The Cost of Living/Housing Crisis
metafilter.com
metafilter.com
The article is a good read, but to anyone who's felt the belt tighten lately, it will likely contain no surprises.
I'm just going to make a couple points of comparison to my own situation.
I take home about 7k monthly after taxes. This is our sole income. That puts us about on par with the "typical" household with two working adults.
Our monthly mortgage payment is about 1700 on a 1200 sq ft house which is really too small for our family of five. I often find myself regretting our conservatism when we purchased our home in 2020. We figured that we were buying a starter home for the next few years, but with rates doubled since then and with the crazy housing prices, it's going to be a long time before we can consider an upgrade. That's on a 250k mortgage. Often wish we'd taken another 100k, which probably would have increased our payment to the mid 2k range... We could afford that nowadays. Hindsight...
Our grocery bills have been excessive, well over 1000 monthly. Grocery store prices seem like they've almost doubled over the last few years.
Amenities like summer camps and pool memberships in our area are also pretty high, and spots are limited and competitive. Over the summer keeping the kids entertained was tough and expensive.
We're extremely fortunate to make the kind of money I make. We're able to pay our bills, save, and maintain a nice lifestyle. We feel squeezed but aren't in any danger of homelessness or starvation. We're comfortable, but lots of luxury stuff is out of reach. We camp for vacation. We tend not to make big purchases. We just had to have $2500 worth of plumbing work done. We could afford it but it sure sucked.
We've often considered moving home. We're from a rural area about an hour from the metro area we live in now, and with remote work a tech job back home is actually plausible now. But the schools back home are pretty low ranked, whereas right now we live in one of the top districts in the state.
I don't have some grand point to make, guess I'm just laying out what life looks like on an average+ dev salary (155k gross). I can't help but wonder how people making substantially less are managing, especially in the cities.
The way we manage is to make a lot out of (what you would probably consider to be) a little.
For reference, I live in a country with living costs comparable to the US, and my wife & I's combined annual income is about $30K USD, or around one-fifth of yours.
Our only vehicle is worth less than what you just paid your plumber, and my house's hot water system is coming up on 70 years old, but the thought of replacing it for nicety is out-of-the-question. If it blows up one day, then that's an emergency we'll wail about when it happens.
We pay a much smaller mortgage on a smaller house in a remoter location, we have no children, and that whole "vacations, sports teams, extra car for the wife, buying clothes, etc etc" mainstream paradigm is just ... not in the picture. We live differently, yet still, funnily enough (considering the salary disparity) fairly happily and comfortably. I want for little - assuming we put aside large existential things like 'end of your bloodline', which I try not to dwell upon.
Among many other things, I spent part of the past few years figuring out how to significantly reduce our food bills, basically by learning to purchase smart, cook well, and waste little. I equate that to somebody working extra-hard in the office to earn a salary raise.
I hope this gives some little context.
The future needs more smart, kind, people. Not fewer. It is worth it to sacrifice a little to create the next generation, goodness knows there were generations before you that sacrificed much more so that you could ultimately end up living, and it’s easier that you think, especially if you’re in a country that provides a decent social safety net.
The wealthy capitalists who created this situation in the first place are largely going to be the ones inheriting the future. I don't want to bring more "good, kind, people" into existence to be exploited by them.
This is where we're heading. "Good people" can't solve it, because they're far less likely than the plutocrats to even be able to survive comfortably.
Your removal from the gene pool is not only the end of your family, which fought for generations to secure a future for you, but it is also a small death of your culture and your values, which I think are great and deserve to continue on.
I have a family of 4 and I can feed the entire family for one meal for $10. For example, pasta ($2), sauce ($3), and a protein ($5). Rice ($1), protein ($5), and a veggie ($4). For breakfast, milk ($1) and cereal ($1).
On the other hand I took the family out to sushi yesterday which cost $100 and was admittedly more delicious than a home-cooked pasta meal.
The main thing I’ve found with food prices is how processed you buy - the simpler the ingredients you use, likely the cheaper overall you’ll be. This isn’t always the case (I’m pretty sure I can buy sauce for less than buying the component parts) but you can easily hit $20-30 a day per person and still feel you’re “cooking at home”.
Buy ingredients. Not ready-to-eat, highly processed foods.
Where possible, buy from local producers (directly from farmer, bakery on the corner) rather than big box store.
Like dried beans: soak overnight, cook, add some veggies & spices, enjoy.
Tastier & cheaper than canned food.
But for things like meat, you’ll never get small farm steak for cheaper than Walmart or Aldi - because the cows aren’t shoved in intensive dense cages. But the price will beat similar quality meats.
The other key is learning to cook what is “in season” (see https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/ for general advice) - there’s a short period locally where strawberries become almost free. Get in tune with the seasons and eat the appropriate foods and your bills drop precipitously.
Sure, you won’t eat strawberries in winter because you’re not having them shipped from Brazil, but you’ll also get a varied table.
The other main thing I would say is get used to eating ugly foods. A local farmer can give you “factory seconds” - plants that are perfectly fine but LOOK bad - for cheap.
Also keep an eye on waste - buying fifty pounds of potatoes for cheap from Costco is NOT a deal if half of them end up going to seed; getting a feel for how much you will actually use and not throw away brings the costs down further. Otherwise you’re throwing money directly in the trash (or compost pile, if you’re cooking at home you should be composting because soon you’ll be wanting to grow your own, even if it’s just herbs).
The trade off for buying less and less processed ingredients is spending more time to prepare them. I like to be on the side of “more time less processed food” but with two kids we are only able to accomplish that by having parents or a nanny live with us.
Interestingly, a Safeway 5 miles from there seems to have prices that run about 180% of those at WinCo, and it has plenty of customers. I worry sometimes that WinCo will find out. :)
And that $500-$600 per month is not really trying to squeeze every dollar. We could knock off another $100-150 if we absolutely had to by replacing some of the more expensive items with cheaper, but still healthy options.
It’s a quite hard nut to crack, correctly handling all these various things to see where the money is flowing.