Living on $350 per month?

[RealPerson]

Here is a guy who lives in Costa Rica. He says he has been a minimalist in progress for 20 years. He rents a home in Costa Rica, in a nice area in a touristy town. He does not own a car but pays someone gas money if he needs to go to San Jose. Total living expenses: $350 per month. This is just for himself. He has no partner and his kids are grown. Jacob, I think he has you beat by a couple of thousand dollars a year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUOjTpsAWY

[jacob]

Oh, so it's a race

RE tax: $4031 (East of Mississippi, ARGH!)
Insurance: $2126 (health, house, car, umbrella)
Food: $1800
Car: $400 (unfortunately needed for DW's job, otherwise we have everything we need within 1 block from here)
Meds: $475 (DW's migraines et al.)
Dog: $300 (vet, meds... he's 14+ yo now)
Total: $11,298

+Misc which is buying stuff on ebay/amazon/craigslist and selling it again later + a couple of road trips to NY per year. Say $600 total and round up.

=$6000/person/year.

So $350/month/person (=4200/yr) is not at all out of reach in the US. All we have to do is move west of the big river to the land of three-figure RE taxes.

[Fish]

According to the Numbeo cost of living index (NYC = 100), Chicago, USA = 80.16 and San Jose, Costa Rica = 60.46. To compare the guy's living expenses to Jacob's, it should be adjusted to: (12*350)*(80.16/60.46) = $5570/year. However, at extreme low spending levels, the real parameter of interest is not absolute expenses, but rather the efficiency of spending (what you get/what you pay). To the extent that the lifestyle is funded (or could be funded) by earned income instead of capital, you can also normalize expenses to minimum or median wages in the area to measure resilience.

[jacob]

Also at low levels, spending becomes somewhat idiosyncrantic in that some of it doesn't reflect what you actually get.

For example, I get nothing out of paying 4x the amount of RE taxes that a similar sized house would cost west of the big river. Most of this money goes to various underfunded and mismanaged pension systems. Consider that an arbitrary head tax or a geographic penalty.

There's also the issue of getting stuff but ignoring the imputed payments. For example, the guy in the OP link pays rent. I don't pay rent and I don't count imputed rent in my budget. I suppose it's more like I live for free in part of my speculative portfolio, but my solution requires such a portfolio whereas the rent-solution does not.

ERE gets complicated once it no longer abides "standard consumer accounting".
See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7870 for more.

[Jason]

Dog: $300 (vet, meds... he's 14+ yo now)

He even gets more life out of his dog than everyone else.

[RealPerson]

Oh, so it's a race

Tongue in cheek. He has some videos detailing his life, including lodging etc. Quite interesting. I am definitely not in this race, but I could sell hot dogs to the crowds.

[2Birds1Stone]

Mmmm, hot dogs =)

[TheWanderingScholar]

Eh depends on CoL. Living on 350 Euros in Estonia? Not that impressive unless you live in Tallinn or Tartu or any other big city.
-Broke Graduate Student

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Nomad]

If I could live on $350 a month, I would be retired now...

[thegreatvoid]

theoretically I live on 0 § a month. Housing and food paid by my employer. I don´t own a vehicle, phone, insurances and no vacations the last couple of years. Haven´t actually bought anything for 2 years.

But I recognize that I´m in a unique situation and in retirement I will need a great deal of money , since I probably will retire at age 25-30 and I´m very pessimistic about the economic growth of the west.

[2Birds1Stone]

Your housing/expenses are part of your compensation for the exchange of your time and services. I wouldn't call that free

[Jin+Guice]

Jacob is easily beatable. He spends a lot on housing, even if you don't count the fact that he is cheating* with his free housing. I could rent a place for less than his RE tax alone, especially if I can split with my SO. It is also easy to get free insurance through the affordable care act. The dude has a car. A car! He's also not a minimalist. If we had a metric for web of goals I think it'd be much harder to find someone beating him.

*I'm aware of the discussion on imputed rent, to my knowledge Jacob doesn't include it because it is not possible to get an accurate number, which is true. It's still cheating though because it would be a material number that's not 0 no matter what reasonable method you use. It doesn't matter in so far as your personal budget is concerned (I'm sort of surprised you don't use some measure of imputed rent when you consider it in your investment portfolio) but as far as the metric is concerned I feel like some sort of imputation should be used.

[Bankai]

$350 is possible. Our lowest months ever were around £800-850 for 2 of us*. And £425 of that was rent. So that's £200 per person (or $260) assuming paid off shelter. Basically covers bills & no thrills food.

*this was pre ere in period when I was working part time making like £800 per month so our sr was slightly negative. It was not fun.

[TopHatFox]

Try $100/mo. Just hit up the parents. lmao