Comment on Survey: More Than 1 In 4 Americans Feel They Need To Make $150,000 Or More To Live Comfortably
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Who cares what people “feel”? It has nothing to do with “feelings”. Just calculate how much it actually costs to live comfortably, and you’ll find that $150k works.
tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You can’t define “comfortably” without feeling.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
You can, though. At least to the extent of saying that “comfortable” means that all your basic needs are met, and you have money left over for more than that. How much more, is a matter of preference…but as long as that basic minimum is met, the rest is just different degrees of comfort.
tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well, then I can say that $40k is definitely “comfortable.” That’s $1500 rent, $300/month food, another $200 gas/elec/internet, a thousand left over for odds & ends and another couple hundred saved.
Pretty much my budget in a MCOL major metro.
ChexMax@lemmy.world 2 days ago
What about taxes? Health Insurance? Car insurance or transportation budget. You can live comfortably on $10 a day for food?? $3.30 a meal? That eats up the rest of that $1300 a month and leaves nothing for entertainment, savings, gifts or dating. Nothing left for meeting that health insurance deductible so you still can’t go to the doctor. Survivable? Absolutely! Doesn’t sound comfortable to me though.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
You don’t have kids? Plan to retire? Have an emergency savings amount? No credit card debt? Car loans? Student loans?
I probably should have been more clear when I said “minimum basic requirements”. I wasn’t talking “survival”…I was talking about “comfort”. The point at which you are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I was also assuming household income…not individual…so I should have been more specific there, as well.
I make about twice what you calculated, and my bank account is consistently at zero after all my household expenses are covered. That’s for my family…not just me. I have no emergency savings, which means if anything in my life breaks down, I go into debt just to pay for repairs…and it takes months to finish paying it off. That’s not “comfortable”. It’s eternally stressful, since emergencies like that usually come up more often than I can pay off the last one.
My point, though, was that it’s all quantifiable. Even the differences between individual circumstances can be calculated. Everyone can look at their life and “know” the number that would get them into that “comfort zone”.