Living Wage Calculator | Hacker News Reader

Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.geog.psu.edu

21 pointsjwilliams34 comments

According to this site, the cost of housing in Cambridge, MA for one person is $1063/month. I live there with a roommate, and the total rent for our place is $1200/month. This is a nice apartment with hardwood floors and lots of light, in a nice location. You do the math, because apparently the creators of this site didn't.

Also, their hourly "living wage" seems to be based on a 40-hour work week. I personally work way more than that, and I know people that work less.

If you think about it, the very concept of a "living wage" -- as a function only of your location and the number of people you support -- is wrong-headed. What do you suppose the living wage is for Beverly Hills, CA? News flash: not everyone can afford to live everywhere. Just like some cars are cheaper than others, some places to live are more affordable than others. If you aren't making enough to live where you want to live, maybe you should re-examine your job skills or your aspirations about where to live, rather than blaming your employer for not paying you a "living wage".

Living on $800/mnth in Boston; Close to the floor. You could get closer, but you'd be compromising on an essential.

That's one room out of three (water incld.), food, T pass (no car), electric, gas (for heat/food), iPhone, net, wash/dry and general supplies.

Minimum wage here is 8.00/hr. But you'd get more and could work less than 40 hrs and make it; It can be done.

But living wage doesn't mean absolute minimum. I'd need double to enjoy myself without having thinking about money. It's meant to be temporary.

"What do you suppose the living wage is for Beverly Hills, CA? News flash: not everyone can afford to live everywhere."

Yet everywhere you go, there's a demand for people who clean up your trash, fix your meals, sweep your streets and teach your children. These people have to live somewhere, too.

They can live someplace nearby and commute.

According to google maps, it takes 34 minutes to get from Compton (a cheap area, if rap songs are accurate) to Beverly Hills. There are probably other cheap areas not legendary for breeding hard soldiers, I just don't know the west coast at all.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&s...

On the east coast, Jersey/Brooklyn/LI to Manhattan is equally reasonable.

> They can live someplace nearby and commute.

The problem with that is that commuting distances is it's own expense. It also rules out people like me who don't have a driver's license to drive a car in the first place. I can only work in heavily urban areas (Most of Chicago, or even parts of Toledo) because of it.

Also, note that the argument above had nothing to do with ecological or foreign dependence concerns, which is what most people think of when they pan commuter culture.

Also, note that the argument above had nothing to do with ecological or foreign dependence concerns

Those are some of the resaons why we have mass transit.

The problem timr was describing is that Beverly Hills needs some low skill workers. I'm sure sufficiently many low skill workers have cars/bus passes to meet the needs of Beverly Hills.

I'm not a fan of car culture either. I'm just pointing out that a "living wage" in beverly hills can't be more than a "living wage" in Compton + cost of commuting.

Incidentally, the market adjusts wages in exactly that way: the 50'th st Qdoba in Manhattan pays a couple bucks more/hour than the Hoboken Qdoba. Most likely there is a similar wage premium to work in Beverly Hills.

It's more normal to have people share living spaces. At my last job I worked with an Indian making 45k who was splitting a 2 breadroom 1350$ / month apt with 8 people (they used bunk beds). He had no car and 170$ / month rent is cheep so he was saving a tun of money.

This site has a pretty major flaw. It assumes one worker regardless of the number of adults, and it also charges for childcare. So really, both adults could work for half of the wage in the 2-adult models.

I'm not begrudging people that live near the poverty line higher wages. I'm just saying that the site is very misleading.

It has other flaws as well.

The most obvious flaw: a "living wage" should be the same in areas within short commuting distance of one another. Just live in whichever place is cheaper. An example:

Living wage in New York City is $7.72, while that in Jersey City or Hoboken is $11.28; the main difference is rent ($484 in New York, $884 in Jersey). So a person making only $8/hour in Jersey City can simply live in New York City and commute (the exact opposite of what people do in real life).

Another flaw is that their costs for rent are a load of crap. Out of the 5 cities I feel qualified to comment on (NYC, Jersey City, Hoboken, New Brunswick and Union City), and only one (Jersey City) was remotely accurate.

[Edit: another serious flaw I just noticed is child care for 2 adults, 1-2 children. If we talk about the "living wage" for one adult, the other adult can provide child care for free. Or each adult need only make "living wage"/2.]

Here's another weird bit: in my area the "medical" cost for one adult is $79 a month. But for two adults it's $226 a month. How the hell does that work?

With two adults it's usually a male and a female who engage in activities that create a new life, and there's a cost for that new life even before it is born.

Or are they thinking that two people will dislike each other enough to shoot or stab or beat on each other thus increasing the medical costs?

The site may be imperfect but at least it tries to offer some comparative info. I've never seen another site that does the same ... not in such an easy to understand format anyways.

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm... has been around for a while.

Same with Chicago. --I don't know where they expect you to live for $337/month. And somehow they're trying to claim that Raleigh, NC is more expensive at $384 - not a chance.

Wow... Mountain View, CA is 9k more expensive per year than where I'm living. Heck, it's 8k more than New York.

Remind me why shoestring-budget startups are supposed to flock there?

Poverty builds character.

Because MV has resources that those other places don't have. If you can succeed without those resources, MV isn't the place for you. However, if you need them and acquiring them costs more than $9k/year somewhere else, MV is cheaper.

Which resources are those, exactly?

people, duh.

I meet smart developers everyday, and have lots of hacker types friends. As the expression goes: You can't swing a dead cat on the bay area without hitting a good engineer/startupper in the head

Try that in any other place. You have to swing that a lot harder.

If you are trying to build a great startup you live by the talent, and die if you don't have it. Execution is key. Being frugal and cheap is second.

I won't disagree with that, but I do think it's overrated, to be honest.

Just once I would love a site like this to consider the possibility that people actually live outside the US.

It would have been interesting to see those results... sigh.

It would be nice to know what the source of the numbers are. I found some specific numbers that seemed low to me. For example, it budgeted $156 a month for food for one adult in SF. I used to budget $40 a week for food for myself in the eighties, reasonably sure its not enough now.

Top Ramen, with 390 calories per package and selling for twenty-five cents, will fulfill your daily calorie needs for $1.25 a day.

Seriously though, I would be surprised if you couldn't put together a balanced if rather dull diet for $156 a month (or $5.12 a day, which now I come to think of it happens to be approximately my daily coffee budget). You wouldn't be eating much meat, but with cereal for breakfast, a simple sandwich for lunch, and pasta or rice + vegetables for dinner I'm sure it'd be sufficient to keep you alive and healthy.

I cook every day (it's pretty much a hobby) and almost always spend less than that per month for food. That includes cooking for other people at least once a week and odd recipe experiments. No shortage of meat either... I just finished off a package of chicken tonight that cost $4 and lasted five meals, including one with another person.

I'm having people over for tacos this weekend, pork butt was on sale for $1.50/lb today. One pound of meat makes quite a few tacos, they'll be cheaper than Taco Bell's. And carnitas rules, it will taste like a million bucks. I usually buy what's on sale as it's a good way to stay out of rut, I just make whatever works well with what I bought.

Now I could go buy a piece of kobe beef and spend the $150 in one trip, but for me it's more fun to come up with tasty meals from more basic (but yet good quality) ingredients. If I actually tried to spend as little as possible it could get really low and ramen wouldn't be involved.

I just bought 2 chicken breasts. Price on the package was Canadian $7.50. So say US $6 (guaranteed to be more in SF). That for me, was 2 meals for one, though obviously nice meals (the vegetables, spices, rice probably increased the price of each dinner to about $7-$8 US). So basically I just spent 1.5 days of my budget on 1 meal.

$6 is a lot for a whole chicken, which comes with two breasts, two thighs, two legs, and two wings.

Yes, you can spend that much for a chicken in SF, but you don't have to.

As I said, I usually buy what's on sale (it really is a good way to keep up variety). When chicken breast is on sale it's usually pretty good, in the $2-3.50/lb range which is about half off. Whole chicken is almost always economical. That said, there are a lot of other cuts of meat (pork chops, roasts, etc). After the holidays you'll be able to pick up turkey and ham really cheap. I got a ham last year and threw a party, it was ridiculously cheap and delicious. It's all about being flexible, if you're alright with going with the flow you can get away with spending much less than you'd think.

It's a fun challenge for me and I've come up with some fun recipes as a result. That said, I do splurge where it counts--good quality olive oil, parmesan, fresh herbs, etc. At the end of the day I'm in it for a tasty meal, not a cheap meal.

Your daily calorie needs, yes. I think what you'd really be forsaking is not meat (hamburger is relatively cheap) but fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, and most of all, variety. So I'd dispute "healthy." Sure it'll work when you're young, but 10 years of it, and say hi to cancer. And your point about your "coffee budget" just emphasizes it.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I should admit that the reason I had such a low food budget was so I could have more money for beer ;-)

Fresh fruit and vegetables really aren't that expensive. An apple costs, what, fifty cents? A banana, about the same? And you can get a whole head of lettuce or half a bunch of celery for not much more than a dollar. Or potatoes... I forget how much they cost, but it ain't much. As for milk, buy a half-gallon every week for $2.50 and you've got all the calcium you need.

Variety remains the big problem, of course.

To many people on HN, "fifty cents" for an apple is not that expensive, neither is $2.50 for some milk...I know I easily spend that on a bottle or two of Bawls or 50x that on a new toy for my laptop, or even 100x that on a single nice anniversary dinner at craftsteak in vegas with my significant other while we were in town for defcon (so, hotel and all was even more money). However, 50 cents for an apple earning a minimum wage paycheck working multiple jobs with your spouse to provide for your children while trying to pay the rent and bills is not an insignificant amount of money.

I still remember the congressional food stamp challenge from a year or two ago where everyone who attempted to live on food stamps for a single week made a real point of saying that while it was simple to buy junk food and things like peanut butter, fresh fruits and vegetables, among other "healthy" items to eat, were nearly impossible to buy. Plus even just buying the cheaper junk food, they found that they didn't have the energy they had and always wanted more food...but of course, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the challenge. (http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/)

So no, fresh fruit and veggies can be pretty expensive and unaffordable.

All of these numbers are ridiculously high. I could afford not to die even when I was earning half of what they say the minimum is for my area. I suspect that this is politically motivated (e.g. they highlight all the jobs they don't think pay enough -- but they don't highlight all the expenses they could argue are too high).

The numbers for San Francisco seem about right to me. I'm fairly frugal, and I'm in line with their numbers for a single adult in the city.

The phrase "living wage" is loaded to start with. I'm sure there are political motivations here.

However, when I ran their calculations for my town, I was surprised to get a number very close to what we had already figured out as our minimum "comfortable" budget. No, we wouldn't die on less money, but the cuts would have to come someplace painful, like dropping health insurance for me and my wife, or eating a lot more potatoes and a lot less meat and vegetables.

If you wanted to rephrase the concept to "minimum stable middle class income", they were right on, at least in our case.

These numbers just seem wrong.

A specific example is they include child care - $800 per month, and then write: ...must earn to support their family, if they are the sole provider....

????

If you are going to include child care then divide all the numbers in half, and things make more sense.

Edit: heh jackowayed said the same thing :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com