Fuck, I’d sure like to be living in the fantasy world where America is that generous. You might get that much with a severe disability in a super high COL area, but it’d be hard fought and the invasion of your privacy is going to be absurd to make sure you’re not ‘abusing’ it.
Sec 8 is hard in a lot of places too. Most times you get stuck with the most dogshit landlord in the most dogshit apartment building in the most dogshit area of the city.
So how does that hinder shitposting?
Alright lemmy commenters you want the real secret sauce on How to live comfortably with the least amount of money? I can tell you my strategy. This won’t work for everyone, and many of you won’t like what I have to say.
loans and rent are a scam. Never go into debt, never open a credit card. Pay with the money you actually have saved up or learn to live without. don’t subscribe to anything recurring but phone and internet payments.
Live well below your means, not right at them or slightly above. If you live paycheck to paycheck and arent able to save up a dime for an emergency fund you will get screwed eventually.
invest in ways of generating passive income. diversify, have a portfolio, learn the difference between money, value, and assets. Leverage the concepts and apply them. Take a chance and put 100$ somewhere in the financial market, fail and loose some money, learn something from it, try again until you start growing money.
live out of your vehicle. Rent is a scam that preys upon your willingness to whore yourself out socioeconomically for quick illusionary scraps of safety and convinence that month. Any car, van, or truck can be converted into a liveable space. Its hard to adjust to such a different way of living at first but if you can do so the benefits of adapting to that kind of lifestyle is massive. You become your own landlord and pay yourself rent. Your only expenses becomes insurance and maintance.
Donate your plasma. It’s a relatively safe procedure, You can do it twice a week, and it provides a part time jobs worth of income.
Change your psychology. Society has ingrained upon us from birth a sense that our worth as human beings is determined by productivity and value we can provide.
You see a lot of people in the comments here rail on NEETs Who aren’t currently in the job market while still somehow living a life. Fuck that, I’m here to tell you that your life has intrinsic value. You and I werent put on this planet to slave away at jobs we hate to maybe one day achieve the dream of paying a 30 year mortage on some shitty suburbanite house. Thats not the life I dreamed of for for myself and I won’t be shamed for carving a way out of that speeding train to misery.
as long as you aren’t parasitizing your family living off their resources and found your own unique living situation thsat isnt burdening anyone, then go for it. Carve out a life of freedom where you can choose to sit on your ass and laise about without shame my friend.
You dont need to be employed all the time.You don’t need to work all the time to live a comfortable life. If you live the way I just described you can work 6 months or a year saving up the money and coast on the funds for a year or two before working again. You can be free to travel the country living dirt cheap for many many months. Is that NEET life? Maybe. But wouldnt you like a sabbatical like that? A break from the years of work grinding?
Develop skills and invest in infrastructure that improve your self reliance or reduce payments. Taking automotive classes and learning to fix your own car problems saves a lot of money. Learning basic electrical and plumbing if you want to go offgrid. Keeping yourself better warm in winter without central heating or cool in summer without central cooling. If you don’t want to live in a car then owning a piece of land and putting an offgrid home on it is next best thing for living without expenses.
Am an Australian guy starting work in the mid 80s
Worked washing dishes from 16 part time for comoc book money when it was laughed at, realsied work wasn’t for me, got a labouring job that paid ok and was away from home 5 days a week with food and accommodation paid for by my employer, just stayed at my parents for 2 days a week, chipped in with a small amount they asked for, had a an old cheap motobike to het aroibd, nevertheless owned a car, too expensive. Saved heaps but not paid much, 12 months in I upgrade to a fly in fly out job on triple the wage, much the same work, employer also happy to pay for all tertiary education expenses for remote study, 2 weeks on, 1 week off, stay at hone with parents, seme deal, go to work for a fortnight, take $10 come home with $5 becase everything is paid for. Nothing but study and work, seems hard. Don’t drink or smoke so no expenses really aside from the occasional snickers bar. Other workers come back and stay for the week at Sheraton and get hookers, go to the Casino, , looks like loads of fun to a 20 something but they come back to work broke. All the while i am nerding out on financial newspapers and putting all my savings in the stock market… Retire at 35, debt free, modest house, no mortgage, fast foward, same frugal habits, am 57 and investments have balloned ridiculously. Am a NEET, or retired, or a drag on society, depends how u look at it I guess
I mean some of your advice is sound but honestly a lot of it reads like “step 1: have money, step 2: don’t have no money”
Those two steps are the core tenants of our global economy. You need money to live, its just the questions of how much you need, how you can get it, and how well you can save it.
If you want to reductively boil down my five paragraph essay into a slightly smaller tldr the core message is more accurately like
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Have any amount of money from work, passive income, social security, pension, plasma donation, or other legit means. Be smart with your finances and start budgeting what little money starts coming in. Try to learn how to grow money through passive income have it work for you so you don’t have to work for every scrap of money.
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Find ways to reduce the amount of money you spend each month in every way you can. Pinch EVERY penny, cut out every luxury and convinence, reduce resources consumed. The biggest expense most people have is rent which easily eats over 1k per month or 12k a year. If you have a car consider moving into it for a few months while still working and save up a couple thousand for a nicer car or cheap plot of land or to take a long sabbatical.
Some people make buckets of money with six digit salaries and are still broke by the time the end of the month comes because they live in high COL area or have poor financial sense like buying a new car every year as status symbol or collecting figurines or having a shoppaholic spouse. They spend just as much as they make thus living right at or slightly above their means.
Some people make barely anything at all from meager social security and still find ways to save up a few hundred a month just by budgeting and reducing expenses, and of course living without a landlord. Thus living well below their already meager means.
Sure, if you’re homeless you save on rent. But then do you eat out every day? Spend time in bars instead of on your couch?
Living in your car might be feasible in North America but good luck trying that in Europe. Also good luck keeping a bank account let alone a job without an address.
If I want to live close to my job without paying rent or taking a loan I gotta save about 1M Euros and be lucky with finding a place. That’s a lot of skipped Frappuccino lattes.
I do speak as a person from north america and made tried to cover my ass with the beginning statement of this isn’t going to apply for everyone figuring europe or other countries will have different challenges in government and feasability. You do raise some good questions. I get the impression you don’t really have any use for my answers though. Someone who measures saved money in frappachino lattes and is so cemented in their particular job they are unwilling to commute long distance, switch jobs, or move to a cheaper area, probably isn’t willing to sacrifice any amount of convinence for the kind of lifestyle im advocating. Regardless ill answer your questions earnestly and hope it informs.
For food, you cook your own meals obviously. 12v fridge and house batteries or perserved shelf stable foods. Most people who live in cars have propane or disel fuel for cooking and heat, or enough battery capacity to run a portable induction cooktop and electric water boiler. You can even power appliances needed for your precious frappachinos to make yourself. You spend free time at public parks and nature reserves, go hiking, camping, find things to do besides sitting around in one place. On bad days you still can hang inside the car. In north america theres a lot of free public land for recreational use and free dispersed camping especially out west.
Having a mailing address to put down on govt and banking paperwork is a challenge if your home is your vehicle. There are ways to get a mailing address and there are mail forwarding buisnesses that you can use. I think the endgame scenario is you would eventually get a plot of land and register a mailing address.
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The price of rent ($3,000/mo) and homes ($1,000,000) are crazy where we left. My wife and I currently living in a small car for about a month now. We are comfortable and have all we need. Small battery (jacket/bluetti/ecoflow) with solar panels and an inverter to charge while driving, small 12v fridge, some clothes, food, 14 gallons water. I leaned a ton from YouTube “CheapRVliving”. Right now we are sacrificing, but soon we will own cheap land and will build our own small house on it. I think it’s the only way we can survive this harsh world. Everything is just so expensive.
Thanks for sharing you and your wifes story. Ive been watching Bob for many years he’s a huge inspiration and source of hope for many of us in these harsh times. Good luck on your journey I wish you guys the best with finding cheap land or whatever other choice you may take.
Thanks for the kind words!
You ever watch Steve Wallis’ stealth camping videos?
I setup the car as a stealth camper, but because we are 2 people and a cat, we have to put things in the front seat when camping and it’s not as stealth.
Passenger floor is the cat litter box, passenger seat is the food bins and on top is the cat food and water, and his carrier (we remove the door so he can go in as he wants). The drivers floor is the extra cat food and cat litter, and drivers seat is a 7 gallon water jug.
At least where we are there’s tons of free camping. I have been using freecampsites.net for most of the camping spots.
Thanks, I’m cured.
There’s no way they get that much in benefits.
I know the benefit system they spend the entire time trying to get around paying anybody anything, anytime they feel like they’ve not hassled you for a while they send people around to check on you.
There is no way wau anon is getting away with that. They hardly ever pay the legitimate claimants
(the most ive ever been paid from SSI is like 600 a month when i was still on it.Pretty sure SSI caps around 1000 ish usd but im on ssd so not sure. One of my friends was on ssi for 400 a month. Its insane to me that i get more money than this and my ssd income is on par with minimum wage. Meanwhile everyone else without my lucky situation has far less.)
Ssdi ranges from 943 to 3627 per month depending on your work history. It’s a pension system so if you’ve paid nothing into it you get the minimum. It can also pay a bit more depending on state because some states have supplements in addition to the federal payment
Section 8 is tough depending on where you live. Some places around here the wait list is so long that it’s literally years and as a result they won’t let new cases join until old ones are purged; which is this nightmare process where they contact you if you’re on the list and if you don’t respond you’re kicked off and then a few spots may open up and people scramble to apply for the day they’re open.
The attitude is generally “you don’t have a job so you can spend your time managing your benefits”. For some people this isn’t wrong but for a lot of people it’s a serious issue; they’re disabled so they don’t work because they spend their time managing their healthcare, or they don’t have the capacity to manage this kind of stuff to begin with, etc. but in a lot of places there’s little sympathy for this and then your benefits are cut, the process to re-enable them can take weeks or months, and in the interim that can mean you lose housing, access to medical care, etc
Survive? No, thrive
If I quit uni today and applied for social security and unemployment pay I’d be way better off financially. A friend of mine actually did that for a semester when she was desperate, despite being a keen and interested student. Not being in education or training can be temporarily easier than being in education or training.
What is a neet?
Not Educated Employed or Trained
People who made it to adulthood without doing anything in life. Commonly they are carried by their parents. They live in the basement/most secluded room in the house, play video games and jerk off all day, eat frozen pizzas and chicken tenders, and usually do this until they’re like 50 years old, crusty, and their parents die.
I know a couple. Dropped out of highschool, and have been coasting for over a decade off their rich parents, never leave the house, never had a job. Been that way for over a decade with no signs of change.
I believe it refers to current status, so it’s “Not in Education, Employment or Training”. Doesn’t mean the person cannot have a degree or diploma or at least finished school.
Correct, you can have a PhD and be a NEET. What matters is that you are currently unemployed, and not studying/training either.
I finish my current job in December and my new job doesn’t start until March, for some reason. So I’m going to be Neet for that time. Or does the fact that I have a job, it just hasn’t started yet, preclude me
Do you consider yourself unemployed? I’d say you aren’t if you are already hired for the next job.
The fact that you’re pursuing a job at all excludes you I’d think
Damn, how do their retirement plans work out?
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Cool my highschool diploma doesnt count thanks to someone on the internet. Thanks disability income for making me a neet by circumstance
Basically jobless adults who are not students.
Not in Education, Employment, or Training
Freeloaders, put simply
Those are called billionnaires.
“Et euh, comment ça s’passe pour les gens comme vous quand y a du soleil ? Enfin, j’veux dire, vous êtes contents qu’y en ait ou ça vous fait chier qu’les pauvres en profitent aussi ?”
Could u weaponise the regarded by paying them a wage?
Only if it comes from the regarded region of France, otherwise its just sparkling autism…
Here’s something actionable: find an elderly couple you visit regularly who are physically okay. Sign on as their carer and get paid. If they’re married, get them to divorce and to claim separately and then split the money three ways. If anyone asks why they’re living at the same address, just say that they can’t stand each other but are forced to live together for financial reasons.
Considering the bills they don’t have to pay, they actually make more than I didn’t a month with a job.
in conversation with The Perfect Match: “I accept money I didn’t earn”
The secret ingredient is crime.
i thought ssi is a form of depression medication… that made a lot of sense
That’s either an SSRI or an SNRI.
American anons olny live in Alaska
