this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
228 points (96.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43397 readers
1112 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tl;Dr: It varies very drastically by locale. Rural Americans can often live okay on "very* minimal income. Standards on what " poor" and "normal" vary about as widely between parts of America as they do between America and where you're from.
Where I live (Dallas), I'm making around $40,000 in an area where the median is $60,000. I live alone, but I will have to buy a new car this year and I will barely be able to make my payments. I do not have a college degree, and I'm still basically entry level.
I've been looking at moving a lot recently. If I moved where I want to live (Oregon), I'd probably make the same or slightly less money, and my rent and expenses would probably rise by a few hundred a month. In effect, I would barely be getting by if I didn't have a car payment.
I've also been looking at Chicago, where the median wage is slightly less than I make now, but cost of living is slightly lower, and I'd make slightly more. I also wouldn't have to have a car, so my disposable income would rise drastically.
Would you consider a solid used car?
In France you can cet a half crappy car for some grands, in Sweden, where I come from, 10k will get you a Volvo rolling another 300.000 kilometers.
The USA is such a curious (for me sort of imaginary even) place. We've been fed USA & USSR and onwards (easy to say the USA was heavily on the win side for teenagers, USSR showed off cool things too for a young mind like heavy tech starship and devastating nuclear power etc. The USA always gave the vibe about "be what you want" though, I'm a big fan :-). How do you deal with the fired at will thing when you get old for example? Is your thirties some sort of retirement hunting time? OPs question sure is interesting for us Europeans I guess(I feel things vary wildly in the EU already! Like retirement in Italy is very personal, in Sweden it isn't).
Gotta go mix the soup, cheers!
The car I'm interested in holds its value very well, so the lifetime cost is lower if I buy new. I'm also planning on being slightly less poor before buying it.
And regarding the "fired at will" thing, we don't deal with it. We just kind of hope. I'm a little bit tistic, so I've been fired several times for not engaging in the proper amount of small talk. You get another job and move on.
Good luck!