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Comment by richardknop | Hacker News Reader

That’s 4900 dollars per month before taxes. Substract taxes, health insurance, rent, bills etc and I think it becomes obvious why you’d live paycheck to paycheck. 59k is not much given how expensive some of the essential necessities (place to live, healthcare etc) have become. Throw in car and student loans just to get rid of any left over money you might struggle to save per month.

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If you have 59K and can't live comfortably, then you are clearly doing something wrong. Or perhaps you have a pretty skewed view on what are “essential necessities”.

Depends on your circumstances. 59k per year on NYC or San Francisco does not give you comfortable life. In some rural area I agree.

What's strange is Europeans are constantly told that everything is so much cheaper in the US. I used to earn that median salary according to current exchange rates, and I had an incredibly comfortable life. Owned my own car. Never worried about finances at all.

Well some things are way cheaper in US, like gas which makes owning a car cheaper. Most consumer goods are also cheaper due to no VAT and stuff like that. But Europe has things going for it too. Free healthcare and free education being the top 2 areas were you save a ton of money compared to US (literally tens of thousands dollars per year you don’t have to spend).

Commodities might be cheaper overall, but that's like taking a $10,000 paycut for a $1,000 annual perk when you look at all the other crap going on in the US.

A lot of things, like consumer goods, are cheaper, but Europeans aren't paying thousands a month for private health insurance or whatever.

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