daylatedollarshort
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 9,358
I think you hit the nail on the head daylate.
If you think about it, all a person really needs to live per month is $300 for food, $50 for their share of utilities, $200 for medical, and around $400 for housing (1 room in a 4bd house). That is a $950 a month budget.
Funny, when most of us are planning on $40K to $80K a year in retirement.
Our kids' friends who didn't go to college, or are out but not making STEM career money, seem to live okay like that. They don't live in poverty, and that is even in a very high COL area.
One way they cut back is by having 3 - 4 roommates and maybe an economy or older car. One group lives with 5 roommates together in an upscale house with an indoor pool.
The low end wage ones aren't jetting off to Paris for the weekend, but they seem to have fun and enough money for free or low cost activities like pizza parties, camping trips, arranging car pools to visit friends in other cities, and days at the beach.
Maybe Yahoo finance would better serve the general public by publishing articles on how some people manage to live well on SS type incomes, instead of all the scare stories.