magazines and a newspaper, a lot of coffees, a five cans of red bull, a 5-hour energy, gasoline, Arby's, Wendy's, Subway, a case of diet coke,a case of bottle water, a can of Pringles, a loaf of bread, enough cold cuts to make three or four sandwiches, butter, basic toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, moisturizer, bar of Dove) from a discount department store, a Kit Kat, cheap socks, cheap underwear, and an air pump. There is nothing there that is even close to being baller.

Hahaha, I totally agree it's not baller. How many days was that for?