Quote:
Originally Posted by wittynickname
Snagged from another forum I follow, discussing the same situation:
$11 an hour is about 23K a year gross. Say 17K net.
Lets say for 1 single person who walks to work and their stores (no car)
Yearly Expenses
Rent - 500 a month (6000)
Groceries (including toiletries, housekeeping products, etc.) - 400 a month (4800)
Phone - 50 a month (600)
Gas - 35 a month (420)
Electric - 100 a month (1200)
Water/Sewage - 25 a month (300)
Health Insurance - 200 a month (2400)
TOTAL - 15,720
17,000 - 15720 = $1280 remaining
All that is assuming one doesn't have a vehicle. If you do need a vehicle you need to find a way to run one for about $100/month. Oh and you'd better REALLY hope you never have even a single emergency come up. (Some of those numbers are questionable, you can probably drop the groceries a decent amount, probably 250-300 is more accurate I would think)
Either way, even in a magical place with only $500/mo rent, you're still going to be living paycheck to paycheck with almost no possibility of saving up for emergencies/big purchases, etc.
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And we wonder why there's so much flight to big cities. Even if you have an extra $1300 per year, there's nothing you can spend that on in these small towns because investment is dead. So you have bored people pissing it away on booze and drugs because there's really nothing else they can do with it.
We talk about small businesses and entrepreneurs being the backbones of the country. Well how are people in small towns supposed to build up the equity needed to start a small business if they barely have enough to live on?