Comment by walidthedream | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walidthedream | Hacker News Reader

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Yes by most normal countries (North and South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East ) and even broader French (outside of Paris) standards 30 meters square feet (320 sq feet) is called a tiny house, and is even illegal for families in some part of the world. The whole point is « if you’re alone »… is that a life frankly ? So you take a shitty salary because you’re alone or do you take money to progress in your personal life and build something like a family ? Oh yeah true you don’t need a car because life is so miserable driving and parking here, but public transportation is a total disaster when it comes to safety (ask pretty women how they feel there) , quality of service (summer transportation is a disaster, strikes and regular failures), cleanliness (piss, rats and bedbugs and vagabonds every where). And yeah the SNCF trains are also the preferred homeless shelter and very unreliable during every public vacation time. So you’re totally right, the car is something of the past… unless you live in a crappy suburb you can today totally forget about the less than 1000 rent.it is around 1500 minimum, and in this paradise that means earning 4500 minimum because waiting lines are in average 15 to 20 candidates per rentals . And you better be a white colored person with a European name and face. So with 3700 net salary you simply not qualify. You end up like most people looking for a partner officially and counting on your partner salary plus yours just to get a chance to live in that tiny flat. Telco is 50 euros min without Netflix and football and Disney or Spotify . If you have a family and need to dream because of the gritty environment you leave in , you can add 30 / 40 bucks and you end up with 70 to 100 bills depending on the number of persons in your household . And you didn’t pay yet the flat tv nor the smartphone. Believe people earning less than 4k net a month in the Paris region do look at the prices today.

I did not want to annoy anybody, I was just answering the "live very comfortably" part.

Yes I lived in Paris 15th arrondissement a little more than two years ago (for like 4 years?) with a less than 60k euros salary and felt personally that I lived comfortably.

> Yes by most normal countries

I know that 30 square meters was comfortable to me at the time and had no shame about it. I still find that I live in a "normal country" and don't really care that much what someone from another "normal country" would use as a diminishing adjective to qualify that apartment's superficy.

> is that a life frankly ?

First, it is, and I felt this part was kind of unnecessary. Founding a family is not the end goal of everyone, nor living in a mansion.

> So you take a shitty salary because you’re alone or do you take money to progress in your personal life and build something like a family ?

I did found someone (to also live with) in that time period, which roughly make the same salary than I, we both lived comfortably on our own before and our combined remunerations was thus much bigger when living together which means we could afford something bigger. We decided to move from Paris though, but I also understand people wanting to stay there.

And 60k is far from shitty, even in Paris. We even considered ourselves privileged as we had a usually better salary than our friends and a job we liked.

> but public transportation is a total disaster [...]

I am not that critical of Paris' public transportation, I thought it was good enough for going to work everyday or where I wanted to go most of the time.

> rent.it is around 1500 minimum

I was paying something like between 900 and 1k for 30-ish (don't remember) square meters. It's for the 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 and 20 arrondissements only I would guess, and [close] suburbs.

> waiting lines are in average 15 to 20 candidates per rentals

Yes that was an issue to me also. I had to send a lot of proposal everywhere to have a chance.

> Telco is 50 euros min without Netflix and football and Disney or Spotify

I just checked. I have different operators for phone and internet, and I'm at 20 for internet and 15 for mobile phone subscription. I'm also very bad at managing money so I'm sure I could spend less, if it mattered to me. No idea how much I spend for electricity, gas and so on, because I've never had any issue with money.

> people earning less than 4k net a month in the Paris region do look at the prices today

I did not and my girlfriend didn't two years ago look at prices when doing most day-to-day things, but maybe the situation evolved since then. Though to be honest we never lived an expensive life: we never had any TV for example nor Netflix and such subscriptions, and don't have expensive hobbies nor especially like expensive things.

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