littledog

My friends and relatives think I'm insane. It's good to be insane.[/QUOTE]

Well,yes and no. I lost my job due to mental illness. And along with it a car,savings and a few friends. I get a nut check and lots of time to ride my bikes. By riding my bikes and not being in the rat race I have been able to live without the debilitating psych meds which made me into a drooling zombie.

I worked in manufacturing and one place I worked-which has since gone bankrupt and closed- made automatic welding machines for Trek. So I feel kind of bad buying bikes made overseas. Yet that is where affordable and reasonably priced bikes come from. Along with just about everything else these days. They have my job,I have a nut check and ride my bike. I think they came out on the short end of the stick.

The last WalMart that opened in town had 2500 applicants for 220 jobs,many of which were part time. They do have cheap bikes but I like my Trek bikes a lot more. And not having a car I can afford to save and buy a decent bike. Life is good.

gregtheripper

yeah i am pretty jelous of the housing prices in some cities myself. my apartment is $625/mo, and i feel like i could have gone cheaper (in the $500's), but my roomates didn't want to be too far from class/work. i live literally across the street from a T stop, two and a half miles from campus/work, 3 and a half to my new internship i am starting in january, and quite literally down the street from all of my basic needs (food, drug store, ect). although the apartment is pricy for a student, it still beats the apartments closer to campus ($700-1100/mo, typically) and beats on campus housing (900-1200/mo on average, and usually you have to share a bedroom.) the heat and hot water are included where i live. also, i live with 5 other people and so my electric is like, $25/mo and we pay maybe $6 each for cable internet. however for a while i did have to subsidize my rent with a student loan. blah.

chephy

During my first two years as a university student, I lived pretty cheaply. $400 for a single room in residence (and a tiny room too.. this is Toronto, baby ). $250 a month on food (it was mandatory to buy a meal card if you lived in residence). $100 tops for everything else: I didn't go out very much, spend most of the time studying, reading, on the internet (included in the residence room charge, fortunately), swimming in the uni pool and going to karate classes (nominal fee for uni students) and riding an x-mart bike around for fun. Well, of course there was tuition too.

I had summer undergrad research grants but no jobs during school year, and had zero financial support from parents. My scholarships paid for everything (that's the main reason I picked the school I picked, actually). Best years of my life. Well, close.

Bizurke

If I watch my money I can live pretty cheaply.
Rent: $245 (I have 2 room mates in a 3 bedroom house in a good neighborhood)
Utilities: $100 (including cable/internet)
phone: $60
food: $120
Misc spending money: $100

$625. Unfortunately I am horrible with my money and spend all the rest on things I don't need, especially if I wander in to a bike shop to pick up something cheap like a water bottle, I end up walking out with at least $70 in stuff I thought I really needed at the time.

c0urt

hmmm, let see, i am moving to alabama this week but right now it is

rent 50 bucks (funny story about that)
no untilities
35 for cell phone
400 a month on food
misc stuff about 200 ish

good thing in alabama i will be rent free and having running water SCORE!!

odl21

crap - i don't have a car, mortgage or children. i spend about $7000 a month.

junior in train

$700/month is no kind of life. It is abject poverty.

odl21

+1 !

r8ingbull

How?

Roody

Poverty means not having what you need. Some people have trained themselves to need much less. They are just as happy--or happier--having less.

Roody

It sounds like you do better with a little money than many of us do with a lot. Carfree is a good way to go when you're on a fixed income. And reducing stress is good for anybody's mental health.

odl21

not sure really - rent (2600), bike stuff, travelling, food & wine (don't eat out much probably spend more on ingredients).

it all adds up to about 7000 most months between my wife and i.

its not that i'm against cars although i think people are far too relient on them. i just don't really feel the need for one. i probably rent one for the weekend about once a month. much cheaper than owning and parking downtown.

i saw this forum and thought it was interesting because i live car free but maybe i'm not the average kind of 'car free' cyclist...

this is certainly an interesting forum but i think its more about simple living than living car free.

SkyeC

I wish I could live as cheaply as some of you but I just can't break free of what I have and am interested in. I go through about $2000/month in expenses from rent, car, car insurance, food/entertainment, utlities, and put the rest into savings.

Living in San Francisco and working on the other side of the Bay at 4am doesn't help any.

Roody

There are many excuses for keeping a car--yours is one of the saddest I've ever heard.

How much of that $2000 goes to the car? Include payment, depreciation, maintenance, gas, repairs, insurance, tolls, parking and oil changes. It probably will come to $500 to $800 every month. It might be worthwhile to either move closer to work or work closer to home.

OTOH, I believe the bay area has some of the best public transit in the nation. I bet you never even tried it! You might not even have to relocate.

chephy

I don't know if there is an "average" kind of car-free cyclist. There is a lot of variation. A lot of people in this forum in particular are interested in simple living and so discuss it here, but a lot of us like some "complicated living" as well.

It works out really nicely for me and my boyfriend. We don't have a car, we have small wardrobes with durable functional clothes and like it that way, we don't have cable, we generally have a minimalistic attitude towards a lot of things. As a result we save heaploads of money on things most people consider mandatory but we don't need at all. So we can splurge on things we find really fun: like bikes, technical gadgets, concerts and food+drink. I actually suspect food and drink is by far our biggest expenditure every month. Way over rent + hydro, and our rent is not cheap...

But when I lived on $700 a month as a student I did not feel poor. I'm sure if I didn't have to buy the damn $2000 meal card, I would've spent less on food. (As it was, I ate quite well: there was a not bad amount of choice of places to eat on campus. Nothing five-star, but some relatively decent places. There was a fancy coffee shop on campus with five-dollar lattes and I thought nothing of buying them any time I felt like drinking one. I just bought whatever looked like it would taste good and didn't even notice the price most of the time.)

But then of course I was smart enough to take advantage of lots of great things that are part of the university student package: free gym, free swimming pool, free library, extreme discounts for lots of things, from concerts to socks, free munchies at various uni-organized events. I'm not a student anymore, but public libraries still exist and so do community swimming pools and skating rinks... And public roads.

gizem310

Me and my husband are DINKs (double income no kids). We spend his paycheck and save all of mine! We've been living simply for a year now and we've saved enough money for a trip around the world! We are quitting our jobs in March and when we get back, we will both get less-paying but more fulfilling jobs that we want to do, not have to, knowing that we can live for less.
It's amazing how easy it's been. Sell the SUV (that alone saves us about $700/month), brown bag it to work, cook, bike everywhere and stop buying "stuff" that we don't need in the first place. It's funny, I'd say our life quality improved drastically after we reduced our consumption.

mjwarner

Each month:
Rent: $325
Phone/Internet: $70
Health Insurance (mine): $50
Car Insurance (wife's car): $50
Utilities: $30
Gasoline (wife's car): $50
Food/Entertainment/Travel: Unsure - we travel occasionally and eat out frequently...
Total: ~$575 + food + entertainment + travel + misc.

brevig

I fully support the simple living life...

Regarding Telecommunications

Get a laptop, purchase a wireless internet package for like $70 and then vonage for $25 and you have internet mobile anywhere you want to go and your phone via your laptop; just get a headset.

Regarding the Lifestyle

Have you guys read https://unconventionalideas.com? Great site. The author is now a door-to-door sellsman but owned his own carpet cleaning business for about 10 years. His articles range from living carfree to homeschooling and being less materialistic/consuming.

Regarding My Experience

I'm 23...in the past six months I have lived in Louisville, Chicago, Knoxville and now Orlando. I do not hold orthodox employment. Currently I'm staying with someone for free. I clean and cook. Miscellaneous jobs (like building a website for a friend) fund other necessities I have. I still do currently have a car and see it as my greatest expense...I'll be trading it in for a bike soon. I get by...but don't have a lot of money for things; hence why I don't have the bike yet.

merlinextraligh

Report back when you grow up. $700 a month doesn't begin to cover my property taxes.

pedex

so how do you like renting that hugely expensive home?

Roody

How's that working for you?

Platy

As home ownership becomes more costly, many young people may be motivated to seek out alternatives. The first visible sign of this will probably be that owning a large suburban home becomes un-hip.

cerewa

Maybe people will think of a suburban home like many people today think of station wagons. (I think that the perceived un-cool-ness of station wagons has been a real boon to the sports car and SUV markets.)

wheel

Simpler living is a byproduct.
I think it has allot to do with a freedom from a capitalistic society. Where having money is the ingrained into you. \

I mean look at the person with a 700 dollar tax. He needs to make that first. He will because he has motivation to make that money.

If I made an extra 700 I could donate it, take a vacation, or go to college. Nothing which will recieve a return in more money.

He/She is going to throw it into a pile of lumber (cement) and fashionable consumer goods.
certainly can't take it with you when you die.

Rent 450
Electricty 50
phat pipe 30
phone 45
food 75
bus pass 30
Health insurance 140
college 175

995

cyclerevolution

I really do not understand these low food budgets... 75$/Month!!! That's insane. I never eat out, am vegan and do all my cooking and I'm closer to $250. I don't see how one could get by on that diet and still get enough fruits/veggies, variety and extras (teas, oils, vinegars, spices, etc...). I spend $80 per month on veggies alone, guaranteed (organic, however... but it is cheaper than grocery store b/c it is CSA). Wild. How do you folks do this? Kraft Dinner?