| SpokenTruth said: I just calculated $252 per month health insurance is the average for a single person aged 21. And it ranges by state from a low of $180 in Utah to $366 in Wyoming ($426 in Alaska but that's to be expected). What? You thought we've been joking about health care and insurance costs in those other threads? Want to cover your family of 4? Close to $900 per month depending on age and state. Oh, and my initial example wasn't minimum wage now was it? It was $10 per hour. So my example shows them already going up that ladder. I only showed minimum age because that's what happens when you move from a city to a rural area. Wages drop. They don't stay the same. And yes, there are social benefits but the right wants to gut them...many want to completely get rid of them. But social welfare doesn't always cover enough. Roommates are more common in the urban cores of the bigger cities in the US. It's rare in smaller cities, suburbs and rural regions. Our houses, apartments and leasing laws/contracts are simply not often designed with that in mind. It's all built around the way things were decades ago when a single income allowed you to easily own your home, cars, health car, etc.... Basically, our buying power today is a fraction of what it used to be. |
I mean, I dunno what you call a smaller city, but in the cities I've lived in (sub 1 million metro populations in poorer areas of the South), that's not really the case. Roommates are super common and a plain 2 bd apartment in a ok part of town costs around $400-500/month (obviously split with a roommate). There's also a lot more competition for jobs in those rural areas because they don't have enough people to fill the positions. While some fast food or service places start near the minimum wage (isn't the case for most), you can pretty easily get $10/hour with just a HS degree and felony-free record.
Now, for people with families trying to live at this level, it's pretty impossible. Requires multiple jobs and help from friends/family to stay above water. But for younger people (as was the example), it's a lot more managable. Out of curosity, where do you live? I've lived in East Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama, where you can find places with even lower cost of living than what we talked about.
Last edited by outlawauron - on 10 August 2018
