No Stupid Questions

I’m leaving. I’m tired of fighting.

You can survive on very little, it just will be a lower quality of life than previous generations which feels bad, but you do what you need to in order to get by.

The simplest way to deal with all of this is to actually perform the financial calculations to see what's the best situation for you.

A $80,000 a year job in a city may actually leave you with a lower quality of life than a $40,000 a year job in the middle of nowhere if you're spending $4,500 a month on rent for a two bedroom apartment in the city, and it would only be $1000 for a two bedroom house the middle of nowhere.

Calculate some possible budgets for different areas and different lifestyles, and find out what works best for you. Being in a city is not as good as it used to be financially speaking.

If you're having trouble "surviving" either way, you need to figure out how to reduce your costs and/or up your income.

Common things like sharing a home (with a partner or roommate) can reduce your costs massively, trying to live alone is pretty stupid financially right now.

Learn how to cook things yourself, it's not hard with Youtube these days, you can massively slash your food budget by not eating out or buying pre-made food. One of the stupidest things I see is people picking up a second job, making very little per hour, and then spending 6 hours of their income on a dinner from a restaurant (eat in, eat out, doordash, etc.). You would have been better off just buying decent meal ingredients for 2 hours of your wage, and then spending 1 hour cooking and cleaning. Then you've got 3 hours worth of time back that you can either use to work for more money for other things, or just not bother working at all to have more time for you.

If you're stuck in a dead end low wage job, invest time in getting new skills that will enable you to get a better job. It's never too late to retrain for a better position unless you've already retired.

and it'd* better be a* nearly six-figure dual income

To be fair the USA seems to have the brightest future compared to basically any other country because you guys don't have this imminent demographic collapse like most other developed countries like Japan, Korea, China, Germany, Italy, etc. And because of your geography and size you are would only be mildly affected by a WW3.

Perhaps it helps to look at other parts of the world and see how comperativelly well you guys have it.

I guess the biggest challenge is to minimize the huge divide between the rich and the poor. Sadly you missed the opportunity to choose Berny Sanders as your leader a couple of times, that would have helped a lot.

With what's about to happen, I do not know

You really believe we're all going to die in the next 30years?
Or are you being hyperbolic?

I know this wasn't your point, but I've been confused on a particular point for awhile:

buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income and it better be nearly six figure dual income....

Just the general idea of it being impossible to afford to buy a house. And don't get me wrong, the prices on houses have gotten ridiculous! At the same time, we talk about landlords buying houses and charging exorbitant rent (suggesting at the very least more than what they pay).

So if rent is more than the mortgage, insurance, etc, then how is it impossible to buy a house if it is possible to rent (an equivalent home)? Is it the down payment (if any)? Costs involved in purchasing? Because it seems like month to month it would be cheaper.

I say this as someone who has rented and owned, and owning felt significantly cheaper.

(Full disclosure, I'm in the military, so I had access to a VA loan... though not really sure what that did for me except maybe allow 0% down... if other people are absolutely required to put up a percentage then I can definitely understand it).