The problem is what constitutes "maintaining a living", both in your own choices and governmental influence. I can show you how to live well on $10/day, but then you'd complain about not having X Y and Z (starting with two cars and a mortgage in a narrow geographic range).

If you can't do without what amounts to luxuries to 75% of the world population, discussing how many hours a week you "should" work is a non-starter.

I'm honestly curious about this since, even as a student, I'm living on more than that per day. Could you tell me more?

Start with these to get the idea: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://mypatriotsupply.com

Shop at the Dollar Store, Goodwill, Aldi, etc. Look for foreclosed, abandoned, and other dirt cheap real estate; search Zillow.com for sub-$1000 properties (not a typo). Plant a garden. Move. No excuses.

You can eat very healthily on the cheap. Lots of different beans and grains, particularly rice.

Meat is very expensive so generally people eating frugally avoid it nearly entirely, but depending on where you live it may be cheap and practical to raise some chickens if you really feel you need it.

I didn't say "eat cheap shit food". I said "plant a garden". Not sure how you read one from the other.

I've found a while ago an article - "eating healthily for $3 a day" (googe it). I found it to be a very interesting read (and an inspiring business idea, BTW). If you start there, you'll get $7/day left for other needs.

> If not, then fuck you you smug ass - it costs to live.

Wow. Now why was that necessary?

Poster makes a valid point – $10 daily will buy you an existence that looks positively palatial to some, and near a pauper to others. You will be living well, relative to any number of other humans, but lacking the things you want.

For example, you probably stop living in the Bay Area.

You do realize that the bay area's cost of living is astronomical, right? He's not slagging on the area or anything...

Regardless, if you actually have an interest in low cost living, hit up Joey Hess. He, in this country, pays something around $4-5 a day in rent/utilities. Using the remaining money frugally for food and other needs is fairly trivial.

source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154371

Chill out dude.

If you want to live in the bay area, you have to work for it. If you want to live on $10 a day, the point is you dont want to work for it. You can't have both.

Living on $10 a day can be done. Go build an earthship in Taos.

> *Danilocampos, you're quire renowned here on HN, I find your post to be the lamest thing you have ever said.

Gosh, are you sure? I've said tons of lame things – not sure this even nudges the needle.

>If not, then fuck you you smug ass - it costs to live.

Wow, HN has dropped this low?

Here were I live the standard household income is around $600 USD a Month. A family of 4 can (parents and two children) can live with that.

Good for you, my rent is more than that and I don't live in an expensive place.

Sure you do! So do I! You and I probably live in the most expensive 1% of places on the planet. We live incredible lives - our existences are better on average than anything any king had 150 years ago. We have whatever food we want at whatever time in the year we want it. We have phenomenal connectivity and mobility and, if we need to be on the other side of the planet in 48 hours time, that's doable.

Of course, I want more. The guy next door has a Range Rover and a Porsche. But I know there are literally billions of people who cannot imagine the luxury in which I live.

The gargantuan difference between kings of old and us today, the critical difference that these comparisons always miss, is that whatever lifestyle you choose, you have to work roughly the same number of hours to maintain it.

If you are a programmer, you can't just decide to work 10 hours a week for $25k and live a $25k lifestyle. If you want to earn $25k, you'll probably still have to work full time to do it. Regardless of the comforts we enjoy, we are still slaves to the workweek (there's not enough contract work for every programmer or designer to go freelance), and that is why it's right to complain.

We may have more "things" per person than Arthur himself, yet we lack the freedom and status of being royalty.

By definition you do live in an expensive place. If your rent alone can sustain most households on the planet, your rent is expensive.

Where would that be?

Step one, grasshopper: MOVE.

If you refuse to leave, then we cannot get on to the next lesson of choosing cheap, even free, real estate.

But, like the koan of the full cup...

Where do you suggest moving to? Out of the US or somewhere within it?

Stay in the USA. Easy to find affordable real estate no matter your budget.

Too many naysayers don't realize how ridiculous their local cost of living is, and how a simple move can cut that by orders of magnitude.

The key is being willing to move. Once you are, options abound. Get busy on http://zillow.com and search regions and price ranges; to get in the mindset, start by searching whole states for properties under $1000 (not a typo).

Bad attitude aside...

I've noticed (at least grokking it more than usual) of late "it costs to live" is a very popular, and deeply misguided, and financially devastating, frame of mind. Yes, of course, on its face the statement is true ... but it belies an existence which is completely ruled by our advertising-driven culture, in an ultimately self-destructive (in a "keep the host alive as long as possible" way) manner. The mindset places spending as the top priority; doesn't matter what the income is, what orders-of-magnitude-cheaper alternatives there are, or the long-term financial consequences, so long as swiping plastic gets results then spend we shall because "it costs to live."

Thus we have a nation saddled with $54K debt per person, and intelligent productive people getting obscenely abusive about the suggestion that living in one of the most expensive places in the world probably isn't a good idea.

Right now in arm's reach on my desk I have a can with enough seeds in it to plant an acre. Being non-hybrid/GM seeds, the $40 cost amortizes to $1/year to feed a family of four for the rest of my life. Yes, it "costs to live" - but you're loading the phrase with far more baggage than necessary.

> (assuming productive hours == 8/day, 5 days/week)

Bad assumption.

> If maintaining a living (comfortable or not) requires 100% of our productive work time (40 hours/week) then how are you not a slave to that subsistence lifestyle?

What is "subsistence" about it? I understand subsistence living to mean "having just enough to survive."

> "Get ... several mortgages and children." > "live a normal life in Silicon Valley with kids"

It seems to me this is exactly the point being made. You can live on a lot less money than whatever you currently consider "normal", but not necessarily in your current location or at your current level of consumption.

Whatever it costs you to live comfortably in SV with kids, it probably costs me half that to live comfortably in Denver with kids. I know of families living on less than half of what I do in places like Japan, who would consider themselves quite comfortable.

If financing your current lifestyle leaves you with no free time to enjoy life, you're a slave to that lifestyle -- whether it's on $5k or $500k a year. If "living in Silicon Valley" is non-negotiable, it's going to take a lot more earning power to get out of that type of "slavery" than if you're willing to live in Belize.

> it probably costs me half that to live comfortably in Denver with kids.

That's a horrible comparison. The difference in potential salaries, potential connections, business opportunities and so on would put make Denver the expensive one IMO (costs half as much as SV to have none of those advantages? wtf!).

> "The difference in potential salaries, potential connections, business opportunities and so on would put make Denver the expensive one IMO"

If you're one of those near the top of the spectrum, making 25 or more times the median salary or starting up a business that truly blows up, perhaps. In which case you wouldn't be complaining that it's hard to raise kids in SV.

If you're an average joe coder, or even fairly above average, you're making 10% less in Denver and you have fewer options for tech companies (but still plenty locally, and some decent remote options). But you can buy a nice house here for well under $200k and live ten minutes from work. For the vast majority of people, it's far less expensive.

The point here is not to convince you, personally, to move to Denver. Just to clarify that there's a whole spectrum of places to live at all sorts of prices, with all sorts of advantages and disadvantages. The GGP post implied that "live a normal life in SV" was the only option, which is of course absurd. There are advantages to living in SV, but they do not come without costs.

People might be more receptive to your argument if you weren't rude to them.

If something else about life is bothering you, it's probably best not to take it out on us naive 20-somethings. Either way it's clear something about this thread has deeply upset you (happens to all of us), so if it's something deeper going on I wish you luck sorting it out. If not, at the least, I too wish it was possible to live on $10/day and still have some semblance of a family and social life.

I met a lot of people probably like samstave, making a lot of uninspired decisions, like drowning themselves in debt and such, then here comes someone telling about $10/day... Those people feel miserably and "deeply upset" of course, especially because there is no easy way out.

It doesn't even have to take "uninspired" decisions. Simply having other human beings depend on you for their existence is enough to make escaping the system impossible, along with a number of other hurdles like lacking transportation to wherever $10/day is enough.

Sam. Breathe.

Can you please go back to Slashdot? you are polluting an otherwise interesting discussion.

That was somewhat uncalled for.

> ... what it actually costs to live a normal life in Silicon Valley with kids ...

By design, the Valley's zoning laws create an artificial shortage of housing units. It costs a lot to live a "normal life" in order to keep out the riff raff.

How does this defen the guys claim "Ill show you how to live well off $10/hr."

Every person on HN should realize that they are worth more than $10/hr. Stop defending living in poverty as an exploit of others.

He wasn't suggesting that you do it; he was suggesting that it is possible.

> We should all put in the most amount of time to our lives and passions

Should we? Is that the ultimate goal here? The problem with trying to tell people what their life is about, is that you are wrong as soon as you start.

> how are you not a slave to that subsistence lifestyle?

Subsistence is 'surviving' (like, not dying, not not unable to pay rent).