Isn't this just called a hostel?
That just sounds like your friend is living in a hostel dorm. $20/day actually sounds cheap now that I'm looking at hostel rates in LA:
http://www.hostelworld.com/search?search_keywords=Los+Angele...
That just sounds like your friend is living in a hostel dorm. $20/day actually sounds cheap now that I'm looking at hostel rates in LA:
http://www.hostelworld.com/search?search_keywords=Los+Angele...
From your description, this sounds like every backpacker hostel, everywhere. Or at least what they aspire to be.
Sadly, everything moves upmarket, and "hostel" tends to now translate to giant soulless hotel where they have two or three bunk beds in each room and no real shared space or opportunity to meet other travelers (who realistically would now be staring at their phone the entire time they were in one of those shared spaces, so you'd never meet them anyway).
But what you describe used to be every night of your round the world trip. It was fun.
I live in a red light district and I get shit about it on a daily basis, but man, not once have I had a dull night and the stories people tell around here blow my goddamn mind. For sure you wouldn't want to live in this type of environment your whole life, but it's absolutely tragic to watch it all gentrifying and being replaced by lifeless condo developments and Au Bon Pain. I'll take the pregnant prostitutes and the alcoholic backpackers over Au Bon Pain any day because they have CHARACTER.
You could have figured that out yourself without the attitude, right?
The cost to live in the hostel when you include all factors is lower even if the daily rates were the same.
A mortgaged house, and short-notice, temporary housing are not in the same category. I was asking if there was some point that the person I was responding to was trying to make that I wasn't seeing.
living in LA/SF/NYC is a luxury that people pay a premium for.
Yeah nah. I don't really follow this. Unless you consider terrible traffic and less than idea air quality luxuries. Having said that, I did live in Adelaide for 13 years.
Okay, I'm being too critical, too inflammatory. Big cities bring people together in a pretty special way that enables all sorts of culture to arise that doesn't happen here, in these big country towns, or struggles to exist on the fringes as a caricature of it's big-city counterpart. And I definitely miss that.
Choices, I guess. I can't afford to buy a house in any suburb I'd like to live in in the big cities in Australia. And I'm getting too old to rent or sharehouse. It's good here, 800 rock climbing routes within an hours drive of my house; kayaking and surfing; high-speed internet and Hacker News; a dog; business opportunities we're putting in to action.
It's a fact, not a matter of opinion. People definitely do pay a premium for the luxury of living in LA/SF/NYC. Just look at the rents as you move further away from the center of the cities.
You and I may argue whether it's worth paying that premium, but that's a separate conversation. Location is the most important valuation metric in real estate. A one acre piece of land in rural America could be worth $5,000. An acre in Manhattan is worth $90M+.[1]
[1] http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/2100-a-square-f...
Definitely an opinion.
that people pay a premium for.
That's a fact.
People definitely pay a premium for living in or close to big cities. Whether it's a luxury is entirely a matter of opinion.
Sure they sound luxurious until you realise you have to pay for them, which is why you'll need the high-paying job.
I'm just saying that it is possible to be comfortable outside a huge city and not owning cars I'd be worried about scratching.
People have different tastes.
I'll just say for brevity that people (especially young professionals) drastically underestimate 1) the amount of opportunities there are in other, smaller cities and 2) the quality of life that's possible on lower salaries in those cities.
But, on the other hand, the vast majority don't. I'm sure there are certain people who really need to be there, but not everyone does.
[0] http://qz.com/729293/90-of-software-developers-work-outside-...
In my opinion it's a trade off between quality of life vs. the opportunities that exist in big cities.
Of course, quality of life is subjective.
The point is that a lot of people don't want to live in a South St. Louis City bungalow. (By the way, I think a lot of the snobbery around this is misguided, but it is what it is.)