How to live on $600 per month

There are a lot of places, especially rural, where broadcast tv is not available. Where I live, we have two broadcast stations that we can occasionally receive depending on the weather.

 

Yes, if the car only gets 20MPG. Considering that many cars easily beat that (my wife's nearly triples it, getting 50+), you are full of it!

 

And a bill for a smaller apartment or mobile home will be less.

Not hard to beat that with some care.

For one car, I would pay less than $500/YEAR, and I get a surcharge because of a long drive (30,000+ miles/year).

Even McDonald's offers health care.

Get a couplke roommates, you can live on less than you think.

 

Forget jail, you could easily end up shot dead. The more criminals that do, the better, in fact.

 

Full-time minimum wage will gross about $1200/month.

 

I paid $25 for an Armani sport coat at a consignment shop. About 1/5 the price of a cheap knockoff. When I wrenched, I always bought clothes used...I knew I'd get grease on them, why not?

My 195,000 mile Jeep is going for its third repair in the year (and ~25,000 miles) I have owned it: front brakes. It will cost under $100 and take me an hour and a half or so. (First two were muffler & tailpipe and a shorted wire on the fuel pump.)

 

He probably plans to use this as a reason why single-payer must be instituted.

 

First this is not a librocommunist state so there are no state taxes taken out. And second with enough dependents listed there is no or little federal income tax taken out, and even with no dependents they get every penny back. Plus EITC, plus welfare, plus food stamps, plus housing, plus, plus, plus. If you ever worked or paid taxes, you'd understand.

And their tax return and EITC, even without getting interest, these people probably NEED this forced savings.

 

So I go and 'rob' a bank instead. I'll make sure to pick a small one and I'll surrender very easily when the police come. Of course, this is only if I lose my job, cannot get another one, and end up evicted and homeless. So it's more of a 'last resort' type of deal.

 

Mobil homes especially those that poor people tend to live in are generally quite old, and are notoriously hard to heat, since they have very poor insulation.

Depends on where you live, For instance in DE here are the requirements

just the minimum coverage is going to cost a minimum of $500 per year if you are over 35 and have a perfect driving record. Much higher if younger or if your record has any points.

And such good policies they offer.
from money.cnn

again depending on what part of the country you live in, you can severely limit your options. A lot of landlords don't rent to two or three people who are not related. Some towns and cities have ordinances against renting to people who are unrelated to each other. Salisbury, MD has such an ordinance.

- - - Updated - - -

Waiting lists to obtain subsidized housing in many places can be several years long. That's the case in DE.

 

Which insurance policies are hospitals going to stop accepting because of Obama? Anthem? Aetna?

 

Try again! I have lived in a mobile home...they are not that hard to heat, especially if the occupant takes some care. Seal the windows, make sure the doors have no drafts, make sure the skirt seals properly, insulate the pipes and ducts, keep the furnace clean. Mine was a late-70's New Moon.

No, wrong! $50K/100K/50K liability for one vehicle would run me $450/year. That's twice the minimums here. Clean driving record, but I am hit with a surcharge due to high miles driven.

Not actually true...full-timers have better policies.

Only if you get caught. But wait, we're related...they're my, umm, COUSINS. Yes, it takes some legwork...but it's not rocket science!

 

You really should throw in the towel in on this. According to your OP you budget $50 a month on gas. You just stated that you get a 30,000 mile per year discount, ( which is actually a rate increase by the actuary tables ). Assuming both posts were accurate and assuming regular gas at it lowest price average this year, ( $3.28 per gl ), you are getting 178 miles per gallon.

You also state you have a good seal on a 40 year old trailer. According to Southface.org, one of the premier green building schools for achitects and engineers, most mobile homes even built by today's improved standards will not be as energy efficient as a site built home. The recommend changing out the heating / cooling system, re-insulating the floor and walls, skirting, and building a canopy roof over the entire structure. They believe with those improvements on a new EnergyStar home, the energy costs should be lowered to a comparable sized site built home. Given these improvements would cost multiple times the worth of a 40 year old mobile home, somehow I doubt your home improvements beat the numbers.

The more you try to explain, the deeper it gets. Quietly waving the white flag would be a good option.

 

Couple of things: The person you quoted did not write the OP. A "surcharge" is the opposite of a discount.

 

The problem is that it is not indexed to inflation, so increases in the minimum wage have lagged increases in the cost of living.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minperpov.jpg

And you may note that minimum wage has always provided income that is *below* the poverty level. Which is why people making that wage still get benefits.

 

Why don't you throw in the towel? The thread has said it IS possible to live on $600 per month. Obviously it CAN be done since some people HAVE to do so. No one has claimed that one can live in luxury and take round the world cruise on $600 per month. Just some can survive on that, some quite well, some miserably.

 

I do a lot of driving. That fact does not make it the norm. I am not the OP. I budgeted nothing, he did.

Haven't lived there for 10+ years, but yes, I did. Spent a couple weekends replacing weather stripping, sealing gaps, replacing the skirting, insulating the floor and the ducts, and sealing windows...made a HUGE difference.

Never claimed it did. Of course, the "numbers" are not even approached by many (I'd even say most) houses in this area, probably including mine. Also note: a mobile home is usually cheaper to heat simply because it's smaller than a stick-built house! (I recall mine was only ~800 sq. ft.)

 

I live on min. wage. I have no family to help me. I had a car but it broke down in traffic. Because I only had liability, and I live paycheck to paycheck I now rely on public transpiration. The public transportation system runs 5am to 5pm Mon-Sat. It takes me two hours to get

 

Two hours to get to work, and two hours to get home. I don't remember the last time I had employer who pays min. wage who worked them 40 hours a week. My manager gets in hot water if I work more than 25. Since travel time to and from work is already 4hrs/ day, a second isn't realistic. I don't have anyone to give rides so that's not an option. I don't know about anywhere else but I've never seen a studio, trailer, or even room for rent that was less than 350/ month. I have no rental history BC in order for me to rent a place I must make 1.5x the amount for rent, so for years I've been paying rent to sleep on the couch(I'm no mooch) I do not qualify for subsidized housing or any other social programs BC in my area only people with children do.

I guess my point is this, yes you can live on $600, but only if you don't care about quality of life.

I am not drug user or degenerate, simply a girl born into poverty, does that make my life less than? Does the lowest class of people deserve no quality of life. Should we just be content to not be dead?

 

Also where are these $200 trailers, here you can only rent a trailer if you also rent the lot that it sits on which typically is 300 to 600 dollars in addition to the rent. Is lot rent only a local thing?

 

No, lot rent is the common practice in most of the U.S. In my area it runs from about $250 to $700 per month and the lot rents can be raised any time the owner wants to do so. A number have been raising them to sky high levels so they can force their tenets out and then sell the land for other uses. It's a real problem because many landlord's won't allow a trailer older than 5 years to be moved onto a lot. Thus the tenet is pretty much forced to junk their trailer if it's older than 5 years since they cannot find a new place to put it. They might be able to put it on their own land, but a typical 1/4 acre lot will run (depending on exactly where in this county) between $50,000 and $150,000. (that size lot in my neighborhood which requires stick built homes) run about $300,000.

 

I think they are located somewhere out in Montana. Of course there are no jobs there which is why the rent is so low.

 

I was watching Frontline on PBS last night. It was pointed out that the AVERAGE American will need a total of $1.2 Million dollars to retire and maintain the average lifestyle they are accustomed to. The $1.2 Million was to include savings, investment, 401k, Social Security, and real estate. Don't just feel badly for yourself, after the recession of 2000 and the crash of 2008, 85% of Americans do not have the $1.2 Million. Gotta love capitalism!

One of those interviewed, one made an important remark. "If I have to live in a pup tent, I will make it work." I guess many of us will be considering that thinking.

 

Sorry Dumbass but Propane may work for heating ones home or a stove but
not running a TV or a flushing the toilet which reguires a pump run via electric.
But worry not,Obama has that taken care of.Electricity bills are going to
excede even the price at the pump as they already have.Obama is doing everything
in his power to shut down Power plants { especially coal burning } however companies
like GE { which Obama exempted from paying ANY tax on domestice profits } will
be granted as many Power plant licenses they can produce.
In short meaning one's electric bill will be a major expense as of yesterday.
Yer Retard little $600 a month thread has been busted.
Forget about clothes,doctor,dental,prescription expenses.Laundry expenses,
ya can't wash clothes c/o propane.Incidental like going out into public.
What is one.supposed to do when out into public ... just window shop.Can't
even budget for a Mars bar at the local convenient.No movie theatre budget or
renting a movie.Or trip to fast food.
I know ... all our Great Grandparents never had a lick of that.Just an apple
and maybe a seat at the local cracker barrel with some chaw.No TV just local
chit chat.Clothes were hand me down.

 

Bad math. The working poor have to pay over 90% of their discretionary income in taxes of various sorts.