The system has made it impossible to live alone. You pretty much have to pair up with someone and split finances, whether that’s a romantic partner or a roommate or whatever. You have to be absolutely killing it to be younger than 40 and living alone right now.
American Capitalists: “Communism doesn’t work.”
Also, American Capitalists: “Live in a large shared space, cook meals together, and maybe even do a little farming on the side to supplement your diet. Also, don’t use the traditional professional trade system. Learn by doing! Become your own mechanic, have friends cut your own hair and do your own dentistry, home school your kids, and dig your own well for water. Basically, become a 1950s Maoist.”
Yeah, there’s no ‘supposed to’ – it’s not designed
It’s designed to prevent savings and use as much of your income for trickle up economics as possible before your max out your borrowing potential or get sick and die.
If we take out 7k of the gross $46,0000/yr for healthcare and retirement…
$5,700 for federal taxes, another k for state taxes…
That’s about $2692 a month, net. Subtract the just over $2k a month listed, there’s another $400 a month for… Utilities, phone, transportation, entertainment, savings, emergencies.
Even as rent is under 25% of income, pretty tight. Doable. But very tighter. You will never retire saving $4000 a year. You can never get sick. You apparently walk to work.
Pretty much have to get a roommate until the student loans are paid off.
Stop buying avocado toast
deleted by creator
I want a single bedroom apartment for 850.
You can get one a lot cheaper than that, but you’re going to have to move somewhere you probably don’t want to live.
If anon is in the US, they can switch to a SAVE plan which would make their monthly payments zero and get the loan discharged after 20-25 years. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Can you explain a bit more for us non-americans? You pay 0 and after 25 years it’s written off? Why doesn’t everybody do that then?
You pay a percentage of your income, but 225% of the federal poverty guideline is subtracted from your income before the calculation is made. If you haven’t paid off the loan within a certain timeframe (I believe 10 years if you have $12,000 in loans or less, 20 years if it’s more but you didn’t go to grad school, or 25 years otherwise) the loan is discharged, but you have to treat the discharged amount as taxable income for the year it’s discharged. Also, if you make your monthly payment ($0 for anon), your loan doesn’t accrue interest that month.
400$ for groceries per month for a single person sounds surprisingly high, especially if they’re trying to live frugally.
23/hr at full time work (40 hrs/week) is $920/week.
Let’s assume that 15% is taken out of each paycheck for taxes and withholdings and such, which leaves $782.
A typical month has 4 weeks, so $3128/month.
Stated expenses are $850+$1000+$400 totaling $2250
$3128-$2250=$878
bruh, if you’re not making it with that kind of money, you need to take a serious look at your finances and cut back on things you don’t need.
EDIT: I’m not replying to everyone.
There are several expenses that would be expected that were not covered. Those should easily fit inside the $878 monthly fund. I’m not going to go through item by item because they weren’t mentioned by OP and everyone will have a different list. The things I’d put on the list absolutely fit, with plenty to spare.
The tax rate is based on my personal experience of being poor in Texas. This was a bit of an asspull, but I did math last year that determined I was losing 13% of my paycheck to taxes and withholdings, and I make a bit less than OP so I bumped it up a couple percent. Texas does not have state income tax, so if that number sounds low that’s probably why.
Ultimately, I stand by what I said.
Expenses a normal person would likely have that aren’t mentioned:
- car related expenses
- utilities, if not covered by rent (especially a cheap apartment is unlikely to cover all the utilities
- any needed insurance not covered by job
- savings
- less frequent necessities (clothes, tools, repairs, medical expenses)
- ideally a little money for something enjoyable every once in a while
Plus what lawless hellscape is 15% for taxes and withholdings? In Ontario you’re paying 20% for taxes alone at the absolute minimum. That’s not including CPP, EI, and anything else you have like benefits co-pay or union dues.
The country is probably America, and the state is likely a red one. And you’re right about lawless hellscape. We have states that don’t collect income tax, 9 of them as a matter of fact. But they still pay federal income tax, which is the lions share of taxes.
I’m not even in one of those states, and for the majority of my working life my withholding has been about 15%. But, I wish I could pay 5-10% more in taxes for some universal healthcare. My employer pays about $10,000 a year per head for our premiums, which is very kind of them because they don’t have to pay 100% of the premiums. And that wonderful healthcare plan is a “zero deductible”, but not like you’re thinking. No, the plan pays absolutely none of your medical bills or visits or prescriptions until you hit your yearly out of pocket, which is $9,000 in network, double that for out of network. What percent of my income do you think $19,000-$27,000 is? I’ll give you a hint, it’s more than 10% haha.
Oh, the cherry on top… The only urgent care facilities in my area that are in network are owned by one hospital group. They stopped doing walk in visits. You have to schedule “urgent” care days in advance or go to one of their “standing emergency room” clinics that are minimum $1000. They invented a new, more expensive tier of urgency in between urgent and emergency. I think this is what they mean when they say capitalism breeds innovation.
Your comment is the biggest problem we have right now. There’s no, just paying a little more on taxes to get free healthcare. It’s estimated that currently it would be $3-4 trillion a year for universal healthcare. The total taxable income the US made was ~$4.4 trillion. 41.5% of that is individual taxes. If everyone paid 10% more that would only be $182B. You haven’t even scratched the surface of the cost. Adding universal health care is far more complicated than just everyone paying a little more in taxes.
Somehow only almost every other first world nation has figured it out, must be that American exceptionalism preventing us from figuring it out.
Also, I think you misunderstood my increase statement. I don’t mean a 10% increase of the federal taxes, I mean a 10% additional tax on total income which is about 10x that. Even using that figure, you’re really telling me that it would take a 24% increase to pay for this, and I’d love to see your sources for that.
And, this is fun, even with your tax increase requirement numbers, $18,000-$27,000 is 24%-37.5% of the median household income in America. Turns out, even if it were as absurdly expensive as you say, it’s literally a bargain for your average family. I now make more than the median, and it’s only 20%-30% of my income, so still a bargain but not as good of one.
Are you saying that paying 30% of your income for free health care is a bargain? At the median income for 60 years would be almost $1.4MM.
One fixable issue is that people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going.
But I agree the cost of living is too high which is directly due to government policies and control of the monetary system.
deleted by creator
My parents convinced 17 year old me that I would be stuck flipping burgers if I didn’t go to college and get good grades. I went to college and got good grades. Now I can’t get any job.
The employment market is super tight right now. A year ago I was freshly graduated after returning to college and landed multiple interviews as well as fending off headhunters on about a weekly basis. I applied to 9 openings and got 6 calls to interview, and made it to the final round of interviews for 3 roles in a 1 month timeframe. Now I’m fighting just to get an interview for the purposes of interview experience and potentially jumping ship if the offer is right, and I’m getting ghosted by the couple of recruiters who have reached out in the last few months. A friend’s boyfriend is job hunting after getting laid off from his last job and hasn’t been able to land a job in months, and another friend landed a job with an insane commute after her position was suddenly no longer needed. Even my old boss who I see at community events regularly and has been begging me to come back and throwing comparatively generous offers out there hasn’t brought it up in a few months. Shit’s rough yo
I was never able to find a stable job, and I graduated in 2019. Went back for a master’s degree, which I just finished in March. There’s nothing. I’m about to run out of money. I don’t know what to do, but I can’t survive in this economy with no help.
people need to stop going to college if there is no monetary benefit to going
Setting aside the idea of going to college for personal enrichment and social development (really fucking important life skills that have long term but difficult to explicitly calculate monetary benefits), its very difficult to say whether a particular college degree in 2024 will pay dividends by 2044.
I’ve seen more than a few people poo-poo English degrees, but when a college degree is functionally mandatory for any kind of corporate employment that’s obviously not true. I’ve seen people laud STEM degrees, then go off and work in the Fivr mines for years earning less than they’d get in a mediocre Sales & Marketing gig (which you can score easily with any kind of BA). I’ve seen people talk up vocational training, but so much of that hinges on your employer and the state of the industry at any given moment (roofers and plumbers doing great in Houston right now, but that’s because home owners’ insurance hasn’t completely abandoned the state yet).
It is a risk to some extent, but much of what college is is a way to figure out who can do what job. A STEM degree is good in that people will know that you have some level of technical skill. I think the main thing is that unless you have a direct way to monetize a degree, its not worth spending years of your life and going into debt on a risk. I personally have an engineering and a science degree that I used for a while, but now I have a construction company and would have been better suited starting in construction.
Kids keep going to college with the promise of making 400k/year, but normies don’t get that. College is good and all but employers generally don’t care which college you went to, or your major (if not directly related), what matters is who you became friends with in college, and who their parents/uncles are.
Better off studying something specific, vocational schools, trade schools. Learn something specific, either no or small loan
employers generally don’t care which college you went to
It’s a little worse than that. College provides a useful socio-economic barrier for unethical employers. They can hide in plain sight by requiring a degree, knowing it’s going to cull out a whole class of people. Working to keep college unaffordable may be another part in this strategy; they’re pulling the ladder up at the same time. Parents and students overcommitting on loans are doing all they can to bash back against all this, even if they don’t know it at the time.
numbers don’t check out
lists $2250 expenses… 100 hours of work per month would cover it
I know they have other expenses, but they failed to list them and failed to make their point.
I’m realistically in the situation OP is trying to get at. I’m making over $30/hr, I’ve been in my career a few years. I pay $1500 towards my housing expenses each month (rent/mortgage, electricity, heat, etc). I pay something like $500 in insurance between my vehicle and home, probably a bit less… My debt repayments are well over $1000/month. I pay $100 each for my cellphone and internet…
I have a slew of other expenses I can’t really enumerate. When I factor in food and gasoline, etc, I basically have no money left. I might have $200 left each month if I’m very thrifty with food.
You know what I’m doing? I’m in the process of getting my finances into a system that can help me visualize the spending and plan for my month over month budgeting. I’m trying to find where I can find costs I don’t need, and cut costs where I can. My work requires me to have a car, and while my vehicle is older, it works great and is pretty good on gas; best of all, I’ve paid off my car. I’m trying to dig myself out of this situation I’m in, and get in the black eventually. I’m tired of worrying about debt, which I’ve been in for nearly 20 years, in some way, shape or form.
Do you pay 500$/month on insurance? Or was that a typo?
Just about. I have pretty comprehensive insurance on my car, plus content and property insurance for my home.
All average between $100-$200 each, so $500 is a reasonable estimate.
That is crazy to me. I pay something like 500€/year for house insurance including contents and about 400€/year for the car. So that’s about 75€/month. But I’m in a different country so who knows. Your other expenses weren’t that different to mine, though.
If you don’t need a ton of data, Mint mobile has a $15 a month 5 GB per month plan. It costs me $201.51 per year. I have to pay a year at a time, but that helped me cut my phone costs by a ton
Heh. I’m Canadian, our telecom situation suckkkks
As an American, I’m terribly sorry for what we exported politically to your country.
I don’t hold you, or any Americans, personally responsible. I understand that there’s a certain culture in your country… Not the primary culture, there’s a mash of a few different cultures, but one specifically (you know which one), that’s particularly problematic.
That culture has infected us for seemingly no good reason whatsoever. A lot of the issues that are central to that culture are not even discussed in our political circles because they’re issues we’ve basically decided on already, that, with any luck at all, will not be changing.
Those up here that have tried to stir the pot have so far, gotten nowhere.
The most significant impact that I’ve directly been aware of from American politics was the mask protests. The idiot bridge that decided to have a demonstration at the capital during COVID, ironically leading to several of them getting COVID in the process…
It’s not just the anti mask protests I’m taking about, it’s the group that would have a protest about mask mandates. IMO, they’re the most direct and significant problem to be inherited from our neighbors to the south, and bluntly, I don’t consider them a representation of the nation as a whole. For the most part, like Canada, you’re all just regular people living your lives trying to make it by. Not deranged activists trying to prove a point that everyone understands and thinks you’re an idiot for dying on that hill… Oh we know what their point is, we just don’t care, nor agree with it.
I’m sure most of our neighbors to the south are just trying to get by without struggling too much.
I’m certain you’re mostly all fine folk just trying to live.
I use ynab (you need a budget) to try and help me out. Emphasis on try.
Solid suggestion. I’m trying to get up and running with something a bit more involved. Right now I’m standing up a firefly III system for myself; I have to stand up an add-on to import data. Still gotta figure out some particulars.
It’s self hosted FOSS, which bluntly, I trust more than anything else. I’m certainly not paying what some companies think their budgeting software is worth on a subscription just to do my personal finance.
EDIT: just to be clear, I’m not knocking the price of ynab here, I’m more specifically talking about something like quicken, which is between $2-5 monthly to subscribe (depending on which product you get). IMO, it’s pretty idiotic to pay monthly to manage your monthly finances. I would imagine most people would use quicken (or a similar app) to reduce their month by month spending on stuff, and the first thing you need to do to get started is to spend more money monthly to have the privilege of doing so. There are obviously benefits and value to doing that, but it doesn’t make sense for me.
Maybe you should have had some forward looking into what a career would pay before investing that much into college. Hell I made more than that in my entry level job more than 15 years ago.
Just because college doesn’t have an instant payoff doesn’t mean it never has a payoff.
Let’s follow your train of thought here.
Everyone makes the “smart” choice of looking into their career, and determine it based on the pay scale.
-
Now we have a dearth of people doing the jobs with low pay, but still crucial to our society.
-
Do you think there exists a demand for everyone to enter into the higher paying work force?
See this is the problem, you’re entirely missing the point. You don’t have to go to Harvard to be an elementary school teacher. Harvard on average $228k for 4 years Bridgewater State $44k for 4 years. Only 35 miles apart.
This person chose to take out somewhere on the realm of $90k worth of student loans for a career that makes less than $50k per year.
I don’t know anything about it, but we an example out of state tuition at Fayetteville State University is less than $25k for 4 years.
There are options and choices but people would rather take the easy way and blame someone else.
I agree college prices are out of control, but right now you have to work within the constraints available.
My friend, jobs like elementary school teacher don’t pay enough to return the interest loans, and that’s only exaggerated with the high inflation.
Entry level jobs, which are supposed to be easier are simply not paying enough to make ends meet. And that’s not a problem all individuals can solve. This requires regulatory work
You either need to really do more research on topics before you make uninformed comments or just don’t comment on things you don’t know.
Mississippi the lowest paid elementary school teachers on average and it’s $48k. If you went to school for $25k then you’d only have a $250 monthly payment for 10 years. Teachers should make more, but you make good decisions you could definitely live okay.
-
Yup that’s the right take. It’s the literal kids who are being told they must go to college who are at fault. It’s definitely not the system, not the adults counseling them about their future, and certainly not the businesses whose only purpose is aggregating wealth for a select few.
As always blame the victim and walk away. Might as well piss on it to show your dominance.
That’s the right take. Take zero responsibility for your own actions and blame everyone else instead.
Don’t have kids
Jesus titty fucking Christ dude. People should be able to afford to shelter and feed themselves on any one job. I don’t care if you’re a fry cook or a neurosurgeon, everyone deserves to live with dignity and in reasonable comfort. No one cares how it was 15 years ago when you were entering the workforce. We care how it is now, where unless you won the parent lottery, you’re probably gonna need two jobs out of college if you want to actually support yourself.
At the risk of defending the guy with the bad take, op can afford shelter and food. Op can’t afford shelter and food and 1000 dollars of loan payments per month.
The 1000 dollars of loan payments per month shouldn’t be a thing, is part of my point. It wasn’t a thing 15 years ago when the person with the bad take got their “entry level job”, and it shouldn’t be a thing now. People should be able to get a college education without having to put themselves into financial ruin.
This comment shows how uneducated on the topic you took the time to comment on you are. Average cost of college in 2010 was $33k and $38k now. source
Also, 15 years ago entry level work was 7-10 dollars an hour. Dude walked into a “skilled” job and confused it for “entry level”. Which is also a bullshit euphemism meant to keep us from realizing that many people will never leave that level of work. It’s literally impossible for everyone to move up because there’s fewer jobs in each level going up.
Entry level based on the OP comment that they are a college graduate. I didn’t realize that I had to specify something that was spelled out in the OP.
Fook that’s a lot of money. I was married with kids making $15/hr and we were fine. It’s about getting good deals, having no debt, driving old cars you fix yourself, and not blowing money on frivalous crap like Starbucks, food delivery, and endless subscriptions to modern bullshit like media services. You kids waste so much these days expecting to be able to spend nickles and dimes everywhere (screw these new business models that bleed you dry with constant payments).
If you can’t live on $50k/yr something is wrong with the choices you’re making.
Lol, did you not read their expenses?
23*40*52=47840/12=3986.66*(8/10)=3189.33Say taxes and such only 20%, likely more if they have any health insurance. 1850 out with rent & student loans.Take away the food 400. Leaves for electric (150), water (25), trash(10), car note(300), gas(150), maintenance (30), car insurance (180) Netflix(15) Internet (40) prepaid phone (20)Leaving $19.33, assuming I didn’t miss any reasonable expenses. Good luck saving up for anything or cutting down expenses, maybe return to a the college diet of ramen til you can pay off the car, if not indefinitely. 1 unexpected expense away from disaster.
E: Fixed the number formatting, ty!
23*40*52=47840/12=3986.66*(8/10)=3189.33Here.
Drop the Netflix and hit the high seas mate.
10 dollars a month shouldn’t break the budget of someone working full time.
Yah, that was my thinking, and chances are they can get Netflix and other services for free from friends/family. But if a trip through a drive through destroyed the budget, bigger issues.
