Man I have a hard time dealing with comments like this, because people say this sort of thing and it is simply not true. When you get to brass tacks that's when all the other "necessary" expenses usually come up. Gotta have Netflix, gotta eat out once or twice a week, what is the point in life if you cannot consume products? What other ways are there to have fun?

My bills are 800 dollars a month, total. My rent is 400. I live 40 minutes from downtown of one of the largest cities in the US. Before this, they were 1200 dollars a month. I wanted to cut them so I found a way. I have everything I need, and I've got money saved in case of an emergency, I'm going to save my way into the upper middle class living this way, without a degree of any kind.

The trick is to repeat the following mantra: "bills are the devil." That's really all there is to it. Get a car with cash. If you don't have cash, save some cash by not spending all your money. A single person who can't live off 1200 bucks a month is mismanaging their finances. If you can't afford to live in San Francisco, that's not due to our economic system, it is due to how the city manages itself, and it's a way the city is telling you you aren't welcome there. Go somewhere where you can have a decent life.

The only real problem here is health insurance. I do not have it. The health insurance market has been absolutely destroyed by government intervention over the last decade. I remember when I could get a decent plan for 80 bucks a month and I thought that was expensive. It wasn't that long ago.

For families, I get that it is a lot tougher. Two incomes are a must nowadays. But historically, families encouraged their sons to establish themselves financially before having children, and communities that had children young or out of wedlock were usually impoverished. It has always been financially tough rearing children. You can't raise a family working the window at a fast food joint, and there was never a time when you could.

It may seem counterintuitive, but being able to cut your bills down like that is often a privilege. Poverty is a trap and it is hard to move somewhere cheaper when you don’t have enough money to buy a car. You can say “don’t spend your money” all you want but when money is tight you make concessions on things, and it usually leads to higher costs down the road. Cheaper products have to be bought more frequently. Bad cars bought break down sooner. This leads to debt trouble as you borrow from your future to pay for expensive costs now, leading to more fees later. The best money management still can’t predict the unexpected and when you’re barely making it month to month even the slightest setback can have rippling consequences that roll you deeper into debt.

It’s really easy to say “just move and stop spending your money lol” but it really is often more complicated than that.

It does seem counterintuitive. Would you be able to elaborate on that? What mechanism exists that makes it hard for me to live cheaply but someone else to not? I've lived very poor in my life and this argument that for some people there's no way out doesn't compute, at least not if you live in the west. I've never met a person that cannot pull themselves out of those traps that wasn't caused by discretionary spending and bad impulse control, not in the west. Ive met legitimately poor people in third world countries that are actually stuck due to societal systemic problems. But every person I've met in the US that can't seem to make their lives better, there is always some mismatched priority that keeps them that way.

Yours and the other comments below are all saying "yeah, it's fine, you can do it if you don't have kids nor health insurance". Which basically means "it's not fine". A good standard of living is not measured by how a person can live as long as she remains single and decides to forego health insurance.

I addressed that in my comment; I pointed out that raising children has always been financially more difficult than being single, and humans have always had to prepare themselves for starting a family if they wanted any chance at raising the standard of living of their children. Saying "you cannot start a family on minimum wage" is a ridiculous bar to set as justification for forcing market restrictions on entire populations.

I could survive just fine off a full-time minimum wage job in my state of Michigan. That's 9.45/hour or about $1500/month. I rent a pretty nice place in a college town for $550/month (across the street from campus, middle of downtown, utilities included). I eat mostly pasta and canned soup, but that's just because it's easy and cheap, and I do go out to eat with my girlfriend once or twice a week. let's say another $700/month for money, phone bill, gas, and walking-around money. Just to round it out let's add $200/month to put into saving for unexpected expenses and $100/month for car insurance or anything else I forgot.

I'm on my parent's health insurance, I think if that were not an option it would really complicate things. Google says the average annual health insurance premium is $15,500, which would basically be my entire yearly pay. I think when you work more than 30 hours your employer is supposed to pay some of that, and maybe there's subsidies too for people on low income, I'm not really sure how it works.

So basically, the current minimum wage is fine for me. For a single parent with 3 kids, it would obviously not be nearly enough. But also, I'm not sure I'm capable of doing any work that's worth a living wage for a single parent with 3 kids, so raising the minimum wage that high would probably put me out of a job. Maybe the minimum wage should be set as high as it can be without costing too many jobs, then the government should give everyone the support they need to feed their families and not be homeless.

Dude, I’m from Michigan. It’s getting expensive there fast. If you think you’re immune to what is happening everywhere else you are in for a rude awakening.

Before my wife and I left in 2014 or so we looked at a decent bungalow in Kalamazoo for roughly 40,000. Now you can’t find a house in that neighborhood for under 150k- and it will be a dump.

I bought a house there around a year ago before deciding it wasn’t a good fit and I still made like 15k after 10 months. It’s insane.

Mind you a good job in Kalamazoo pays 60-80k tops? Sure remote work is a thing but it’s a leash.

Traverse City or Ann Arbor are bordering on Portland prices and there are limited job prospects in either place relative to Portland.

This would’ve been unacceptable to our parents but they’re making a killing off of their investments so they don’t give a shit.

I don’t know what is happening but housing is getting expensive everywhere and fast.

I expect that the solution to that problem is to directly address it via zoning or price controls, not indirectly by raising the minimum wage

They tried that in San Francisco and it only got worse.

Even on your parents insurance if you only had yourself it will eventually get very complicated.

co-pays, out of network doctors taking care of you while you are under after a bout of appendicitis goes wrong, cars breaking down, parents randomly needing help to make ends meet because of all of the same.

Speaking from 20+ years of adulthood nearly half of which was below the poverty line there are more poverty traps than you can possibly imagine that minimum wage or even much more doesn’t even come close to avoiding. The available recourses to you when those events occur are grim.

Calculate the interest on payday loans, if you happen to need one it is exceedingly hard to stop needing them as they drive you down further and further.

Life got considerably more stable after making programmer salaries.

Minimum wage in the US is just waiting for the next big thing to push you further and further down. I was super lucky to find out I was good at this computer thing in my 20s (and that I had family to lend me 500 bucks for my very first and very bargain basement computer in that era).

It felt close to indentured servitude other than I could change jobs, but I didn’t get ahead or even tread water. No vacations, no time off when sick, and 60-100 hours of work a week for years.

I definitely would have preferred just getting a check from the government and going back to school while I got some real skills, or even that same minimum wage with a good transit network and medical care that didn’t find ways to take all my very limited savings.

In the end, unless people have gone through the sort of nightmares life can throw you it is hard to see how much money you need in the states to be stable and it takes a lot of education and knowledge to navigate all of it, which if you are on minimum wage you probably don’t have.

Something has gotta give the situation is not viable.

So what if you can’t afford a two bedroom apartment on minimum wage? Bunk up with a roommate.

okay, but as wage increases continue to lag behind cost of living, are you just going to ask people to bunk up with more and more roommates in a 2BR?

That’s a bit of a straw man saying “two bedroom apartment”. Why would a single person need to live in a 2 bedroom?

I mean, plenty of people rent a room in a shared house in SF. Are they living in poverty because they don’t live in a two bedroom?