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I'm sure you're aware of this, but a lot of people just don't have the financial freedom to even begin thinking about a decision like this, or it ends up requiring a lot of energy to make that plan viable. And as you've probably experienced, energy is not exactly abundant after a day/week/month/etc in an environment like that...

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Oh I'm very aware of it. I tried once before to quit my job and go it alone, at the ripe old age of 22! I failed spectacularly. Reason - I only had 7k GBP in my bank. That simply wasn't enough money for me to live on and pay my mortgage till I found clients. I then put aside 10x times that amount, and things started to fall into place. Exactly the same skills, idea and enthusiasm as before, just a bigger cushion that meant money was not at the forefront of my mind driving crazy waves of anxiety.

Fuck me, wish I had 7k at 22, just around the time the internet bubble burst, basically fucked and went back to data entry for a while.

That 7k was very hard earned. I basically existed much like a pauper despite having a steady job. The amount felt like a lot to me back then too. 4 months later, I realised how little it was! If anything it made me realise how undervalued I was at work.

With the right financial planning, it can be done. But, if you've already taken on 20K in student loans and 5 year cell phone contract, it's gonna be much much harder. That's why we need to start teach financial education really early: like K-12.

Food and water can be quite cheap: the grocery stores are filled with healthy foods you can get for less than 1$ per lb in most of the US: corn, whole wheat flour, bananas, apples, grapes, onions, beans, rolled oats, etc.

The biggest problem with living cheaply is Housing, Healthcare and Tax. for the most part these are mandated by the gov regulations to be really expensive. Once those are solved, we'll be able to live quite cost effectively. I've seen some people get around that by living in a camper van, traveling the world - not for everyone, i know. But, the tiny house movement shows us we can get a tiny house for just 20K.

People have been living trailer parks, with trailers worth far less then 20k for many years. The tiny housing movement did not show us much.

Nope, just that when people who are not poor live in small houses they live quite well, hardly shocking.

Or the opposite; tiny house permitting made it more apparent that many trailer parks have inadequate septic/sewer systems.

Also see, the resurgence of Hookworm in Lowndes Al.

Is that more a function of density?

It's a function of lower income trailer parks not caring about building and sanitation codes.

I really dont understand how in America, tiny houses doesn't get translated as slums.

Because what is called tiny house is a status symbol of the middle class. If a poor person lives in a small house or trailer it's called a slum.

I believe there's also a virtue signalling aspect that plays into the problems in the original article.

"I am so dedicated to my work that I willingly turn my home and outside-of-work life into the smallest possible monastic box, using less resources than the average Joe. Plus I'm so classy that it's a beautiful box, and it can't be cluttered by bourgeois garbage because my experience outside work is a stark void and doesn't generate things that would require space."

Whoa, that looks good on your performance review. All you need to add is 'and I'm never there because I work all the time. The only person who sees my house is Merry Maids, and they only have to send one person with featherdusters all over her. She twirls, and that's her job done for the week' ;)

> That's why we need to start teach financial education really early: like K-12

What you are suggesting would lead to a generation that saves more and consumes less.

When GDP seems to be the only success metric that matters, I often wonder if such education is omitted intentionally.

The moment your life depends on a 7% return, you dont have a viable lifestyle for everyone.

I've already made this comment before, but of course, once people are taught something, they reliably have the same behavior, because humans are such previsible machines ! See various addictions, sex ed, advertising, yada yada.

Actually, we need to do is organize politically and demand that our political leaders use the vast resources at our disposal to build a society that takes care of everyone’s essential needs for free, rather than allowing them to be hoarded by a relatively tiny caste of unfathomably wealthy assholes. Teaching people to scrape by on scraps is the opposite of what we need.

I think you're suggesting redistribution of wealth from the ultra wealthy. It sounds logical: i use to think this was the answer to. But, The problem is, they're not wealthy enough for it to matter. even if you take every last bit of wealth 100% taxation of all their income from all time from every single billionaire in the entire US (about 2.3 trillion$ for the forbes 400), and spread it around giving it out equally to all citizens of the US, that would still only be about 8000$ per head. Any years after that, you'd get nothing because they'd having nothing else to give.

So taxation on a massive scale doesn't work. The problem isn't that the super rich are too wealthy. The problem is life is too expensive for most people. That's the problem we should try to address. In order to do that you'd have to reduce the cost of housing and healthcare.

Everything you say proves your privilege. If you work a minimum wage job there is no way you can put aside 20k in a few years. Taking on student loans is necessary for many to even get a degree to have a chance at a decent job. And poor people usually are excellent at managing resources, yet you go "poor people just lack character", while what they lack is money, which is stolen by a small group of people at the top because they are a bunch of vampires sucking the life out of everything.

Pretty much. There comes a time when it seems hardly worth sugar-coating realities like that. The whole topic is inextricable from the engine constructed to make a few victorious entities, whether they're companies or individuals or both, successful to a degree that justifies their apparent importance.

Funny how that importance is never 'serving people the best way', and is always 'thousands of times more powerful and wealthy than you could even imagine and consuming the blood of young servants in order to live forever'. With some of the most successful Silicon Valley capitalists, the latter is literally true: consuming the blood of the young in hopes of living longer.

I'm not sure how much more on-the-nose it can even get. It's kind of nice to see these things openly talked about. It's legitimate to ask, "This is possible, indeed is happening. Is this good?"

the point is, people spend far more than they have to on college education. The cheapest 4 year degrees are much cheaper than the average ones. And, if you're not shopping around based on price (most people seem not to be), most likely your doing yourself a disservice. Of course, it also depends on your career plans.

I myself, went to the cheapest college in my area, even though I could have gotten into a far more expensive/prestigious college. I chose not to because I knew it would put me a great economic disadvantage to have so much debt. Software engineering careers and many other careers don't always benefit from more prestigious schools.

If more people shopped for colleges based on price then maybe universities will start competing on price and we can finally see them planning ways to make college cheaper instead of adding yet another good for nothing expensive wing to the campus.

Funny that you mention privilege. Most people in the US don't have a degree [1]. Are you saying none of those people have decent jobs? Never mind the people on this very website that work in tech without a degree, there are plenty of other jobs that require no degrees and are compensated quite well. [2] is a good read, despite the fact that it's a little out of date.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

[2] http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html

There are over 300 million Americans. "None" could only ever be a hyperbolic strawman. But on balance, yes, those without a degree experience substantially higher unemployment and lower wages [0].

[0] https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

Good point. In many cases the higher wages are somewhat negated by the time investment though.

It's true that not everyone can do it, but it's also true that most professional people who say this are just mentally stuck in an expensive lifestyle, and/or unwilling go somewhere cheaper.

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