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.”
Start building guillotines. Convince others why guillotines are necessary. Get to work.
Go back to living with your parents
$23/hr x 40 hours = $920/wk
$920 x 52 weeks per year = $47,840 per year, gross.
government takes ~25% in taxes leaving you with net $35,880
rent is $850 x 12 months = $10,200
$35,880 - $10,200 = $25,680
student loans $1000/mo x 12 months = $12,000
$25,680 - $12,000 = $13,680
groceries $400 x 12 months = $4,800 $13,680 - $4,800 = $8,880 to spare.Your annual budget has a surplus of $8,880
Divided over 12 months, you have an allowance of $740 per month.Honestly you have it better than most people.
Furthermore you don’t need $400 in food each month.
Food is stupid anyway; Most Americans are overweight, so you can probably get by on less.
If carbohydrates have not yet been made toxic to your biochemistry via your metabolism being turbofucked to hell by sugar and empty starch, you could pull the red beans and rice plus basic spice hack for staple nutrition. Literally just big fucking bags of dry brown rice and dried red beans.
I see dried red beans and dry brown rice coming in around $1 per lb, and that’s DRIED remember - after you soak them and cook them you’re getting multiple pounds of food per dollar. You could get your grocery budget down to $100 per month if this is your base-load calorie source per meal and you decide to spruce things up every so often with a dollar here and a dollar there.
Beans and rice are a cheap way to eat but people shouldn’t have to live on that…especially with a college degree.
The list doesn’t include utilities, phone, basic household supplies, nor any sort of healthcare/medicines (USA! USA!). You also didn’t take out health insurance from the checks. A few years ago I was making about 55k and my biweekly checks were a lot closer to $1300 than $1840.
Yeah, the comment you’re responding to is dumb. What about savings? Transportation? How are they supposed to afford cookware and other kitchen appliances since they have just graduated and probably have very few possessions? It’s silly.
The student loans do seem high though!
Not to mention the cost of having a hobby that makes life worth living. Wage slaving is not a good way to live
Kids just don’t want work 69 hours per week anymore.
Why is everybody so lazy?
Looool work 40/52, shut up and eat ur beans, bitch
Seriously, in the face of technological efficiency of the 21st century your answer to that life-situation is smth smth carbohydrates?
Utilities? (ie water, power, trash)
Phone. Internet. I guess you could always attach your ethernet strait into the red beans and rice.
Car payment…
Insurance…
Gas…
You got gas covered too, with the beans there…
What about being happy for this money? Can you have a fulfilling life for 740 bucks a month? What if you subtract bills from it first? What if you subtract transportation costs, seasonal clothing, repairs, medical bills? Can you feel happy if you worked your ass off to get a good job in your field only to have to eat beans and rice and have fun for free or at home?
Seasonal clothing?
Winter jackets, etc
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.
100 hours of work if the money is tax free (it’s not). Taxes take about 40% of your gross income so on $23/hr hr can’t afford the listed bills.
By my estimation and IRS calculator, his tax liability is probably under 20%. Probably. This assumes about 15% is being taken out for healthcare and retirement however, so yeah, the net paycheck will be approximately 30-40% lower than gross.
I’d estimate OP has $440 a month left over after all the list expenses.
Use this tax calculator; it includes FICA, state taxes, and local taxes:
https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes
No one is paying 40% total tax rate unless they are single, make $350,000+, and live in a high tax area (NYC, San Francisco). If you are married, you have to make at least $800,000 to pay 40% overall.
That’s what I used. Still some question about how much nontaxable retirement/Healthcare as well as what the state taxes would be. I estimated $5,700 in federal and $1000 in state. Based on 10% to retirement and $2400 a year for insurance, right off the top, and a 3% state tax.
$440 per month to pay for gas, utilities, phone bill, insurance, incidentals, etc. You can forget about savings completely.
I don’t think OP is too far off the mark.
Absolutely nowhere in the USA will you be taxed 40% of your income, I’m amazed such a blatantly obvious statement is being so heavily upvoted
Look through the thread and you will see people showing their work and coming up with similar numbers. 40% was a rough estimate off the top of my head. Figures from a recent paystub of mine: gross income of $2700.80, net income of $1774.41. My deductions are more than just taxes, but regardless that is an effective reduction in pay of %35.31. This is a real life figure that the others may be similarly subjected to, as opposed to the numbers you get out of a calculator.
Look through the thread and you will see people showing their work and coming up with similar numbers.
I’ve not seen anyone so far in this thread quoting 40% taxes. Looking at
I just pulled my paystub (single income household) and I’m at 37% of income going to taxes and full benefits (including 7% to my 401k) covering my whole family while not making much more than the OP
I’d be glad if rich people paid 40% tax.
But it is closer to 4%, while they could easily pay 95%.
Taxes are not the problem. They are necessary for a functioning society. And if other people avoid paying taxes, that means YOU will have to pay more. Because the money will have to come from somewhere.
I’d gladly pay 90% taxes if it meant the rest of my expenses were provided by the government.
In the UK if you earn over £100k you effectively get taxed 60% (using PAYE)
I’d happily pay 75% if it meant public services were actually effective, but we have the double whammy of high taxation and crumbling services - that’s what over a decade of conservative rule does… Here’s to the next 4 years!
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.
If you don’t need a ton of data, Mint mobile has a $15 a month 5 GB per month plan. It costs me $201.51 per year. I have to pay a year at a time, but that helped me cut my phone costs by a ton
Heh. I’m Canadian, our telecom situation suckkkks
As an American, I’m terribly sorry for what we exported politically to your country.
I don’t hold you, or any Americans, personally responsible. I understand that there’s a certain culture in your country… Not the primary culture, there’s a mash of a few different cultures, but one specifically (you know which one), that’s particularly problematic.
That culture has infected us for seemingly no good reason whatsoever. A lot of the issues that are central to that culture are not even discussed in our political circles because they’re issues we’ve basically decided on already, that, with any luck at all, will not be changing.
Those up here that have tried to stir the pot have so far, gotten nowhere.
The most significant impact that I’ve directly been aware of from American politics was the mask protests. The idiot bridge that decided to have a demonstration at the capital during COVID, ironically leading to several of them getting COVID in the process…
It’s not just the anti mask protests I’m taking about, it’s the group that would have a protest about mask mandates. IMO, they’re the most direct and significant problem to be inherited from our neighbors to the south, and bluntly, I don’t consider them a representation of the nation as a whole. For the most part, like Canada, you’re all just regular people living your lives trying to make it by. Not deranged activists trying to prove a point that everyone understands and thinks you’re an idiot for dying on that hill… Oh we know what their point is, we just don’t care, nor agree with it.
I’m sure most of our neighbors to the south are just trying to get by without struggling too much.
I’m certain you’re mostly all fine folk just trying to live.
Do you pay 500$/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.
I’m in Canada so our dollar is worth less than American dollars and I believe euros are with more than USD, works out to 330 euro or something.
Our rates are clearly higher still. But hopefully that puts things into a better context.
I’m around $35 CAD for my wage per hour, which is still pretty low IMO.
Inflation has hit us really hard…
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.
You pay whut on your student loans. You’ve been hosed Davy
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.
You old farts don’t understand the world you live in anymore because you guys wasted everything and fucked everything over for future generations.
You’d collapse faster than the wtc towers on 9/11 if you were in their situation.
Lol, did you not read their expenses? 234052=47840/12=3986.66*(8/10)=3189.33 Say 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.
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.
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.
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.
I initially tried the “no degree” route and quickly observed the very low ceiling to what I could earn without a degree while working the white collar jobs that I’m good at, as well as how difficult climbing the ladder beyond that is. The pay bump and quality of work benefit from just a 2 year degree has been incredible
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.
if there is no monetary benefit to going
For decades we’ve all been told that college will pay for itself. It’s gonna take a long time for society to unlearn that.
True. Its sad because the construction field is wide open and there just are not enough workers, zero degree required.
It sure would be nice to have more open minded, diverse people working blue collar. It’s exhausting quietly listening to all these conservatives and feeling like I’m the only one who gives a damn.
I agree. My whole childhood people would say things like “get good grades or you’ll be a garbage man” - and it’s like I wish I had a union job that couldn’t be outsourced.
same with public school custodial dept. i make over 20 an hour with no degree. but I’m pretty capped now because I’ve been here 7 years and the union isn’t strong enough to leverage the QOL raises we need and deserve.
i highly prefer blue collar but I also have medical limitations and there’s just not enough regulation for things like extreme heat in these physical type jobs, which has kept me from seriously considering working construction.
It’s still generally true, it’s just the gap is much smaller than it once was.
It’s always a question of whether it should be worth it for an individual, but on average it will pay for itself over the course of a career.
Vocational stuff should definitely get an equal footing with academics.
Plumbers, electricians, etc.
They don’t because universities are absolutely rinsing it on the tuition fees.
Society paid for my lengthy uni education so joke’s on them. But I am sorry for people who get absolutely ripped off in other countries like the US etc.
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.
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
- saving
- 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.
Man, that sounds like the worst case, Ontario…
Attodaso man, fuckin attodaso.
Texas governments (city, state) makes money from sales and property taxes. The payroll taxes are federal.
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 $1.4MM.
After Taxes and Expenses having a negative net seems like a great time to file for a SAVE repayment plan on the loans, some rates as low as 0$ monthly.
OP didn’t mention a car, unless they live in an area where it is somehow required, they might just go without one for now
I don’t understand why this has so many down votes, it’s correct! To have $878 available monthly I’d need to move back in with my mom (aka free rent and occasionally food too). And I’m a junior softer dev, easily among the higher paying jobs for starters. That’s some killer money if you got your own place on top, also spending 400 on food? Holy sheep shit.
It’s not even slightly correct.
- Estimate of taxes & withholdings is way too low. Maybe some states have such a low tax rate, but most places do not. In addition, withholdings are usually much higher.
- There are tons of expenses not itemized that you can assume most people will have. Phone, internet, utilities, renters insurance, health insurance, car payments, gas, car insurance, parking, transit tickets, bank account, etc.
- Also doesn’t account for an emergency fund, savings of any kind or anything other than hand to mouth.
- Then there’s stuff you need to keep your job & apartment. Cleaning supplies, soap, deodorant, shampoo, laundry soap, dryer sheets, garbage/recycling/compost bags, clothes, shoes, haircuts etc.
- God forbid you have any sort of uncovered medical expenses. Birth control, OTC drugs of any kind, glasses/contacts, supplements for some kind of nutrient deficiency, dispensing fees for prescription drugs, etc.
Why do people insist on dragging each other down like this, like some billionaire is going to be impressed with how long they were able to live off a sack of rice and beans.
It costs nothing to support each other.
This isn’t about dragging each other down. Those are genuinely the costs of living for me (central Europe). 15% is the tax rate, the only time I payed more than 400 bucks for groceries in a month was when me and my gf together bought take out every day because we were in the process of moving among other things, and there’s no way in hell our internet/electricity/water/gass bills could put a major dent into 878 bucks. That shit is like 150, where we often pay reserves, so a small chunk of that will come back.
America is fucking expensive if that’s true, like holy shit, good luck to you all. It’s easy to forget that in America you’re forced to buy a car and pay for healthcare (here, health care is part of the 15% tax btw). Here you can just buy a YEARLY public transit ticket for around 150 (more for nationwide, but whatever) and just rent a small van when you really need a car. Altho I ear a little less than OP and still manage to squeeze in a small cheap car. And with my gf doubling our income we can even afford a bit larger flat. I’d argue I’m quite spoiled and not using my money effectively and still manage fine.
it’s because it’s not taking into account any other expenses, phone, internet, utilities etc.
Spending 75-100 a week for a person in groceries is pretty normal in my experience. Before COVID I was spending 50-60 a week but those days are over. .
400$ for groceries per month for a single person sounds surprisingly high, especially if they’re trying to live frugally.
Have you bought food recently? I guess I live in area where the only thing that grows well is corn so anything fresh has to be freighted here but man good food ain’t cheap and cheap food ain’t good.
Yes I’ve bought food recently. I don’t sustain myself with just air based diet, at least not yet.
I feed a family of 4 on close to $300 a month (but I budget $400/mo) a single person can absolutely do better than $400/mo
Looking at the votes I think many disagree. I was assuming the person in OP was American and compared to where I live food is a lot cheaper there. Maybe there’s something I’m not understanding how American grocery budgets work.
“Groceries”
Not all thats green is lettuce.
The devil’s lettuce will bloat up your snack budget. Might even waste money on candles and an Indian themed wall flag of some sort. Terrible for the budget.
Thats the neat thing, you’re not!
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.
Or start working crazy overtime.
And die.
Death is inevitable. 😃
But time is what we can change
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 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.
Ah ok that makes more sense, thanks for explaining!
