4 ms·

You are painting here a picture between extremes. There a millions of students who live on campus at a cheap dorm room, have no car and get around on a budget

by stfu 14y ago

You are painting here a picture between extremes. There a millions of students who live on campus at a cheap dorm room, have no car and get around on a budget where $900/m sounds like a life of luxury. If you decided to life in one of the very few inner-city metro areas where this is the norm nothing forced you to stay there. This is your lifestyle choice, not a poverty choice.

overgryphon 14y ago
A cheap dorm room these days can be around $800-900 a month, and dorms aren't generally coed, so his married status would have made that a much more expensive option. The car was probably required for the job, and the time required to find a new job isn't feasible when you are working 80+ hours a week to keep everything afloat. Moving is expensive, and would have required both him and his wife to transfer schools. That requires long term planning and isn't a feasible option for an immediate crisis.
justinsteele 14y ago
"Cheap dorm room"? Every dorm room at my university was more expensive than the surrounding (better quality) apartments.
bane 14y ago
Okay smart guy, here's your challenge, using only resources available to a young person with no college degree, and no friends or family resources, and only what was available in 2001 and around $150 in starting cash. Put together a proposal of what I should have done. Include in it a location: It must be on or near an accredited university. Find housing that is magically "super cheap" or not a "luxury". Specify the costs. The housing must allow for no deposit (don't have the money) and nonexistent credit and allow for a married couple to stay there - dorms obviously won't work. Scans of local newspaper clippings from around the country will suffice since Apartments.com didn't exist back then. A money ($) budget: Include all relevant transport costs, food, clothes, tuition, etc. Every single thing that costs money. These have to be real costs and not a WAG. If you pick a school, include tuition for two and all relevant fees exactly. A time budget: Map out what my day-to-day life should have been according to your omniscience. Include every minute from wake-up to sleep. Include all travel times to and from work, home and school (I'll allow shopping time to be ignored). This probably implies that work, home and school are within walking distance, large isolated land grant universities won't work since available jobs centers are obviously too far. A job or two: They must pay in isolation or in combination enough to cover the budget above, while allowing time to go to school, and they must be able to be done at different times. No time travel! Remember no college degree or other relevant qualifications. Jobs must be both available and plentiful. Just putting out "work at Costco" won't cut it, one actually has to get hired. I can tell you that my hit rate on job applications was less than 10% (I received 1 job based on over 100 applications). Add in a $10,000 medical bill due in 45 days. Describe a way to relocate two cars and an apartment full of stuff at zero cost to this magical valley of freedom (as in beer) and plenty.
- jsnk 14y ago
  I did not have $10000 med bill coming my way, but I lived a very frugal life during my university days. Some of it is written here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371702). With that said, I think you could have saved money on several things. $900/month is a lot for students. I decided to go to school in small city instead of a large one because I knew it would be cheaper to live there. By sharing rooms with 4 other students, I only paid between $325/month to 375/month. This was including, heat, water, power etc. Did you have cable TV or internet? Cut it. You spend minimum $40 on it. Did you ever eat out? Never do it. You can save $1000/month there. You mentioned that you drove. Sell the car. Car costs much more money that you think. $16000 is not a lot, but that's actually enough for many students. I made less than that during 4 month summer internships, and I paid my tuition and living expenses without any problem.
  - bane 14y ago
    Great experience by the way. I'll break this down one by one. $900/month is a lot for students. - I agree, had I been single I would have split a room like that with somebody else for $450. However, I wasn't and my "roommate" wasn't allowed to work the first two years we were married. I decided to go to school in small city instead of a large one because I knew it would be cheaper to live there. - You don't always get a choice where to go to school, sometimes you have to go where both of you have been accepted. I've broken how tuition worked for us down elsewhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975 By sharing rooms with 4 other students, I only paid between $325/month to 375/month. This was including, heat, water, power etc. In theory, it doesn't sound like where you lived was all that much less expensive than where I lived per person. Did you have cable TV or internet? Cut it. You spend minimum $40 on it. - Agreed, we had no cable, no internet, no phones of any kind for the first two years. Did you ever eat out? Never do it. You can save $1000/month there. - Agreed, when we ate out it was unavoidable, and it was taco bell, the cheapest thing on the menu. Elsewhere in this thread I've given some sample "recipes" of what we ended up eating when times were a rougher than normal. I still don't really like ketchup to this day all that much. You mentioned that you drove. - 100% paid for, unavoidable, public transport wasn't good, was expensive, and biking/walking would have eaten up hours per day that could have been used for working/studying. Sell the car. Car costs much more money that you think. - We sold one of them the second February to make rent and buy groceries. When my wife got her work permit, we had to limit where she could work to sync with where I worked or we'd spend too much time driving around and eating up fuel. We would have sold furniture too, but we didn't have any :( Other than a used mattress somebody donated to us, we had a couple frying pans, some old clothes and an old computer. When we got married we had about $150 in the bank.

by stfu 14y ago

overgryphon 14y ago

A cheap dorm room these days can be around $800-900 a month, and dorms aren't generally coed, so his married status would have made that a much more expensive option. The car was probably required for the job, and the time required to find a new job isn't feasible when you are working 80+ hours a week to keep everything afloat. Moving is expensive, and would have required both him and his wife to transfer schools. That requires long term planning and isn't a feasible option for an immediate crisis.

justinsteele 14y ago

"Cheap dorm room"? Every dorm room at my university was more expensive than the surrounding (better quality) apartments.

bane 14y ago

Okay smart guy, here's your challenge, using only resources available to a young person with no college degree, and no friends or family resources, and only what was available in 2001 and around $150 in starting cash. Put together a proposal of what I should have done. Include in it a location: It must be on or near an accredited university. Find housing that is magically "super cheap" or not a "luxury". Specify the costs. The housing must allow for no deposit (don't have the money) and nonexistent credit and allow for a married couple to stay there - dorms obviously won't work. Scans of local newspaper clippings from around the country will suffice since Apartments.com didn't exist back then. A money ($) budget: Include all relevant transport costs, food, clothes, tuition, etc. Every single thing that costs money. These have to be real costs and not a WAG. If you pick a school, include tuition for two and all relevant fees exactly. A time budget: Map out what my day-to-day life should have been according to your omniscience. Include every minute from wake-up to sleep. Include all travel times to and from work, home and school (I'll allow shopping time to be ignored). This probably implies that work, home and school are within walking distance, large isolated land grant universities won't work since available jobs centers are obviously too far. A job or two: They must pay in isolation or in combination enough to cover the budget above, while allowing time to go to school, and they must be able to be done at different times. No time travel! Remember no college degree or other relevant qualifications. Jobs must be both available and plentiful. Just putting out "work at Costco" won't cut it, one actually has to get hired. I can tell you that my hit rate on job applications was less than 10% (I received 1 job based on over 100 applications). Add in a $10,000 medical bill due in 45 days. Describe a way to relocate two cars and an apartment full of stuff at zero cost to this magical valley of freedom (as in beer) and plenty.

jsnk 14y ago
I did not have $10000 med bill coming my way, but I lived a very frugal life during my university days. Some of it is written here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371702). With that said, I think you could have saved money on several things. $900/month is a lot for students. I decided to go to school in small city instead of a large one because I knew it would be cheaper to live there. By sharing rooms with 4 other students, I only paid between $325/month to 375/month. This was including, heat, water, power etc. Did you have cable TV or internet? Cut it. You spend minimum $40 on it. Did you ever eat out? Never do it. You can save $1000/month there. You mentioned that you drove. Sell the car. Car costs much more money that you think. $16000 is not a lot, but that's actually enough for many students. I made less than that during 4 month summer internships, and I paid my tuition and living expenses without any problem.
- bane 14y ago
  Great experience by the way. I'll break this down one by one. $900/month is a lot for students. - I agree, had I been single I would have split a room like that with somebody else for $450. However, I wasn't and my "roommate" wasn't allowed to work the first two years we were married. I decided to go to school in small city instead of a large one because I knew it would be cheaper to live there. - You don't always get a choice where to go to school, sometimes you have to go where both of you have been accepted. I've broken how tuition worked for us down elsewhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975 By sharing rooms with 4 other students, I only paid between $325/month to 375/month. This was including, heat, water, power etc. In theory, it doesn't sound like where you lived was all that much less expensive than where I lived per person. Did you have cable TV or internet? Cut it. You spend minimum $40 on it. - Agreed, we had no cable, no internet, no phones of any kind for the first two years. Did you ever eat out? Never do it. You can save $1000/month there. - Agreed, when we ate out it was unavoidable, and it was taco bell, the cheapest thing on the menu. Elsewhere in this thread I've given some sample "recipes" of what we ended up eating when times were a rougher than normal. I still don't really like ketchup to this day all that much. You mentioned that you drove. - 100% paid for, unavoidable, public transport wasn't good, was expensive, and biking/walking would have eaten up hours per day that could have been used for working/studying. Sell the car. Car costs much more money that you think. - We sold one of them the second February to make rent and buy groceries. When my wife got her work permit, we had to limit where she could work to sync with where I worked or we'd spend too much time driving around and eating up fuel. We would have sold furniture too, but we didn't have any :( Other than a used mattress somebody donated to us, we had a couple frying pans, some old clothes and an old computer. When we got married we had about $150 in the bank.