Speedwell

In Houston, 125 percent of poverty means a $525/month studio apartment with "all bills paid" (water, trash removal, and electricity), a monthly bus pass, groceries from "dollar stores" and places that sell odd lots, a prepaid cell phone, and going to work sick because you can't afford to lose time or get fired. It can be done but it's inhumane.

COSPhil

Yes, I don't doubt it can be done. I have to say looking at apartment prices in the Springs the result is very similar. Although there is VERY few buses in the Springs.

With regard to the threads in the Marriage based forums, sometimes there are some "other" circumstances - so, for example, I fairly regularly see students.

With immigration it will cost a min of $3000 to go from I129-F to Green Card, so they have to be able to achieve that some how.

I have a decent London salary which due to its Olympic nature is coming towards an end. My OH has a reasonable salary, much higher than the "poverty line" but does have a student loan and car payment against that. It's cost us a big chunk of change to make our relationship work. Albeit I grant you that we could have not visited the "other" one which is a large amount of that cost.

Bob

Indeed. Town over, the reserved low income housing for those earning $35K costs $1600 a month for a pokey 2 bed apartment....how is anyone supposed to survive on that?

GeoffM

That must be a very specific part of LA you're talking about! We have relatives scattered along the foothills (210-134-101), easily have the "nice lifestyle" you quote (which suits me too), pay a mortgage, yet don't have a household income anywhere near $300k let alone $500k.

SultanOfSwing

One point to note is that living comfortably for less is very possible if you're lucky enough to live and work far enough outside the big cities.

We live in the far northern suburbs (not cookie-cutter suburbia but older, former holiday/cottage towns) of Chicago. When I arrived on my K1, my wife was making less than $25k; with one child and we made it work. When I first got a job we were up to just over $55k so we rented for a while until we saved enough to buy a house.

Now we own our house - not a huge one but 3 beds/2 baths, room for 2 more bedrooms and a bathroom when we finish the basement; decent sized garden in a nice, quiet town surrounded by other quiet towns and we make a lot less than $100k a year which is more than enough to support us and our two children.

My commute is short, hers a wee bit longer but not my much; we own my car and are 4 payments away from owning hers (screw the new car crap, I'll put 300,000 miles on mine as long as it works before I go looking for another monthly car payment), my wife is super smart with money and I'm tight as a gnat's chuff. Fair enough, we can't afford a holiday every year but we still get in plenty of day trips over the summer and we always have a decent spread at Christmas with enough treats here and there throughout the year to make up for not having these five figure incomes that everyone seems to think are so easy to come by

Sally Redux

Ridiculous - your comments I mean.

Pulaski

As a broad brush summary I'd agree. I'm sure some would agree about some of your line items, and as SultanofSwing noted if you can live and work in the outer suburbs you can live comfortably on a lot less, and especially if you've owned you home for 15 years or more (or owned previous homes and rolled a lot of equity in your home). And in some cities you could argue about $10k-$20k in annual income, but overall a reasonable summary if you only have a couple of hundred words.

And dismissing it as "ridiculous" is unwarranted. Anyone who doesn't agree be more specific about how, and/ or by how much, they disagree.

Sally Redux

to you too.

How can you possibly think you need $500,000 pa to live in LA?

My husband earns a LOT less than that, we have a big mortgage, one child in college and the other a teenager, I don't work and we can still fulfil his criteria, I could even shop in Whole Foods if I wanted to.

Yorkieabroad

.

Yorkieabroad

Bingo

Hiro11

I have to work from what I know. I was recently considering a job in Irvine (internal transfer) and asked around at the office there for relative cost of living. To be fair, take the lower end of my numbers if you're talking strictly cost of living. However, to replicate the lifestyle I have here in Chicago (where I live in a very nice surburb), for me to deal with hassel of moving my family across the country and for me to feel completely secure with the decision, that's what it would take. Perhaps I'm being conservative, but Chicago is a lot cheaper than LA.

Apfelkuchen

$18,912 already is the 125% figure for a household of 2. The 100% figure (all that active duty military have to meet) is $15,130. I'm not sure why the military rate is lower. Possibly because military income is supplemented with a Basic Allowance for Housing adjusted for rank and duty station.

EDIT: And healthcare is taken care of.

SultanOfSwing

If you're in Cook County though you're being unnecessarily gouged. Cost of living in Lake County is so much less.

Chicago's nothing special. You've obviously never been to London

Bob

He's not really far off the mark for Boston though.

Sure life can be great on much less, but the compromises get much larger...such as not having a house, or living in the burbs rather than the big city. Like way the shit out in the burbs.

We're also surviving on way, way less than those numbers, but it's not living the high life, it's far from living the decent life even.

Sally Redux

Oh yeah, well that was the point I was making earlier, when moving you have to factor in whether it's worth it to you personally.