8 ms·

I've commented (probably too much) to argue with the harshest critics of this piece, but I am surprised to not have seen much this criticism which is my main on

by xp84 1y ago

I've commented (probably too much) to argue with the harshest critics of this piece, but I am surprised to not have seen much this criticism which is my main one: Supposing I've made peace with the main gist of this: Cut living expenses to a point where you can work ¼ or so of the time most of us spend working by living somewhere cheap and not being so materialistic. The missing piece here is social connections. Family and friends. If I could take my in-laws and my 2 best friends and their families with me, I'd sign up to move to a rural place like this tomorrow. But it's impractical for nearly everyone in the whole country to make such a thing happen. This limits its appeal. This place is 90 minutes or so from the Montreal airport, which is actually not bad for rural places, but flights are not cheap, certainly not accessible on the budget described here, so for you to have contact with anyone outside this town, they're likely going to have to drop about $500 per person, per visit, and will be staying at the Super 8 since you probably don't have a guest room). So, implied but not acknowledged in this piece is the assumption that you are almost definitely going to only see your family and friends a few more times (maybe once a year each, if you're super lucky) for the rest of your life. And unlike questions of money; food, entertainment, family and friends aren't fungible. You can start over and hope to make new friends out there, but you can't replace people. This is what would make this life untenable to me, and I'm not even all that extraverted.

jvanderbot 1y ago
Any discussion of staying near family and friends on a forum predominated by startups out of the bay area is completely disingenuous. But that aside, I suggest this is front page and meaningful not because it brings up a third option (to stay home, move to a city, or move to rural NY), but instead because it advocates accidentally for just staying home. Your family probably already lives in an area that is more affordable than SF/NYC/Paris, and they are there waiting. It's entertaining as an extreme data point but motivating for other reasons This article is most interesting to me because I tried moving to the big city to be a big shot techie, and have been substantially happier living outside a major city in Minnesota. Absolutely nobody that I knew in those cities lived near their family, absolutely all of them moved away to chase fortune and fame.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  Eh, perhaps a curious administrator can share the data but I really suspect just through sheer numbers most people on this forum do not live in the bay area. The NYC metro area is 23 million [1] which is about 7% of the country (23/300). There's a good chance somebody who works in NYC grew up nearby. That said, if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead... Even if rent is twice as expensive in SF, if your salary is twice that then your savings are also twice as much which will go a longer way anywhere but SF. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
  - Retric 1y ago
    People aren’t simply moving into the city locally the numbers just don’t work. The demographics of NYC require and support the idea of a huge and constant flux of people from distant areas moving into and out of the city which matches people’s observations. Even the gender divide is abnormal, the largest age group is 25-29 for women and 30-34 for men despite more men being born vs women living longer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
    - barry-cotter 1y ago
      The metro area, not the city. That extends into New Jersey and Connecticut.
      - Retric 1y ago
        I’m saying the “local metro area” just doesn’t have the population to support that kind of migration pattern on its own. Sure plenty of locals move into the city just as with any city, what sets NYC apart is it draws in people from much longer distances before most of them leave. The elderly population in NYC being relatively tiny.
  - sandworm101 1y ago
    >> if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead And the locals start to hate you for buying up land and generally raising prices enough that working folk are squeezed out of the market. Some areas are starting to enact laws to prevent productive farmland becoming condos and hobby farms for retiring city people.
drewg123 1y ago
The problem is that its across an international border from the Montreal airport. So you'd need to cross a border twice to fly to a domestic US destination and twice more on your return. Crossing a border is always an unknown in terms of delays, so I question the practicality. I'd personally feel like I needed to leave way more than 90 minutes to ge to the airport. FWIW, I've crossed the border at both Cornwall and Ogdensburg when driving to Ottawa, and they were quiet when I crossed. Going from the US side to Canada was fast and easy, but the reverse wasn't true, and that was several years ago when crossing the border was quite a bit less stressful.
- jmb99 1y ago
  Oddly enough, I always spend more time crossing into Canada than the US at Ogdensburg, even though I’m a Canadian citizen and travelling on a Canadian passport. Had my car searched last time. As always, your mileage may vary.
  - kotaKat 1y ago
    Same crossing, different experience: American citizen (with NY Enhanced Drivers License), Canadian First Nations (with Secure Certificate of Indian Status). They look at my native card and just wave me through. The single time I got pulled in to go pay tax on a gift for someone ($150 USD) they looked at my card and went "I'm not dealing with the tax paperwork on that (due to some native exemptions)" and waved me back out. As for local air travel: you'd have to go 30 minutes from Massena anyways for 'proper' air travel - Ogdensburg now has once-a-day service to DC via Breeze. Traveling to Shmoocon was hilarious for only $30 roundtrip.
- xp84 1y ago
  Indeed, though you could probably do pretty well by getting a NEXUS membership for this use case. At least for now, though obviously US-Canada relations are getting stupider by the week so who knows how many dumb roadblocks will end up being thrown up. I just noticed that Syracuse has an airport with passenger service, only 2 ½ hours away, so that's another option, if the "international flight" hassle plus border crossing actually burns an hour.
cjbarber 1y ago
The network effects/moats of places! There needs to be a Kickstarter for coordinating groups of people to move to the same place all at the same time.
- RajT88 1y ago
  Good luck getting people to agree not to compete for the best cheap houses.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    doesn't seems to be a problem currently.
- pyuser583 1y ago
  Then the value of the place would go up fast. This is one way gentrification happens.
  - jefftk 1y ago
    That seems to be pretty good for the group of newcomers! They all buy together at lowish prices, then prices go up enough that they ~make their money back on housing appreciation. And it's not bad for existing homeowners either, since they get the appreciation too.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Is someone Penny pinching $400/month really going to have the funds necessary to flip housing?
      - pyuser583 1y ago
        Some penny pinching so they can flip houses would.
    - kiba 1y ago
      Or you could just invest the difference in your stock portfolio and institute a land value tax instead. Stock are more a lot more liquid than real estate and less risky as well. Whereas the value of a home is pretty much stuck in the property until you convert it to liquid cash by selling it, but then you need to move elsewhere.
KennyBlanken 1y ago
Rural living also looks cheaper because most people do not even remotely consider the costs of transportation. The IRS estimates per-mile deduction at well over 60 cents per mile. If you have to drive 15 miles to the grocery store and back, your grocery bill goes up $18/trip. If you need to drive 15 miles to work and back, take $90/week out of your paycheck. Then there's the fact that whoever is The Employer in that region - if you lose your job there, you're fucked. So The Employer gets to abuse every rule in th book because who's going to complain and risk losing their job? If The Employer decideds to drop everyone's pay by 25 cents/hour, what are you all going to do? Answer: nothing. Meanwhile in the city you can go anywhere you want within a 500 square mile area (or more) for well under $100/month and commuter rail will take you even further for not a lot more. And you can do other things while using said transportation. No "self driving car" needed. As a sidenote: the same author complains about the "loss of the $50 motel room" and laments they're 3x more expensive now. Days after complaining that housing isn't actually that expensive. The guy has to be a troll... Oh, and also not factored in: almost every aspect of rural life is heavily subsidized, and I don't just mean direct assistance. I mean literally everything you stare at when you roll through a rural town was subsidized in some way by the federal government, and most of them either don't know or will never admit it. For fucks sakes the government actually runs a program to subsidize rural Americans getting to fly around on barely-occupied turboprop planes. But heaven forbid a city get some federal funding for electric or hybrid transit busses that will serve several thousand people a day.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  About the bit regarding funding: It’s because rural voters are both active and reliable regardless of their party affiliation, they get out the vote. This in turn for the fact that many rural counties account for a great many house seats and can swing senate elections, they have more power than numbers suggest. If urban voters were as persistent and consistent as rural ones they could easily flip the narrative, but in my experience (and by looking at a lot of election statistics) a huge chunk of apathetic eligible to vote voters live in urban areas, so you don’t have the same en masse consistency and persistence
- throw27263w 1y ago
nobodywillobsrv 1y ago
To be fair, leaving everyone behind and not seeing them again was kind of what people did in the great grandfather era mentioned in the article. Even not that long ago. I was talking to someone only perhaps grandma age the other day who said their brother's family moved to BC and they didn't see them for 25 years. Your comment does focus in on the interesting point in that connected places have perhaps not scaled as well. Or perhaps there is some pareto front of locations on cost vs connectedness we need to imagine in our heads. Very interesting.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  > what people did in the great grandfather era Unfortunately the appeal to ancestry fallacy is always a terrible idea. You see this in the nutrition space where “influencers” go on and on about how our ancestors ate, forgetting that our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans. Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways. The reason to complain about the high cost of living is that the U.S. has an incredibly high GDP and yet Americans live highly precarious lives, not that in certain very specific ways our ancestors had it slightly better, which as you point out leads to all sorts of issues.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Cost of living is always a somewhat distorted metric because it ignores tradeoffs. If I was living on ~500$/month in that area I’d spend way more on technology and far less on food. Starlink and a local grocery store means the vast majority of the US is able to support a lifestyle most of humanity could only dream of until fairly recently without actually being that expensive. Year round bananas for dollars per pound is a fucking miracle of logistics. Not that long ago one of my coworkers was effectively living in minimum wage in a major US city and tossing everything else into savings. Excessive number of roommates, no car, cooking simple vegetarian meals at home etc. At the other end if he had a major medical condition, drug addiction, etc he’d have been “fucked,” except for the fact modern medicine simply wasn’t available at any price again until recently so should we assume it’s normal.
  - nazgulnarsil 1y ago
starkparker 1y ago
That's the other unspoken side of the boomer-emulation argument, too. People's access to the world when boomers were buying houses and raising families was much less. Their families and friends were already close because few, if any, of them left where they were from (except to get drafted into wars). In some of those who left, they did so to enable the rest to follow. These things just don't happen anymore. To find better work (especially outside of tech), people move, some constantly. Siblings wind up across the country or further from each other and where they grew up. Elders are either left behind or move into retirement homes. There are exceptions, and those who keep some of that support network find the real boomer superpowers of sharing costs (financial, time, and labor alike) and inheriting wealth. But the ease with which people could leave home for good is one of many factors that make emulating boomers difficult, if not impossible: that rural cheap house isn't 10 minutes from the rest of your family, your childhood friends, and your co-workers anymore.
- barry-cotter 1y ago
  > Their families and friends were already close because few, if any, of them left where they were from (except to get drafted into wars) Your original text, edited for sequence and clarity while preserving your voice: This doesn’t apply to the U.S. or Canada, nor has it ever since their foundings, possibly excepting some natives. The American frontier was declared closed by 1890, long before the post-WW2 population surge to California. Before that, New Englanders left farmland to settle the Midwest. Later came the Great Migration of mostly Black Southerners to northern cities. Anglophone North America has never been a peasant society where families remained rooted for generations.
  - sandworm101 1y ago
    >> peasant society where families remained rooted for generations. I'd hazard that a few parts of Appalachia remained relative stable, and poor, across more than a couple generations.
rubitxxx15 1y ago
As an introvert, I believe I could live in a remote location without problem. I often wish I could switch off my hearing to just enjoy silence, and dream of getting a chance to spend time in an isolation chamber. That said, I don’t know if I’d want to live in a depressing small town, unless it had a good diner.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Seems like that low bar you should be able to meet somewhere?
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  If you get a sense of relief from silence, I recommend Peltor ear defenders. The more expensive/better ones. Seriously. I don't wear them a lot, but when I do the lack of stimulation is instantly relaxing. Only downside is you can't sleep in them.
  - mettamage 1y ago
    I sometimes sleep with them, especially while traveling. Paper thin walls? Hostels? Not a problem. It takes some getting used to.
  - nathan_compton 1y ago
    My ears get hot. Do they make cooled ones or something?
- projektfu 1y ago
  Rural NY isn't just for introverts. Most people are social and are somewhat active. Like most areas, an outsider will probably feel like an outsider, but if one allows themselves to be curious about the things people are into doing, I think it would be fine for typically social people. One who sneers at rural people and habits will probably not get along. And if you take too much offense at rural people sneering about urban things, likewise. Unfortunately, there is a lot of racism in upstate NY. I do know rural NY black people, and they do fine, but I'm not sure they appreciate the way insults are thrown about "present company excluded". It's those attitudes that kept me from wanting to stay.
rufus_foreman 1y ago
>> The missing piece here is social connections. Family and friends Silicon Valley is not populated by people who are there for family and friends. Silicon Valley is populated by people who left their family and friends to go participate in a gold rush. Silicon Valley is populated by people from other continents who came to participate in the gold rush, family and friends be damned. I really don't understand the antipathy towards the fact that you can live on $432 a month in America. I just really don't. With some tradeoffs, you can live on $432 a month in America, and this fact makes some Hacker News commentators very very angry.
- trchek 1y ago
  So I think some of us have done it out of having no other choice and found it lacking. From the time I had to live a year going to paycheck advance every month because of an unexpected auto repair bill (leaving that cheap typically requires a used beat up car). Or the time I woke up with an excruciating pain in my side and went to ER which resulted in bills that lead to years of payments. People do this experiment every day in the USA and the experience is pretty bad. EDIT I’ll grant this is all a fine trade off for some people. But having lived it, I can definitely say no thank you.
- npodbielski 1y ago
  I am not angry. I am barely cementator here even. But I find this article radicoulous. For example author mentioned raising family at the beginning. And then mentions no car. How are you suppose to transport kids to school/preschool? 'You can take the bus' - yeah, drive with the bus to one place (kindergarten), then the second (school), then the third (job). In the winter, rain, storm or heat. Yes that is doable but would be very annoying and time consuming. No mention to hearing kids complaining that they want to eat/drink/poop at the bus or bus stop. And if you and you spouse have jobs and kids you probably need two cars, and school is another cost so I would say 400$ is pure fantasy unless you want to live insolitude, fishing in forest. Normal people need near school/preschool/highschool/job/store etc. And this is why you have cities. It is cheaper for society to concentrate population around those buildings.
  - 1y ago
loandbehold 1y ago
Professionals move from city to city all the time due to jobs. In the modern world it's easier to keep in touch with family and friends with Internet and cheap (by historical standards) flights.
- a_wild_dandan 1y ago
  That's using a mighty broad brush to paint folks' circumstantial situations.
- xp84 1y ago
  I have 3 close friends - they live about an hour away, about 8 hours drive away (or about an hour of flying + 1-2 hours driving), and one on the other side of the country. "Keeping in touch via Internet" for me is a pale imitation of what I want from a friendship. We text a few times a week. I visit each of them 1-2 times a year. I miss them a lot. This isn't to claim it's impossible to do better. But I have a feeling that especially those on the "urban" side of the friendship just have a hard time making time for say, a Zoom call with you on the same frequency as they may have gone out with you for dinner or drinks. Especially group dynamics don't allow this: If you were part of a group of 5 friends that hung out together, they'll just start hanging out without you, and no time will be opening up in all of their schedules to devote to tele-friendship. Those friendships will suffer. And remember, the "low cost of living, low earning" thesis we're discussing does mostly rule out even those "cheap" flights (which stop being cheap really quick once you have a family, so multiply all prices by 2, 3, 4...)
- estebank 1y ago
  Americans have been moving less and less, and that trend hasn't reverted. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states-migration-continued-decline-from-2020-to-2021.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states...
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  A small set of professionals do, yes. A lot more stay near family and friends instead.
supermatt 1y ago
This is an example of a place. There are likely many such places all over the USA within a few hours drive of where your friends and family live.
- _dark_matter_ 1y ago
  So now you have to have a car? So yes this post is still unrealistic
  - shlant 1y ago
    yea you either need to see people very rarely, see them often by spending a lot of time and money traveling, or see them often by spending multiple days away (which again, how are you paying for this? and what's the point of buying a house far away if you won't be there half the time?)
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    Having a reliable car can be cheap, it just requires skipping more modern convenience features and being willing to work on it yourself.
  - supermatt 1y ago
    The comment said about people having to fly in to the nearest airport…
littlestymaar 1y ago
This! Ans it's also why there are homeless people un big cities when from a material point of view they could be living a half-decent life in a rural place instead. Humans are social animals, and most of our behavior are shaped by this characteristic, even if some people don't seem to realize that.
rightbyte 1y ago
It is quite cheap to build a small prefab guest house. Room for guests is not a concern I think. Rather, the friction is making them endure the travel time is, I would say .
polishdude20 1y ago
The family and friends part is what gets me. I'd love to move somewhere 4 hours away in a rural town but nobody else will follow me there.
throwaway31131 1y ago
My problem is I mostly agree with the piece, it's very possible to live cheaply when everything goes smoothly and most things are routine. The problem is things very often don't go smoothly, especially once you have a family. For example, my daughter took a small fall on a jungle gym, so small that I didn't even think she really got hurt but she landed really unlucky and broke her arm. We went to urgent care but she needed surgery to put pins in. Modern medicine is amazing. Totally healed, not even scares from the pin, but it is not cheap. Expect to pay at least $17K [1] for this w/o insurance, our was significantly more. And with insurance, you're not living on $400/month anymore... Cars break down, pipes back up, etc. etc. etc. [1] https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-cost-without-insurance https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-...
- sarchertech 1y ago
  In New York you could make 5x the amount of money the article is talking about and still qualify for free healthcare.
  - hnfever 1y ago
    You'd qualify based on income but probably be excluded for having too many assets. The limit in New York is $32,396.
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      Looks like that goes up to $44k for a couple, a vehicle is exempt, and home equity is exempt up to a million and change. There’s also ACA credits that don’t have an asset test.
    - laurencerowe 1y ago
      MAGI based Medicare doesn’t have asset limits.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    Woah, I had no idea. This rebuts one of my main concerns from the original article: They did not include healthcare costs. But you are right. A little bit of Googling found this plan: "New York (State) Essential Plan". Details: https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/new-york-essential-plan/ https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/new-york-essential-plan/ > Frequently Asked Questions > Who qualifies for the Essential Plan? > Residents aged 19–64, living in New York, with incomes 138%–250% FPL (e.g., $21,597–$39,125 for a single adult in 2025), U.S. citizens or eligible immigrants, not on Medicaid or Medicare. This is pretty wild. I'm not saying the coverage will be amazing, but if you are a "starving artist/writer", this is pretty good. You can buy that little log cabin and work 20 hours a week pumping gas (or working at a supermarket). The rest of the time, you can do your art/writing.
osigurdson 1y ago
The other issue with "living somewhere cheap" early in life is it limits your options incredibly if you ever want to go anywhere else. Maybe fine as a retirement move however.
- andrei_says_ 1y ago
  Fine if defining living as being able to breathe, eat and have shelter and nothing more.
- eloisant 1y ago
  Exactly, I've had this exact discussion with a friend who bought a house in a cheaper town. Fake numbers but for the sake of arguments: he bought a $100k house, I bought a $300k house in a more expensive city. Real estate did a 2x, his house is worth $200k and now he can't afford to move to a $600k place like mine - while I can move to an area with a similar cost of living as where I live now. The gap is even bigger because prices go up faster in big cities.
- sethammons 1y ago
  We had to move back from nowhere Montana to society so our kids could more easily get jobs / careers. So far so good, oldest is killing it in IT at a bank.
simonebrunozzi 1y ago
Agreed. This suggests that there might be a market for a rural "community", as opposed to solo living.
- lobsterthief 1y ago
  Is this ultimately different than suburbs? Or are you describing a sort of remote kibbutz?
snapplebobapple 1y ago
I think it's actually the other way around. History is full of people essentially saying goodbye to their family and friends permanently because communication took months and was expensive and moving for a better life. What you're saying is your familial and other social connections is worth more to you than the suffering you are experiencing in other aspects of your existence. I think what is actually going on is the modern economy has gotten really good at pricing things just below the pain point where most of us will actually do something about it, rather than your social relationships not being fungible, especially with modern communications technology making it easy to keep in touch with people if you really want to.
etruong42 1y ago
The author argued that the American Dream that the "boomers" had access to is still available, and I believe that American Dream did mean having to uproot, much like the settlers before them. Perhaps you feel like this needs to be called out more explicitly rather than just hinted at. I think another concern that the author doesn't _highlight_ but is plenty clear is that this sort of lifestyle probably is more amenable to the able bodied, with their frequent allusions to hunting and fishing. So while the author doesn't explicitly list out all possible issues, and everyone will have different priorities and opportunities in their life, I think the author is plenty clear on what they're describing, and the concern you raised is easily inferred from what they're saying.

by xp84 1y ago

jvanderbot 1y ago

Any discussion of staying near family and friends on a forum predominated by startups out of the bay area is completely disingenuous. But that aside, I suggest this is front page and meaningful not because it brings up a third option (to stay home, move to a city, or move to rural NY), but instead because it advocates accidentally for just staying home. Your family probably already lives in an area that is more affordable than SF/NYC/Paris, and they are there waiting. It's entertaining as an extreme data point but motivating for other reasons This article is most interesting to me because I tried moving to the big city to be a big shot techie, and have been substantially happier living outside a major city in Minnesota. Absolutely nobody that I knew in those cities lived near their family, absolutely all of them moved away to chase fortune and fame.

lesuorac 1y ago
Eh, perhaps a curious administrator can share the data but I really suspect just through sheer numbers most people on this forum do not live in the bay area. The NYC metro area is 23 million [1] which is about 7% of the country (23/300). There's a good chance somebody who works in NYC grew up nearby. That said, if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead... Even if rent is twice as expensive in SF, if your salary is twice that then your savings are also twice as much which will go a longer way anywhere but SF. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
- Retric 1y ago
  People aren’t simply moving into the city locally the numbers just don’t work. The demographics of NYC require and support the idea of a huge and constant flux of people from distant areas moving into and out of the city which matches people’s observations. Even the gender divide is abnormal, the largest age group is 25-29 for women and 30-34 for men despite more men being born vs women living longer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
  - barry-cotter 1y ago
    The metro area, not the city. That extends into New Jersey and Connecticut.
    - Retric 1y ago
      I’m saying the “local metro area” just doesn’t have the population to support that kind of migration pattern on its own. Sure plenty of locals move into the city just as with any city, what sets NYC apart is it draws in people from much longer distances before most of them leave. The elderly population in NYC being relatively tiny.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  >> if you chase fortune and fame for a decade and then retire to Minnesota you still come out ahead And the locals start to hate you for buying up land and generally raising prices enough that working folk are squeezed out of the market. Some areas are starting to enact laws to prevent productive farmland becoming condos and hobby farms for retiring city people.

drewg123 1y ago

The problem is that its across an international border from the Montreal airport. So you'd need to cross a border twice to fly to a domestic US destination and twice more on your return. Crossing a border is always an unknown in terms of delays, so I question the practicality. I'd personally feel like I needed to leave way more than 90 minutes to ge to the airport. FWIW, I've crossed the border at both Cornwall and Ogdensburg when driving to Ottawa, and they were quiet when I crossed. Going from the US side to Canada was fast and easy, but the reverse wasn't true, and that was several years ago when crossing the border was quite a bit less stressful.

jmb99 1y ago
Oddly enough, I always spend more time crossing into Canada than the US at Ogdensburg, even though I’m a Canadian citizen and travelling on a Canadian passport. Had my car searched last time. As always, your mileage may vary.
- kotaKat 1y ago
  Same crossing, different experience: American citizen (with NY Enhanced Drivers License), Canadian First Nations (with Secure Certificate of Indian Status). They look at my native card and just wave me through. The single time I got pulled in to go pay tax on a gift for someone ($150 USD) they looked at my card and went "I'm not dealing with the tax paperwork on that (due to some native exemptions)" and waved me back out. As for local air travel: you'd have to go 30 minutes from Massena anyways for 'proper' air travel - Ogdensburg now has once-a-day service to DC via Breeze. Traveling to Shmoocon was hilarious for only $30 roundtrip.
xp84 1y ago
Indeed, though you could probably do pretty well by getting a NEXUS membership for this use case. At least for now, though obviously US-Canada relations are getting stupider by the week so who knows how many dumb roadblocks will end up being thrown up. I just noticed that Syracuse has an airport with passenger service, only 2 ½ hours away, so that's another option, if the "international flight" hassle plus border crossing actually burns an hour.

cjbarber 1y ago

The network effects/moats of places! There needs to be a Kickstarter for coordinating groups of people to move to the same place all at the same time.

RajT88 1y ago
Good luck getting people to agree not to compete for the best cheap houses.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  doesn't seems to be a problem currently.
pyuser583 1y ago
Then the value of the place would go up fast. This is one way gentrification happens.
- jefftk 1y ago
  That seems to be pretty good for the group of newcomers! They all buy together at lowish prices, then prices go up enough that they ~make their money back on housing appreciation. And it's not bad for existing homeowners either, since they get the appreciation too.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Is someone Penny pinching $400/month really going to have the funds necessary to flip housing?
    - pyuser583 1y ago
      Some penny pinching so they can flip houses would.
  - kiba 1y ago
    Or you could just invest the difference in your stock portfolio and institute a land value tax instead. Stock are more a lot more liquid than real estate and less risky as well. Whereas the value of a home is pretty much stuck in the property until you convert it to liquid cash by selling it, but then you need to move elsewhere.

KennyBlanken 1y ago

Rural living also looks cheaper because most people do not even remotely consider the costs of transportation. The IRS estimates per-mile deduction at well over 60 cents per mile. If you have to drive 15 miles to the grocery store and back, your grocery bill goes up $18/trip. If you need to drive 15 miles to work and back, take $90/week out of your paycheck. Then there's the fact that whoever is The Employer in that region - if you lose your job there, you're fucked. So The Employer gets to abuse every rule in th book because who's going to complain and risk losing their job? If The Employer decideds to drop everyone's pay by 25 cents/hour, what are you all going to do? Answer: nothing. Meanwhile in the city you can go anywhere you want within a 500 square mile area (or more) for well under $100/month and commuter rail will take you even further for not a lot more. And you can do other things while using said transportation. No "self driving car" needed. As a sidenote: the same author complains about the "loss of the $50 motel room" and laments they're 3x more expensive now. Days after complaining that housing isn't actually that expensive. The guy has to be a troll... Oh, and also not factored in: almost every aspect of rural life is heavily subsidized, and I don't just mean direct assistance. I mean literally everything you stare at when you roll through a rural town was subsidized in some way by the federal government, and most of them either don't know or will never admit it. For fucks sakes the government actually runs a program to subsidize rural Americans getting to fly around on barely-occupied turboprop planes. But heaven forbid a city get some federal funding for electric or hybrid transit busses that will serve several thousand people a day.

no_wizard 1y ago
About the bit regarding funding: It’s because rural voters are both active and reliable regardless of their party affiliation, they get out the vote. This in turn for the fact that many rural counties account for a great many house seats and can swing senate elections, they have more power than numbers suggest. If urban voters were as persistent and consistent as rural ones they could easily flip the narrative, but in my experience (and by looking at a lot of election statistics) a huge chunk of apathetic eligible to vote voters live in urban areas, so you don’t have the same en masse consistency and persistence
throw27263w 1y ago

nobodywillobsrv 1y ago

To be fair, leaving everyone behind and not seeing them again was kind of what people did in the great grandfather era mentioned in the article. Even not that long ago. I was talking to someone only perhaps grandma age the other day who said their brother's family moved to BC and they didn't see them for 25 years. Your comment does focus in on the interesting point in that connected places have perhaps not scaled as well. Or perhaps there is some pareto front of locations on cost vs connectedness we need to imagine in our heads. Very interesting.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
> what people did in the great grandfather era Unfortunately the appeal to ancestry fallacy is always a terrible idea. You see this in the nutrition space where “influencers” go on and on about how our ancestors ate, forgetting that our ancestors died extremely early relative to modern humans. Similarly, our grandparents lived pretty terrible lives in many ways. The reason to complain about the high cost of living is that the U.S. has an incredibly high GDP and yet Americans live highly precarious lives, not that in certain very specific ways our ancestors had it slightly better, which as you point out leads to all sorts of issues.
- Retric 1y ago
  Cost of living is always a somewhat distorted metric because it ignores tradeoffs. If I was living on ~500$/month in that area I’d spend way more on technology and far less on food. Starlink and a local grocery store means the vast majority of the US is able to support a lifestyle most of humanity could only dream of until fairly recently without actually being that expensive. Year round bananas for dollars per pound is a fucking miracle of logistics. Not that long ago one of my coworkers was effectively living in minimum wage in a major US city and tossing everything else into savings. Excessive number of roommates, no car, cooking simple vegetarian meals at home etc. At the other end if he had a major medical condition, drug addiction, etc he’d have been “fucked,” except for the fact modern medicine simply wasn’t available at any price again until recently so should we assume it’s normal.
- nazgulnarsil 1y ago

starkparker 1y ago

That's the other unspoken side of the boomer-emulation argument, too. People's access to the world when boomers were buying houses and raising families was much less. Their families and friends were already close because few, if any, of them left where they were from (except to get drafted into wars). In some of those who left, they did so to enable the rest to follow. These things just don't happen anymore. To find better work (especially outside of tech), people move, some constantly. Siblings wind up across the country or further from each other and where they grew up. Elders are either left behind or move into retirement homes. There are exceptions, and those who keep some of that support network find the real boomer superpowers of sharing costs (financial, time, and labor alike) and inheriting wealth. But the ease with which people could leave home for good is one of many factors that make emulating boomers difficult, if not impossible: that rural cheap house isn't 10 minutes from the rest of your family, your childhood friends, and your co-workers anymore.

barry-cotter 1y ago
> Their families and friends were already close because few, if any, of them left where they were from (except to get drafted into wars) Your original text, edited for sequence and clarity while preserving your voice: This doesn’t apply to the U.S. or Canada, nor has it ever since their foundings, possibly excepting some natives. The American frontier was declared closed by 1890, long before the post-WW2 population surge to California. Before that, New Englanders left farmland to settle the Midwest. Later came the Great Migration of mostly Black Southerners to northern cities. Anglophone North America has never been a peasant society where families remained rooted for generations.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  >> peasant society where families remained rooted for generations. I'd hazard that a few parts of Appalachia remained relative stable, and poor, across more than a couple generations.

rubitxxx15 1y ago

As an introvert, I believe I could live in a remote location without problem. I often wish I could switch off my hearing to just enjoy silence, and dream of getting a chance to spend time in an isolation chamber. That said, I don’t know if I’d want to live in a depressing small town, unless it had a good diner.

s1artibartfast 1y ago
Seems like that low bar you should be able to meet somewhere?
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
If you get a sense of relief from silence, I recommend Peltor ear defenders. The more expensive/better ones. Seriously. I don't wear them a lot, but when I do the lack of stimulation is instantly relaxing. Only downside is you can't sleep in them.
- mettamage 1y ago
  I sometimes sleep with them, especially while traveling. Paper thin walls? Hostels? Not a problem. It takes some getting used to.
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  My ears get hot. Do they make cooled ones or something?
projektfu 1y ago
Rural NY isn't just for introverts. Most people are social and are somewhat active. Like most areas, an outsider will probably feel like an outsider, but if one allows themselves to be curious about the things people are into doing, I think it would be fine for typically social people. One who sneers at rural people and habits will probably not get along. And if you take too much offense at rural people sneering about urban things, likewise. Unfortunately, there is a lot of racism in upstate NY. I do know rural NY black people, and they do fine, but I'm not sure they appreciate the way insults are thrown about "present company excluded". It's those attitudes that kept me from wanting to stay.

rufus_foreman 1y ago

>> The missing piece here is social connections. Family and friends Silicon Valley is not populated by people who are there for family and friends. Silicon Valley is populated by people who left their family and friends to go participate in a gold rush. Silicon Valley is populated by people from other continents who came to participate in the gold rush, family and friends be damned. I really don't understand the antipathy towards the fact that you can live on $432 a month in America. I just really don't. With some tradeoffs, you can live on $432 a month in America, and this fact makes some Hacker News commentators very very angry.

trchek 1y ago
So I think some of us have done it out of having no other choice and found it lacking. From the time I had to live a year going to paycheck advance every month because of an unexpected auto repair bill (leaving that cheap typically requires a used beat up car). Or the time I woke up with an excruciating pain in my side and went to ER which resulted in bills that lead to years of payments. People do this experiment every day in the USA and the experience is pretty bad. EDIT I’ll grant this is all a fine trade off for some people. But having lived it, I can definitely say no thank you.
npodbielski 1y ago
I am not angry. I am barely cementator here even. But I find this article radicoulous. For example author mentioned raising family at the beginning. And then mentions no car. How are you suppose to transport kids to school/preschool? 'You can take the bus' - yeah, drive with the bus to one place (kindergarten), then the second (school), then the third (job). In the winter, rain, storm or heat. Yes that is doable but would be very annoying and time consuming. No mention to hearing kids complaining that they want to eat/drink/poop at the bus or bus stop. And if you and you spouse have jobs and kids you probably need two cars, and school is another cost so I would say 400$ is pure fantasy unless you want to live insolitude, fishing in forest. Normal people need near school/preschool/highschool/job/store etc. And this is why you have cities. It is cheaper for society to concentrate population around those buildings.
- 1y ago

loandbehold 1y ago

Professionals move from city to city all the time due to jobs. In the modern world it's easier to keep in touch with family and friends with Internet and cheap (by historical standards) flights.

a_wild_dandan 1y ago
That's using a mighty broad brush to paint folks' circumstantial situations.
xp84 1y ago
I have 3 close friends - they live about an hour away, about 8 hours drive away (or about an hour of flying + 1-2 hours driving), and one on the other side of the country. "Keeping in touch via Internet" for me is a pale imitation of what I want from a friendship. We text a few times a week. I visit each of them 1-2 times a year. I miss them a lot. This isn't to claim it's impossible to do better. But I have a feeling that especially those on the "urban" side of the friendship just have a hard time making time for say, a Zoom call with you on the same frequency as they may have gone out with you for dinner or drinks. Especially group dynamics don't allow this: If you were part of a group of 5 friends that hung out together, they'll just start hanging out without you, and no time will be opening up in all of their schedules to devote to tele-friendship. Those friendships will suffer. And remember, the "low cost of living, low earning" thesis we're discussing does mostly rule out even those "cheap" flights (which stop being cheap really quick once you have a family, so multiply all prices by 2, 3, 4...)
estebank 1y ago
Americans have been moving less and less, and that trend hasn't reverted. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states-migration-continued-decline-from-2020-to-2021.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states...
alabastervlog 1y ago
A small set of professionals do, yes. A lot more stay near family and friends instead.

supermatt 1y ago

This is an example of a place. There are likely many such places all over the USA within a few hours drive of where your friends and family live.

_dark_matter_ 1y ago
So now you have to have a car? So yes this post is still unrealistic
- shlant 1y ago
  yea you either need to see people very rarely, see them often by spending a lot of time and money traveling, or see them often by spending multiple days away (which again, how are you paying for this? and what's the point of buying a house far away if you won't be there half the time?)
- _heimdall 1y ago
  Having a reliable car can be cheap, it just requires skipping more modern convenience features and being willing to work on it yourself.
- supermatt 1y ago
  The comment said about people having to fly in to the nearest airport…

littlestymaar 1y ago

This! Ans it's also why there are homeless people un big cities when from a material point of view they could be living a half-decent life in a rural place instead. Humans are social animals, and most of our behavior are shaped by this characteristic, even if some people don't seem to realize that.

rightbyte 1y ago

It is quite cheap to build a small prefab guest house. Room for guests is not a concern I think. Rather, the friction is making them endure the travel time is, I would say .

polishdude20 1y ago

The family and friends part is what gets me. I'd love to move somewhere 4 hours away in a rural town but nobody else will follow me there.

throwaway31131 1y ago

My problem is I mostly agree with the piece, it's very possible to live cheaply when everything goes smoothly and most things are routine. The problem is things very often don't go smoothly, especially once you have a family. For example, my daughter took a small fall on a jungle gym, so small that I didn't even think she really got hurt but she landed really unlucky and broke her arm. We went to urgent care but she needed surgery to put pins in. Modern medicine is amazing. Totally healed, not even scares from the pin, but it is not cheap. Expect to pay at least $17K [1] for this w/o insurance, our was significantly more. And with insurance, you're not living on $400/month anymore... Cars break down, pipes back up, etc. etc. etc. [1] https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-cost-without-insurance https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-a-broken-bone-...

sarchertech 1y ago
In New York you could make 5x the amount of money the article is talking about and still qualify for free healthcare.
- hnfever 1y ago
  You'd qualify based on income but probably be excluded for having too many assets. The limit in New York is $32,396.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    Looks like that goes up to $44k for a couple, a vehicle is exempt, and home equity is exempt up to a million and change. There’s also ACA credits that don’t have an asset test.
  - laurencerowe 1y ago
    MAGI based Medicare doesn’t have asset limits.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  Woah, I had no idea. This rebuts one of my main concerns from the original article: They did not include healthcare costs. But you are right. A little bit of Googling found this plan: "New York (State) Essential Plan". Details: https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/new-york-essential-plan/ https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/new-york-essential-plan/ > Frequently Asked Questions > Who qualifies for the Essential Plan? > Residents aged 19–64, living in New York, with incomes 138%–250% FPL (e.g., $21,597–$39,125 for a single adult in 2025), U.S. citizens or eligible immigrants, not on Medicaid or Medicare. This is pretty wild. I'm not saying the coverage will be amazing, but if you are a "starving artist/writer", this is pretty good. You can buy that little log cabin and work 20 hours a week pumping gas (or working at a supermarket). The rest of the time, you can do your art/writing.

osigurdson 1y ago

The other issue with "living somewhere cheap" early in life is it limits your options incredibly if you ever want to go anywhere else. Maybe fine as a retirement move however.

andrei_says_ 1y ago
Fine if defining living as being able to breathe, eat and have shelter and nothing more.
eloisant 1y ago
Exactly, I've had this exact discussion with a friend who bought a house in a cheaper town. Fake numbers but for the sake of arguments: he bought a $100k house, I bought a $300k house in a more expensive city. Real estate did a 2x, his house is worth $200k and now he can't afford to move to a $600k place like mine - while I can move to an area with a similar cost of living as where I live now. The gap is even bigger because prices go up faster in big cities.
sethammons 1y ago
We had to move back from nowhere Montana to society so our kids could more easily get jobs / careers. So far so good, oldest is killing it in IT at a bank.

simonebrunozzi 1y ago

Agreed. This suggests that there might be a market for a rural "community", as opposed to solo living.

lobsterthief 1y ago
Is this ultimately different than suburbs? Or are you describing a sort of remote kibbutz?

snapplebobapple 1y ago

I think it's actually the other way around. History is full of people essentially saying goodbye to their family and friends permanently because communication took months and was expensive and moving for a better life. What you're saying is your familial and other social connections is worth more to you than the suffering you are experiencing in other aspects of your existence. I think what is actually going on is the modern economy has gotten really good at pricing things just below the pain point where most of us will actually do something about it, rather than your social relationships not being fungible, especially with modern communications technology making it easy to keep in touch with people if you really want to.

etruong42 1y ago

The author argued that the American Dream that the "boomers" had access to is still available, and I believe that American Dream did mean having to uproot, much like the settlers before them. Perhaps you feel like this needs to be called out more explicitly rather than just hinted at. I think another concern that the author doesn't _highlight_ but is plenty clear is that this sort of lifestyle probably is more amenable to the able bodied, with their frequent allusions to hunting and fishing. So while the author doesn't explicitly list out all possible issues, and everyone will have different priorities and opportunities in their life, I think the author is plenty clear on what they're describing, and the concern you raised is easily inferred from what they're saying.