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While the majority of the country, in terms of land, is rural, so what? The housing stock does not exist to support the 80% or more of the population that lives in urban and suburban areas. Neither does the infrastructure exists to support a quick expansion of housing stock in these areas.
The reason some houses in rural areas sell so inexpensively is that they are selling for the cost of the land, or quite close to it. The actual cost of materials and labor for the structures cannot be recouped due to the urban shift of our population. Should people from the cities start to adopt a rural lifestyle in any real numbers, it will cause rural prices to skyrocket.
Prices are roughly proportionate to the number of people who want to live in a place. Houses in Buffalo and Cleveland were selling for $1 because nobody wanted to live in deserted areas of rust belt cities. If we see a migration of people from urban to rural areas, rural prices go up, and urban prices go down.
Yes.
To compare a square mile of New York or Houston or Des Moines - with thousands of residences - with a square mile of forest/grasslands/mountains/desert that might have one or two (or zero) dwellings on it is absurd.
And no small chunk of that rural land is hideously expensive: the entire Alaskan bush, places that have no infrastructure (where putting it in so that one might live there would cost a fortune), etc.
side note:
My sister lives in Los Angeles. She doesn't make much more than $40k, is very content, and has disposable income. The fact that someone just can't believe it, or that someone else thinks she could make a better living in rural Nebraska, has no bearing upon reality.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "survive". I actually just pulled my earnings from SSN for my wife and I this weekend.
We got married in 2010, but lived together in 2009 (with roommates). In 2009 combined we made $28,865. In 2010 combined we made: $28,791. In 2011 combined we made: $42,804. In all of those years we survived just fine. Now we weren't going out and buying a house or brand new cars (although my wife did buy a car in 2008, but it was used). I believe in all of those years we were also putting a little bit in retirement via 401k or Roth IRA.
Edited to add I personally never made over $24k until I was 29 in 2012.
Last edited by mizzourah2006; 02-10-2022 at 08:34 AM..
I don’t understand why this is so hard to envision. If you make less money, you just downgrade your lifestyle in monetary ways. When I “survived” on 15k, I was taking on student loan debt for years and my “entertainment” was the library. My car had windows that wouldn’t work and a gas gauge that didn’t even work. But it was a car. Now my car costs as much as my college education and has so many features I literally don’t know how to use them and I wouldn’t even if I knew. I got by on 6k and 9k and 15k and 45k and 100k and 180k and everything in between. That’s what people do, they survive.
Past a certain point, everything is life style creep. 40k is enough to get by in most of the country outside of the biggest metros.
I don’t understand why this is so hard to envision. If you make less money, you just downgrade your lifestyle in monetary ways. When I “survived” on 15k, I was taking on student loan debt for years and my “entertainment” was the library. My car had windows that wouldn’t work and a gas gauge that didn’t even work. But it was a car. Now my car costs as much as my college education and has so many features I literally don’t know how to use them and I wouldn’t even if I knew. I got by on 6k and 9k and 15k and 45k and 100k and 180k and everything in between. That’s what people do, they survive.
Past a certain point, everything is life style creep. 40k is enough to get by in most of the country outside of the biggest metros.
I agree. I had mentioned a few pages back that It seems like a silly question and also kind of unkind. Yes, there are people in this country making 40k a year...just not on Citydata for the most part. Noted.
I could see wondering how someone survives on that with a bunch of kids in a high COL area...but that wasn't what was asked.
As an older person who has accumulated savings and investments over the years I really do think it's a valid question for some individuals. I can't imagine being young 20ish person living in a high COL city. Where I live 40k means renting, not owning a car, no vacations involving an airplane, no extra money for savings or investments, eating out would be rare, minimal clothing, basically it's a very minimalistic lifestyle. Hobbies would be library and internet. Minimum wage is 15.20 an hour.
Back in the 90's it was much easier to save for the future making 40k a year. Forget having any hope doing that 30 years later.
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