I'm crunching the math for what would be something that's constitutes as "comfortable" when living financially "lean" but still saving enough to cover the worst case scenarios for what happens as a person who's single and renting a room.
I'm just basing this on someone who's in my demographics (late 20s, male ) and going off that perspective to make these estimates.
So here's what I think is around the level of "comfortable" at the moment:
$7200 - $600 a month to rent a room / house share (not in sf /NYC ofcourse)
$2500 - about the cost of car insurance
$1000 - cost of repairs for car per year
$1000 - gas usage for car per year
$1000 - amount saved up per year to replace car every 5 years
$4000 - Food + leisure
$1800 - Health insurance through work per year
$5000 - Emergency saving per year up to the deductible amount of health insurance.
considering that taxes are going to be around 25% of the income earned, you'd have to be earning around 31,400 dollars or $15 dollars an hour at 40 hours per week to reach this figure.
I mean, if cut down on the food and leisure, and don't factor in $5000 in emergency savings, I guess that people can live at $12/13hr, but honestly I think it makes sense that people would want to choose $15/hr as their target for raising the minimum wage up to (I'm honestly torn about it, on one hand you're raising the wages up to people's livelyhood, but on the other hand, adding that much capital into the economy creates inflation when you don't have the economical / population growth to match the surplus to match that capital).
As for retirement, anything that isn't really spent on the emergency funds probably could be directed to an IRA or 401k,
But I guess what it comes down to really is just how much more you want to include in your life. Adding a child adds about $10k per year to that total, trying to own a house adds probably a good $5000 - $10k per year, etc.
I guess it's not really about how much you make per year, but just about how much your upkeep is compared to your earnings that can really define how "comfortable" you are.
I guess in my case I would be living comfortably without making too much money because my costs come up to something like:
$5400 - $450 per month, utilities included
$1000 - transportation (scooters are cheap to buy and maintain)
- $100 insurance per year - $600 to buy a 50cc scooter per year (Short lifespans) - $200 for oilchange + maintenance - $100 for uber costs when they randomly break down
$4000 - food + leisure
$1800 - health insurance
$5000 - emergency savings
so considering that in this wage bracket you'll get around 80% after taxes, you'd have to get like $10.5 dollars per hours working 40 hours per week to be comfortable.
I dunno, what do you guys think, am I missing something that I should be accounting for?
Submitted December 31, 2017 at 10:09PM by Biioe http://ift.tt/2q9IJe6
