[kuzimoto]

How were those people living? Are they single people in their mid 20s with no significant other or kids? Are they making enough to put some towards retirement?

I guess if you're willing to sacrifice some things it could work. You're definitely not raising a family of 3-4 in a nicer neighborhood with that amount.

[perl4ever]

I don't know how other people live, but for me, the overriding expense has always been rent. But in some places I've been, there are apartments with lower than market rent that are reserved for people with low income.

I don't think there is one correct answer to the question of how much money you have to have to live, because it's mostly about your biggest expense, imo. Everything else you can economize on to an extreme if you have to, if you're healthy and sane and frugal.

Once you start talking about a "nice" neighborhood, you're talking about a competitive zero-sum game where the costs can increase without limit.

[afcapel]

The median annual household income worldwide is about 10k/year. 20k/year puts you in the 91st percentile globally for person income. So it's perfectly possible to live with that money, most people in the world do.

[digitaltrees]

Cost of goods and services is proportional in most places. Human happiness is often based on perceived social standing rather than objective wealth.

That is assuming your status is above subsistence level in your society.

[kuzimoto]

I figured we were talking mostly about US, so technically until you're a family of 3 you're not living in poverty, which seems pretty reasonable. It also probably greatly depends on where you live. Housing prices closer to major/wealthy cities are more expensive.

Having an income of 20k/year in US puts you at like 16th percentile.

[drblast]

Not everyone considers it a sacrifice to not be married or have kids. For the people who do fewer than half of them are happy that way.

We're all pretty bad at knowing what will make us happy in advance.

[kuzimoto]

I'm not exactly saying not having a family is a sacrifice, but where you want to live. The cheapest apartment I could find in my area (before kids/marriage) was about $700 and that's a few cities away in a no-so-great area where cops were getting called to our neighbors every few days. I could go closer to downtown and be in a worse area.

With kids, the cheaper areas have generally worse schools, parks, etc.

[Aeolun]

Ah, these people were living in a first world nation with functional social systems, so it wasn’t actually as hard as it might seem.

The neighborhood they were living in was generally fairly average, everything considered. But only one of them had one kid (also single parent though).

Not in a large city. But I’m fairly sure in that case the main downgrade would be the neighborhood.