How I live on $7,000 per year

I think you have a good thing going on for yourself. if you can save that kind of money it definitely changes how you interact with the world. I only had 1/10th of what you have in investments and it definitely made me bolder in the world.

I wasn't being hyperbolic about insurance carriers though, and I'm sure you already know about this but I'd really caution you (and others) on this. As a small (10 person) company, we had a health insurance policy that was dropped without cause by the carrier. They told us to our face, "sue us". They know we won't, because what would it accomplish? We'd lose (burn) money, they have money to burn, it makes no sense.

When you're small (an individual or a small company), they can get away with doing that to you. So, you're making payments on a policy, but I'd wager that when you need it, is when you'll be getting a letter in the mail saying "after we received your letter telling us to terminate your policy, we did"...

Yeah, I can live in a tent and hunt for food. Zero dollars per year.

Sorry, but fuck that. None of these stories are inspiring.

I think it's great that you've found a lifestyle you enjoy that also allows you to get by with very little money. What I take issue with is your judgmental tone in the article - as if there's something wrong with everyone else for not wanting to live in an RV.

This country faces a dire economic crisis, and there is no doubt that the income of the middle class has been getting shredded - and continues to drop. Unemployment is at an all-time high. It seems incredibly callous and foolish to sweep these all away with a "well, maybe they should be living like me".

There's a bit of rose-tinted glasses going on here, isn't there? I don't particular buy into this notion that the previous generation was oh so virtuous, while this one is just daft as a brick.

It's quite easy to argue against the underlying principle of the growth economy, because it pre-supposes that the previous 100 years of industrialized capitalism are what's going to continue to fix the world's problems.

It also scares me that China's growth, for instance, is tied to me being able to go to walmart and get a cheap skateboard I'm never going to use and a huge LCD TV I'm going to throw away in two years. Our economic system of moving capital and wealth creation is now dependent on being convinced to want things we don't need, and shuffling around the systems of credit we created for that system. It used to be about creating value- mostly having to do with real things that fulfilled basic human needs, and now that the market's power isn't based on that, credit default swaps are what we come up with. It's a logical conclusion of a system that only has the principal of growth behind it.

Obviously our market-based capitalistic system is the only viable way to efficiently move capital around right now, but you can't blame someone for being unhappy with the underlying message that growth is the only way forward, forever. Some people would argue that we've already reached the peak of the curve in the first world.

If everyone becomes an entrepreneur, compelled to be stingy and just do productive things for the fun of it, then they're still being productive, and the world is still getting useful stuff. But, it seems your concern is that if everyone just does the work they'd like to do then there will be a misallocation of labor: certain things that need to get done won't get done.[1]

Is this really true? Are there well-organized economies that are stagnating while people are engaged in their own independently productive pursuits? Is Japan's economy stagnating because they consume too little or because they are working too little?

[1] An immediate counter-argument here is that people are likely to be more productive when they love their work.

I can't imagine a better base for economics knowledge than Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson."

> I know every economics model there is in and out.

Then you should be familiar with Austrian economics.

Though that is probably not covered in an "advanced degree in economics!"

Peter Schiff tells the story of a six guys stranded on a deserted island: five Asians and an American. They divide up the work as follows: one Asian hunts, one Asian fishes, one Asian gathers vegetables, one Asian cooks, and one Asian tends the fire. The American has the job of eating.

Peter says that an economist would look at the situation and explain that the American is the key to the whole enterprise. Without the American, the Asians would not have jobs.

The truth is that supply is its own demand. Whatever you produce that is surplus, you can trade for another's surplus. The problem in economics is not how to increase demand, but how to increase supply: how can people produce more useful things so that they can trade their surplus for the surplus of others.

If this were true, you'd be able to comprehend what I said, and you'd be able to repeat my argument correctly, and then you'd be able to present a counter argument based on the science of economics. Your appeal to authority just tells me you made a really bad economic decision yourself.

I'm not going to debate your political ideology, because, why should I? The current economic state of the USA proves that endless government and consumer spending does not produce a healthy economy.

Your ideology is disproven by reality. The "stimulus" resulted in higher unemployment and a worse off economy. Bush's handing out "stimulus" checks to the people did the same thing.

Reality has already disproven your ideology.

Now, I know, having seen your ideology before, all the standard excuses. "The patient died because we didn't apply ENOUGH leeches!"

But they are not economic arguments. They are ideological ones. They are based on trying to rationalize a particular set of political positions. There's really no point in attempting to debate your desire to rationalized. I can't stop it.

Your reliance on ad hominem backed by the fallacy of appeal to authority where the authority is non-existent shows that you are making an ideological political claim, not an economic one.

The comparison to global warming is also hilarious, because, like the political ideology you're espousing it too has been disproven by science. I can do it right here: IR absorption of CO2 is less than water vapor. If you understood the science of global warming, you'd be devastated.

The thing is, when you understand a subject, you can defend your position with arguments. You don't need to rely in the low form of characterizing your opponent or their arguments in derogatory ways. You can simply make counter arguments, presumably, if you're right, superior counter arguments.

That you have chosen not to shows that you've replaced ideology for thinking.

It'd be interesting to see his breakdown of the other expenses you mention, though.

Let's say you make $100,000 per year. Saving 80% would mean saving $80,000 per year, and living on $20,000 per year. After 5 years you would have saved $400,000. 3% of $400,000 is $12,000, which is only about half of what you need to equal what you'd lived on for the past 5 years. You'd need a 5% return in order to make $20,000 per year from $400,000.

And this doesn't even take taxes in to account. Good luck saving 80% of your net when taxes alone eat away more than 20% of your net. You're also going to wind up paying taxes on the 5% return, effectively requiring maybe a 6% return (or probably significantly more, considering how much you lost in income taxes in the first place).

Since the salary for an academic scientist is rather low, I could have made the money MUCH faster as a long haul trucker. At $17.5/hr a framing carpenter apprentice is paid substantially better than a grad student. At $37/hour a journeyman level carpenter (after 4 years as an apprentice) would make nearly twice as much as a postdoc. A watchmaker (2 year education) makes 40k. Yes, skilled tradesmen make that much. I never knew.

Had I known back then what I know now, I would never ever have gotten the degrees I did. It was and is one of the most inefficient means of making money I can imagine. Other than being a sign spinner or a dancing pizza (which still pays more than being a research assistant with a MSc, no kidding). I would have way more resentment towards the system if it wasn't for the fact that I enjoyed my work at the time. This enjoyment probably saved me from wasting my money on stuff to compensate for my lack of happiness working.

Not sure what you're getting at. I got my BS in Physics. Then even went to grad school for a while. There is no such thing as "getting a job in physics". There are no "physics jobs" that I could find. It's basically either go into high school teaching, or else get your PhD and try for an associate professor job while learning how to apply for grants.

My education in Physics was basically a bust. Entertainment. Fun to learn that stuff. Then I owed a lot of money. That's it. Had to actually learn something else in order to pay off the loans and make a living.

So let me get this straight. The government builds "free" schools. The government then forces people - under threat of violence - to attend these schools. Therefore people owe the government a lifetime of work.

I'm appalled that anyone could hold such a view.

And a lot of people get denied that plan.

Hospitals really mess with people's cost-benefit analysis, which isn't normally too good to begin with. I was with someone in the hospital a few months ago, and we got the strangest looks when we tried to find out how much a test would cost. Ultimately we decided not to do the test, which was a long shot to find anything for a problem that wasn't very serious, and save a bunch of money. I wish there were some way to inject some more rationality into healthcare to get around the mindset of always doing everything possible, no matter the costs and possible benefits of treatments or tests.

On the other hand having money that was put into savings instead of stuff creates the feeling of power and potential. When I started saving I counted my net worth in cars (because consumerism was still my frame of reference). Imagine walking past a car lot and knowing one has enough money to buy 1-2-3, .... later 8-9-10 ... today dozens of cars (now I count in houses instead ;-) ) on the lot in _cash_ is a very interesting and positive feeling. It's the feeling of being in control and essentially being able to do what you want. Things no longer happen to you. One has financial agency. This is completely different from a reactive mindset.

(That means if you have a decent interest rate and reasonable risk tolerance, you can invest the cash elsewhere and make more money than you would save by buying the boat outright.)