The median standard of living on our planet is around US$300/month for an individual. That is $10/day. There are around 4 billion folks who live on our planet with this order of income. This is not poverty, this is international standard of middle class, for around 2/3'rds of our brother and sisters who we share the planet with.
Could you live well on that? I will take a few stabs at it:
My budget now is $1800 a month, including rent which is $800. I live alone in a 650 square foot apartment, I feel it is wasteful for me to have so much space for myself. The other $1000 is for everything else which is a lavish amount of money to be able to spend. The poverty line for a single in the USA is US$933/month; my spending is less than double that. In rural India the poverty line is 356.35 Rupees (US$7.50) /month.
For $200 I could rent a nice 2 bedroom (in south America, including utilities), and get a roommate. So the cost would be $100 from me. This can be done in the USA (which has arguably the lowest cost of living in world), by renting e.g. a 2 bedroom apartment and getting 5 roommates (in practice, family).
Tack an extra $100 for food, and that's a very comfortable amount of food, although you'd have to cook yourself a lot. You'd have to increase it by 50%-100% to be eating out.
Still have $100 left. I could just create a miscellaneous category and pump everything into it. All you really need is internet connection, and then you will be leading a life of greater real wealth than the planet's richest kings just a decade ago. Yeah, I think I could thrive on $300/month, but until I put my money where my mouth is, it's all just talk.
Here is another take of similar budget but living in tropical beach paradise.
I'd be interested in gathering folks who are willing to attempt living on $300 for a month, maybe make some sort of blog challenge?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
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7 comments:
Closest I know of online is Jacob from ERE, who claims to be around $500/mo. I'm in grad school, and have averaged $1650 over the last 10 months, though it would have been significantly lower without some (many) needless purchases. To top it off, the job I work at during the semester pays about $530/mo, so I'm fully dependent on my parents. When I graduate and (maybe) start making Real Money™, my goal will be to cut monthly spending to somewhere shy of $1000, and save every penny in effort to retire early. We'll see how it goes; I've got 3 more years of school left, plus a year of interning, before I can put the plan into action. But that doesn't mean I can't start laying the foundation now, i.e., cut spending to the bone and develop the right mindset.
in the third world, they probably have social / family wealth in a way that we do not. Neighborhoods who know each other well, share, pool resources, etc.
Sharing an house / apartment with five strangers is just not the same. Would you really want to have just one computer, that is shared amongst five people? Even that is generous by third world standards. The bulk of them might be consigned to cyber-cafe's, assuming they could afford that.
I'd love to have a $300 a month budget but unfortunately, that wouldn't even cover my utilities!
A $300 a month budget is is possible but it isn't easy. I lived on less than that in Guatemala. I'll be returning there for three months later this year. I plan to do some traveling though so I'll probably be spending more than $300 a month. Maybe one of those months I'll stay put and live on about that much.
Watch the Mexican, Bangladeshi etc immigrants who remit large percentages of small wages to see how it's done. My husband did that for a few years when he first moved to NYC, sending most of his money home to his mum - but he shared everything with his roommates, there were no individual TVs or food or social life or whatever. That wouldn't be so palatable to most N.Americans (or Yurpeans like me).
I could probably do $300 if I owned my "shelter" outright and wasn't paying rent (almost 50% of my budget!) but merely teal estate taxes which I would envision to be a few hundred a year. I'd also ditch the car. Otherwise, I would not need to change anything.
If you want a challenge on that level, search for riot for austerity.
I am currently working in a live-in job where my employer provides everything + a monthly salary. This will allow me to purchase a dependable van in a few months and I will be able to then hit the road and work part time, living on only $300 a month. I will use the library for internet access (have a netbook), check out books from the library for reading/entertainment and will eat mostly dry and canned foods with the occasional camp cookout. There are also free promotions for car lots, churches, grand openings etc where you can go eat a meal for free. My budget will look like this:
insurance: $25
maint: $10
gas: $53
food: $125
fast food: $20
showers: $50
laundry: $12
phone: $7
misc: $13
Total: $315 per month
My overnight parking is free, as I do stealth parking or spend a week in the woods or at campgrounds that do not charge in the winter (I know of 3 on the coast). I have a cat-litter toilet in my van, but primarily use public restrooms. I also get low cost health club memberships for showers and sauna use.
I'm able to spend my days at the beach, the library (when its bad weather) or warm and dry in my van "down by the river". Its a great lifestyle for a single person and it allows me to live on less than $4000 a year. At minimum wage, I only have to work for 2 - 3 months a year to live quite comfortably. Of course, with a family it would cost much more.
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