Comment by Sodaware | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sodaware | Hacker News Reader

The title of the article is slightly misleading in that it's $7,000 per person, so it's actually $14K in this case. I know that's a little nit-picky, but things like rent would eat a good chunk of that $7k.

Living on $14k is certainly possible, and the usual suspects can be cut to save some cash:

* Drop cable TV

* Same for cell phone - keep one pre-pay for emergency and use Skype for business/personal

* Stick to one car if at all possible (easier if someone can work from home or has flexible work hours). Negotiate lower insurance rates if possible.

* Don't eat out

* If internet is essential, go for the cheapest package available.

There are usually offers for new internet customers that give low rates for the first year. However, when your year expires you can call them up and ask to be put on a new special. This worked for my wife and I when our rates went up, and we got upgraded to a faster connection to boot.

That's really the biggest money saving tip of all - ask politely. It doesn't always work, but you lose nothing and can gain some decent savings over time.

He lives in a trailer at an RV park also... that right there cuts your rent significantly. Hey, if you want to live in a trailer at an RV park for $400 a month, barbecue with charcoal because it costs less than propane, and grow a few vegetables by the side of your trailer in a makeshift garden, more power to you.

Unfortunately, I prefer living in a solid structure made of wood and bricks that doesn't wash away in a flood or blow away in a storm.

Permanent structures do wash away in floods and blow away in storms. And if you have a storm warning, you can actually move your house out of the way of the storm.

Yeah, it's not rocket science. The biggest money losers are too much house and too much car and all the interest payments that go towards it. Even by eliminating the interest by paying in cash you're already cut your expenses on those items by 50%. The rest is just details, but most importantly. Don't buy ANYTHING on credit.

If you have a credit card with no annual payment and you pay every month, should you still not pay on credit?

I'm not sure if I see the problem then.

Okay, to be more precise: >>Don't pay any interest or fees<<. I do run online purchases through my credit card and then pay off the balance in full every month.

That's a good point and one of the frustrating things I find about an otherwise awesome blog. Living with a significant other is cheaper than living by yourself because I really doubt you're going to want to live in really close quarter with someone your not sleeping with.

I was living on 5-7k for five years before I got married. Being single or married doesn't materially affect the math. If you're single, you can live in a smaller space, but you'll spend slightly more on rent. This is nearly a wash. However, if you're single you don't have to go along/compromise with your partners less than frugal choices.

My rent (which is the cheapest possible in town) is $6,000 (not including heating oil, which is ~$75/mo in the winter) a year for a very small room of a duplex in which each half is shared by 4 people. In a very different real estate market I've been in within the last two years (KY houses are on the order of 1/2 the cost of houses in NH), it's still about the same price for rent. You won't make it on the $1-2k that's left over from that. How long ago were you living on <$7k?

Since 2001 and up to now.

Are you positively sure you have the cheapest rent in town? We lived in the same city for two years before we found a place that was 30% cheaper. Go to craigslist and set up an RSS feed. The underpriced places don't stay on the market for more than a day before someone snatches them up.

Yeah, it doesn't get a hair more than $500/yr cheaper and would exclude bus access. (note the shitty living situation) Part of the reason is that NH has a high property tax instead of having income tax. That's passed on to the renters.

Have you checked out Seabrook (dunno what your feelings are towards salt marches and nuclear plants). I hear they almost pay people to live there. We were talking about moving to the Free State for a while but the property taxes are scary. Now it looks like we'll be buying a house in Oregon.

I live in New Orleans and you can barely get a 1 bedroom apartment for $7000.

A quick search on craigslist reveals several places for less than that and that's just in the past few days.

http://neworleans.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=&srchT...

Usually underpriced places get snatched up within a day, much like any other good deal on craigslist, so set up an RSS feed and monitor it constantly.

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