
Ask HN: What is the minimum yearly income to live in your twenties? - hsikka
I&#x27;m a graduate student, and was running some calculations to see what kind of income I need to not worry about basic quality of life, and it came down to around 30k:<p>12k for rent
3k for food
5k for health insurance
1k for clothes
3k for transport(no car)
6 or so as a rainy day savings&#x2F;frugal liesure
======
LeoSolaris
That's going to be very location dependent... mostly in the form of rent and
utilities. Larger cities will have much higher rent rates than sleepy college
towns. New York City, for instance, would roughly triple your rent budget.
Most places in the US, you would be able to live on that budget, provided you
could find public transportation. That's not as easy to do everywhere either.

If you're looking at a fairly small locality, meaning your daily commute
distance is only a few miles, you may want to look at a motorized bicycle.
They are easy to keep in a small apartment, offer a higher degree of freedom
than public transit, and are about comparable in total travel time.

~~~
cm2012
You can live in NY comfortably for 1500 a month rent.

------
peelle
As others have already said, it depends on location, definition of quality,
and so on.

Below, I added some numbers from my past. The everything else is still just
for minimum/essentials. It includes things like car insurance, utilities,
repairs, gas money to get to work, clothing, etc.

\--- In 2003 as a college freshman(college paid for by parents/loans), I got
by in Jonesboro, Arkansas for around $7000 a year.

$3,000 - rent in a run down part of town. $1,000 - food $3,000 - everything
else.

\--- 2005, in Columbia, MO I got by spending about $14,000.

$8,000 - rent $2,000 - food $4,000 - everything else

\--- 2006, in Columbia, MO I got by spending about $10,000.

$3,2000 - rented a nice 5 bedroom split 5 ways. $2,800 - food $4,000 -
everything else

\--- In 2015, at Lake Worth, FL for around $20,000.

$11,000 - rent $4,000 - food $5,000 - everything else

\--- This year I'm looking to rent in Taipei, Taiwan. Here's what I have so
far priced things out at. $16,000 - $25,000.

$12,000 - $18,000 - rent $2,000 - $3,000 - food $2,000 - $4,000 - everything
else

In between the 2006 & 2015 rentals, I purchased and lived in a home.

Also, like most people over time I went from $500 clunkers to a $5,000
reliable car, rented in nicer neighborhoods, bought higher quality food, and
so on.

------
chrisseaton
30k... what? You don’t even give a currency. How do you expect anyone to
engage with you when there’s zero context here?

~~~
dimensi0nal
30,000 of the default currency.

------
adamzochowski
It depends on what is your standard you want to accept, and where you live.
The 'basic quality of life' means different things to different people.

For example, 12k rental can be extravagant. At this amount probably you can
have a whole private apartment, with an actual bedroom (not a studio). But
room rentals should be cheaper. Look what student rentals ask for, or friendly
professionals that need roommates. These could be way below $500/month, even
in new york. Alternatively, do you have parents or siblings to live with and
share the rental costs?

Similarly, clothing is tricky, but people do with less than 1k. Some might not
buy anything in a year. Buy quality over quantity, things that last. Be
vigilant at avoiding spills, cleaning them quickly, know how to patch clothes,
and dye them. Look for coupons, discounts, clearance, outlets, friends that
have employee discounts.

3k for transport and without a car? How expensive are the busses + bicycle
maintenance in the area? Most expensive monthly passes around the world are
around $150/month. Be it new york or singapore. Also, many places let you
transfer from metro to buses and vice versa on same ticket! The big thing here
is that one has to trade time and schedule ventures out. Know which
buses/subways are when, and knowing how long are transfers. Trips that are
15minute in car can become 1hour slogs if not timed right.

6k for rainy day -- the rainy day money is meant not to be spent unless you
have to. There is no need to budget for it being spent every year.

5k health insurance -- demand universal health care, or bet you won't get
sick, or get a job that covers this?

\---

In my earlier years I tried to do similar calculation and I got slightly below
10k for basics like roof over head and lack of malnutrition, and in my
calculations found 20k to be comfortable enough to allow for independant
living and icecream, and beer outing with friends once a month, a cinema twice
a year. etc.

------
keiferski
Entirely depends where you are. You could live a decent lifestyle (coffee
daily, eat out 3-4 times/week, have your own studio apartment) in many
European cities on $1,000 a month, total. At that point your yearly costs are
maybe $15,000, given $3,000 for emergencies or random expenses.

~~~
chatmasta
Citation please. In my experience, you _might_ be able to get this far in a
place like Beograd or Budapest... but even then it's going to be a stretch.

~~~
keiferski
I've been living on this amount for the past 5 years in Belgrade, Wroclaw,
Sarajevo, Prague, Odessa, etc. It's not that difficult, considering that the
average local salary in somewhere like Belgrade is less than $500.

As a data point: average local salary in Belgrade in 2017 was about $400 per
month. Now, as a foreigner you're obviously going to not have access to local
networks, family housing, etc. But you can easily find an Airbnb for ~$400 in
the center. That leaves you with $600 a month for everything else - very, very
doable.

[https://checkinprice.com/average-minimum-salary-belgrade-
ser...](https://checkinprice.com/average-minimum-salary-belgrade-serbia/)

------
maheart
Note: currency is AUD

I have years worth of data, and in my opinion, if you already own the "basic
stuff" (sofa, bed, fridge, TV, even car) and can split the costs of certain
items (rent, gas/water/electricity, Internet), then you can "survive" in
Melbourne, Australia (an expensive city) on ~$25k (approximately $24k after
taxes because of how tax brackets are structured).

This includes: rent (up to ~$220 week), car rego ($820/yr), 3rd-party car
insurance, petrol ($30/week), Internet, mobile (1GB data), gym, groceries
($50/week). You could even eat out ~$50/week.

$30k will give you breathing space.

------
andrewprock
$1000 for clothes!

$3000 for transport!

I'm pretty sure a frugal grad student could push both down to $0.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don’t think I spend a thousand dollars on clothes as a fully employed
person.

------
natalyarostova
I did $55k USD/year in SF recently. I had great healthcare as part of my job.
After rent/expenses I didn't really save any money, but my experienced was
preparing me to have a substantive private sector salary after a few years.

I could have cut it down to 40k/year _somewhat_ easily, if I also went for a
long commute and gave up some luxuries like eating out. Below 40k I would have
had to learned some more serious frugality tricks.

------
paulcole
As an undergrad I was living off of well under $5k a year when I was 21.
Sharing a studio apartment in a college town with a friend, eating cheaply,
etc.

By the time I was 29 and living in a bigger city I was spending a fair amount
of my $35,000 a year salary. My college roommate on the other hand lived in
NYC and was spending more per month on his apartment than we did per year for
our college apartment.

------
smt88
What city and currency are these calculations for?

Can you live with your parents?

Why do you not consider paying taxes?

~~~
chrisseaton
In some places graduate student income is tax free.

~~~
analog31
I'm not an accountant, but my understanding is that the tuition reimbursement
is not taxed, but the stipend is. All I know is that I filed taxes on my
graduate stipend 30 years ago.

Hope I actually owed the tax that I paid. ;-)

~~~
chrisseaton
My full stipend recently was definitely not subject to income tax, and I then
had a zero rate tax bracket on top of that for my supplementary income.

I wonder if they should tax stipends but also increase them by the taxed
amount, so people see they’re more realistic than they first look. But then
you’d lose the zero rate bracket for the rest of your income.

------
austincheney
I spend about $15000 on mortgage plus taxes for my 2900sqft house. If I were
living cheap I would buy a used trailer for $12k and find somewhere cheap to
park it long term.

------
SmushyTaco
It depends on the location since prices are different everywhere you go.

------
kochikame
Depends where you live

------
guessmyname
Flagged because you didn’t provide the current nor location.

~~~
pizza
That's not what flagging is for.

 _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is
spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag
them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did._

