> First off, I see $38,817 not $18k. Where did you get that?

https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/42660

> Typical Expenses > > 1 Adult > > Housing > > $18,388

I'm talking about just the housing, it looks like the number you're talking about is total expenses.

> Second, this is for the whole Seattle/Tacoma area. This isn’t living in central Seattle.

Okay that makes more sense. You can definitely get studios for $1.5k with utilities in e.g. Renton or Kent.

That clears it up.

$1.5k is actually really high. The median rent according to Zillow, for just Seattle, is $2.3k and that’s all sizes of apartments.

I’m suspicious of the claim here that this is minimal living costs, not closer to median cost.

It looks like it's 40th percentile, which for the whole metro region, yea $1.5k for a studio makes sense even after you add in utilities. So much closer to median cost.

$1.5k with $100-$200 of utilities, renters insurance, etc in Seattle proper gets a little more difficult to find. You could probably do it up north past greenwood, over in west seattle, or similar. If you know how to dodge the craigslist scams haha.

40th percentile: interesting! Thanks for digging that up.

I guess ideologically I don’t think “living wage” corresponds to 40th percentile

The results for 2 people definitely seemed more realistic (childcare notwithstanding)

It's also important to remember that it includes the neighborhoods you may not be so excited to live in where rents are going to be cheaper, driving down the average. I live in Chicago, my "living wage" is like $85,000/yr for a single guy with no kids, but my area also has a median rent of >$2000 and I need a 2nd bedroom to use as an office.

This stuff is so general as to be basically worthless beyond a comparison between areas, not as a datapoint to use when calculating the cost of living somewhere.

> We had a perfectly happy, frugal, life at around $36k.

There's a tendency for people to think that anyone not living in a house with a white picket fence in Queen Anne must be insufferable.

It seems like there's a large group of people that is simply miserable if they don't have as much as others - regardless of if that thing is going to actually bring them any joy or not.

It seems like half my friends are killing themselves to buy a boat - and they don't even go out boating more than a couple times a year. I'll never get it.

It's an interest effect indeed: social poverty.

As a kid in the 80s we owned close to nothing. But nobody did and we just made the best of it. I never felt poor because this simply was the living standard of the time and our objective needs were met.

It seems since then we simply invented a whole lot of extra "needs", which really are "wants".

But if you're not in SLU, is it really living?

I'm curious about this. How many years ago was this, and would you be willing to divulge the general vicinity of the neighbourhood you rented or lived in?