It is very unlikely a single person is having a comfortable life in San Diego on $80k.

It says get by. That can feel a lot different than comfort.

I think the article suggests living wages to live like a king.

The criteria they used is that “50% of income is used to cover necessities, such as housing and utility costs, 30% goes toward discretionary spending, and 20% is left for savings or investments.”.

I don’t know anybody who makes under six figures and saves or invests 20% of their income, and 30% discretionary spending seems like a LOT.

If the article were more realistic, the living wage amounts would be significantly lower than reported. As stated, it would leave people very comfortable.

I never understand if these types of things are gross or net. 50% of gross pay is a lot different than 50% of net pay, depending on the tax bracket. Using percentage, how a person lives should scale with their income, from pauper to prince. Most people don’t want to scale down where they live to the point of fitting in a lot of these guidelines, which is fair, things can get pretty gross.

For me, after taxes, health insurance, and my 401k (which is 12%), my take home is 55% of my gross. If we add the 401k back in, since they have that broken out with the 20, 67% is what someone might have to actually work with.

If someone making $100k has a similar percentage, their gross budget would be $7,692/month, while the net budget would be $5,153/month. That’s $2,539 that goes to Uncle Sam and insurance that so many rules of thumb like to ignore. 50% of the take home pay is $2,500 for all necessities, rent will take a massive bite out of that and I think is the most important factor to control for to make the rest of it work. I assume a car payment would also go into that bucket, as well has groceries. Depending on the city, that may not go as far as people think when they hear 6 figures.

I have a house now, but spent about 15 years moving every year or two to avoid rent increases. I had this idea in my head that rent shouldn’t cost more than $1,000, and yearly increases should be minimal. At some point I went beyond that, but think I maxed out at $1,600 only for 1 year, which was mostly to keep me sane after work fucked me over and I was trying to make the best of it. When I see apartments for $2k+, I can’t even comprehend that. I thought I was living pretty high on the hog with that $1,600 place. Someone making $100k/year can’t really afford these $2+ rents if they’re not making big sacrifices elsewhere.

Someone making $100k/year can’t really afford these $2+ rents if they’re not making big sacrifices elsewhere.

That may be the key, though. I’m not American, but was looking at Canadian household figures, and I’m seeing something like 40% of food spending going to restaurants! “Communications” being over $2600 a year ($216 / month for phone and internet???)! Private transportation being over $11,000 a year (10x what public transportation would cost). Drugs and alcohol accounts for nearly $2000 a year with gambling being another $200.

Sacrifice doesn’t mean to be poor, but it does mean that people need to spend wisely. If done right, you could live an even better life while spending less!

To that, I wonder what the real cost of living would be if people were more reasonable with their spendings.

Cooking is labor, intensive labor at that. Someone working 50 hours a week is going to have a lot less energy to dedicate towards cooking their own food, and will thus likely eat out more.

Truly, I don’t think encouraging people to cook at home is a viable solution. We need low cost, high quality, publicly owned and operated community kitchens.

Hey, even though I love to cook, I’m also SUPER lazy (some might just call it efficient) when it comes to making meals.

For one, investing just a few hundred dollars (or much less if buying used) can get you a pressure cooker and/or a bread maker, and/or a rice cooker, and/or a slow cooker.

Any of these items, especially the pressure cooker, can save a considerable amount of time - most meals are simply “drop in your ingredients and walk away”. It can take less time to make dinner and clean up than it would take to order out.

I’m not exaggerating.

Longer, more elaborate meals are often made on the weekend, so we aren’t missing out on favourites like pizza. Even then, I won’t spend more than 20-30 minutes in the kitchen making a large meal. LOL

Being able to save money on food is a skill, and it’s a skill that everyone should know.

Even making batches of food ahead of time (I do this with beans) can save a considerable amount of money per month, without taking up more than a few minutes of effort.

All I’m saying is that if people are struggling, but they are spending a huge amount of money on restaurants, then making meals at home is a reasonable, easy way to save money.

Hell, even if you really don’t want to put any time into cooking from scratch, premade meals are going to be cheaper than a restaurant meal.