When I look at that I still see room to squeeze it cheaper. Rent could go down with a roommate (or several). A $200 car note is pretty substantial. $500 for food is also a lot more than needs to be spent.
I think that when you look at that, it's a bare-minimum kind of thing and it couldn't possibly get any cheaper.
What it boils down to is the will to make the sacrifices necessary to stop having to make all these short-term tactical decisions and be able to start taking a longer view.
Here's a lady who talks about having a $30/week food budget for her AND her husband.
I would also suggest that you don't attack me personally for my views and instead argue why they're wrong. When I disagreed with you I said "I don't think you can make that argument reasonably." When you disagreed with me you said "I'm not sure if you're trolling or just extremely naive and idealistic." You can do better.
If you're really that numb to people's suffering that you argue that it's possible to live on a 30$ weekly food budget because one wing nut posts a web page about it...
Well, it really does make me think you're trolling and that you've already make up your mind that 90% of the world is in poverty because they made poor decisions.
You could drink your own urine to save money on water bills as well....
That's 1.6 million hits. Obviously not all of them are about a precise $30/week food budget but plenty are. The idea that "one wing nut posts a web page about it" is blatantly false.
Did you even read the article? The lady espouses savings and thrift and the notion of building up a budget buffer so that when good deals come along that you can afford to take advantage of them. That means getting more than $30 worth of food per week while still only spending $30 on average.
Just because you can't imagine how it's possible to eat well on $30 per week doesn't mean it is impossible. It probably means that you've never had any reason at all to try and thus no idea about the feasibility. I can't say that I blame you for not trying; it's clearly a waste of your time. But it is doable.
I think this is exactly right. There's almost always somewhere you can cut - when I was a student I lived on $11k per year in today's dollars. $2000/month seems kind of luxurious.
And I didn't suffer any of the wrenching decision making overhead in the article. Decisions were easy - "Is there any way I can avoid buying this?" No? Then I bought it.
College students are like the Kevin Federline's of poverty.
They believe that because they lived frugally for a few years while seizing opportunities that a middle class existence opened for them they are now able to speak expertly on poverty and what being on the street is like.
And Kevin Federline made it up out of the streets with his dangerous thug dance moves.
>They believe that because they lived frugally for a few years while seizing opportunities that a middle class existence opened for them they are now able to speak expertly on poverty and what being on the street is like.
Based on this and your earlier comment I have serious doubts as to whether you've actually met someone who makes less than about $60k a year. You do ape your Contemporary Marxism professor passingly well, though.
Proving nothing. How do you know whether or not I can afford a Porsche? The ghettos are full of kids who know how much a high-end Lamborghini costs.
As it happens, I could afford to buy a Porsche if that was the sort of thing I wanted. Because in the decades since college I lived within my means and strove to make my skills more attractive to people who might want to hire me.
One thing I didn't do was fetishize poverty. All you have to do to be poor is refrain from doing anything. In the US nobody of average intelligence needs to be poor.
>Fox news and Rush Limbaugh will guide your moral compass.
I don't watch broadcast television or listen to commercial radio, so I'm not exactly sure what's on Fox or what Limbaugh is saying. But to the extent they support things like self-discipline, thrift, and hard work (you can find definitions for those words with Google) I agree with them.
> 700-rent 200-car note 80-insurance 500-food 200- utilities 200-gas
When I look at that I still see room to squeeze it cheaper. Rent could go down with a roommate (or several). A $200 car note is pretty substantial. $500 for food is also a lot more than needs to be spent.
I think that when you look at that, it's a bare-minimum kind of thing and it couldn't possibly get any cheaper.
What it boils down to is the will to make the sacrifices necessary to stop having to make all these short-term tactical decisions and be able to start taking a longer view.
Here's a lady who talks about having a $30/week food budget for her AND her husband.
http://moneysavingmom.com/2012/04/is-it-possible-to-survive-...
I would also suggest that you don't attack me personally for my views and instead argue why they're wrong. When I disagreed with you I said "I don't think you can make that argument reasonably." When you disagreed with me you said "I'm not sure if you're trolling or just extremely naive and idealistic." You can do better.