Remember, not everyone lives in the Bay Area. ;-) Depending on where you live and if you have roommates, the $2k per month may be enough to pay rent, bills, college loans and leave some left over for spending money.
There is no way I'd leave a job for 2k/month startup when virtually any job I can get employing the skills I used to build the startup would easily get me 3-5x my startup income (and health insurance too).
I meant "pays your rent" quite literally. As in, taking the biggest of your financial worries away and leaving you only needing to deal with the spending money part. So you still can't live on your income, but you can coast along for an entire year on $10k savings.
Up to that point, $10k in the bank meant you'd better start scrambling to pick up a contract in the next couple months before you run out of money.
$2,000 / 160 = $12.50, which is substantially higher than the minimum wage in all fifty states of the Union, so I'm guessing that there exist at least a few people who are somehow making do...
Please don't make me do division with regards to my last salary, it would just depress me.
PS: He did get an internship that played 13.50 his senior year, but he did not quit Shonies until he graduated.
PS: Average monthly pay was ~= 7.5$ * (40 + (1.5(overtime) * 40 (hours) * 4 / 12)) * 52 / 12 = 1950$ a month.
Granted this is 10 to 15 years ago so it went further, but he was also paying for school at the time.
I say this as someone who grew up in rural northeast Ohio and now lives in Columbus. In the city, I don't even have to own a car to get around. Consider how much extra money you'd have every month if you didn't have a car payment, car insurance, and fuel costs. That's just the beginning of what you could save by finding a decent place in a cheap metro area.
The cost is somewhere around $50 per month, but I'm not totally sure because you ride free with an OSU student ID. For those times when you really do want a car and can't ride with a friend or borrow one, rentals are quite reasonable: I just looked at renting a car from noon Friday to 8 AM Monday and the cost is under $70 from Budget.
I've been without a car since April 2008, when a driver crossed the center line, totaled my car, and ran off. I love driving and I miss having a car, but I've been able to get around all right without one. Of course, getting around is a huge pain when I go back home to visit.
That said, living off of $2,000/month is easily doable if:
1. You live in an inexpensive location.
A bit of research on Craigslist can give you a general idea of where to find inexpensive apartments. Sometimes they're rural, sometimes they're not. The key, though, is being willing to move to the inexpensive location.
2. You have very little debt.
This is probably the difficulty that most people encounter. And unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to make it happen unless it's always been a priority for you.
3. You're reasonably good at keeping your other living expenses low.
This means lots of cooking at home, not going to the movies all the time, and probably saving up for several months if you want to buy a shiny new television or game console.
Well, you opened with,
I'm guessing you've never tried to live on $12.50/hr.
I consider this aggressive and personal. Rather than stating your position and evidence, you've attacked the credentials of anyone who disagrees with you. Aside from the fact that it's naive and almost certainly false (there are folks on this site from all walks of life with all kinds of experience and opinions), it is distracting. I do not care at all whether someone has the particular credentials you think are necessary to comment on the topic; I care only about what evidence and experience they do have.
Above all, I want to hear about ideas, not people. If you speculate on people's motives or qualifications (especially if you're suggesting downvotes are the result of disagreement or censorship), or any time in general that you attack the person of other commenters, you won't interest me. You'll annoy me. And unless you say something particularly redeeming, I'll probably downvote the comment.
http://www.sfgsa.org/index.aspx?page=411
Plus you're probably not clocking an even 40 hour work week working on your small business. $2k a month is likely minimum wage-ish or below in SF.
If you don't have too many other expenses, then you could definitely get by on $2,000/month income.
If I got a roommate, my monthly cost would drop by about $200 (I could afford a car). Once I pay off the debt, making $2000 a month would mean I would be putting $500-1000 in the bank every month.
So yeah, what I'm paying now is abnormally low, but with a roommate or two, $250/month is not at all uncommon.