Yes, I meant talent not better. Thanks for pointing that out.

Got ya, I know exactly what you mean.
A couple years ago, up in MA, a friend of mind had a student who was exceptional. Father among the missing, crack whore mother, living with Grandma, working in a fast food joint after school to survive.:(

But, like I said, exceptional, so my friend worked with her and for her. The result was she was accepted to Smith Collage....absolutely free, not a dime for anything. Graduating from the seven sisters she'd be set for life. All she had to do is write a paper. It didn't have to be good, in truth probably wouldn't even be read, but part of the procedure. Oh, and it had to be typed.
All through school the girl had hand written every assignment, except when she could squeeze on to one of the school PCs, to transcribe and print her work.

So my friend solicited me when I was at her house thanksgiving weekend. At Christmas she took the girl a PC and printer, to write the paper and take to Smith to use in the fall. Smith like all those elite schools have tremendous support systems for minority and poor students. From the school and girls that came there under the same circumstances as freshmen...freshwomen?

I got a call in the spring that the girl had quit High School a month short and moved from grandma's to crack whore Mom's. I cried.

I didn't respond earlier as I felt I didn't have much to add to the discussion.
But as you mentioned this twice it stuck in my head, so I did some calculations and came back to it.

I don't doubt that you really did live comfortably on $15k because it's not worth lying about. However I'm intrigued as to the circumstances.

Here are my calculations, based on the real life amounts I pay (converted to $ at today's exchange rate to make it easier to read in the US)

All figures per year
Rent - $6,972 (I have the cheapest rent of anyone I know, more usual would be $11,500 plus)
Council Tax - $2,205
Electricity - $709
Gas (household, not car) - $189
Water - $402
Car Tax - $226
MOT $99 (mandatory car test - required annually)
Car Insurance - $450
TV Licence - $259
Phone - $118

Total - $11,629

Now this list covers only mandatory costs.
Not included but recommended:
Breakdown Cover, home contents insurance

(in the interst of frugality the phone is a basic pay-as-you-go mobile, in order to make emergency calls and be contactable in return - quarterly line rental for landline would be much higher)

The amount left per month ($280) has to cover the following for two people:
Car repairs, clothes, family occasions (birthdays, Christmas etc), food and drink, gas (petrol), haircuts, household cleaning products, perishable items like pantyhose, toiletries, prescription charges, suncream, toilet paper..... and apparently saving for retirement.

I could not live "comfortably" this close to the edge. I can only assume some of this is cheaper in the US.

Comfort is opinion too. I am happy with only a few things, some people would be unhappy with what I have and some people would think I have too much to be happy.

In the US, it depends entirely on where you live. $8400 gets you an excellent flat, in most locations.

No "council tax" but there are usually a mix of local and state taxes that add up to about half that.

Electricity: also depends where you live: here, the lowest bill would probably be $1200, but others will see $600.

Water: always included in rent

Car tax: none

Car insurance: usu. about double.

TV Licence: none

Phone: 24.99/month Vonage (or something) = $600, but it's "unlimited" time and long distance. This assumes high-speed Internet, which I cannot live without but others may find unnecessary.

Let me break it down to the best of my memory. (; I don't take it as a challenge to my integrity, and I certainly wasn't proposing that it would be normal to live comfortably on $15,000, we were fairly frugal. We also lived in a...well you'd probably consider it a small town.

Rent: $6,600. $550/month, 1 bedroom apartment.
Car: I'll be liberal here. The car was long since paid off, but I'll figure average cost per year at ($5,500(buying price)-$2,800(selling price) + $1,000(parts and paid service))/4(years of ownership) + $500(insurance per year) so: $1425. I took care of most problems myself.
Gas: Maybe $480. I lived right next to my college and we frequently biked during the summer.
Retirement: $1,200. Meager Roth IRA savings.
Electricity: $360
Internet: $480
Phone: $960. We were still tied to our damn Cingular contract. Now we just have Skype, no cells for the time being but the situation has changed besides that.
All other utilities were taken care of with the apartment.

That leaves about $3500 for other things. We were vegetarian--were as in the wife is now vegan--and made almost all of our own food. I'll guess $1,200 a year, we were pretty frugal. We each had $480 per year personal spending money, and $480 per year mutual spending money. Most of the time though the majority went unspent and back into the pool.

As for the circumstances, that was money from the Montgomery GI Bill. I lived next to a community college and wasn't really "pursuing a degree", except in the mind of the VA office of course. (; I was dinking around with restoring cars...but that's another story.

This was in Oregon too, so no sales tax. $550 a month got us the nicest 1 bedroom in town. (;

We were happy. I had picked up a nice projector on the cheap a few years earlier and we downloaded documentaries from UK Nova. Lots of vegetable lasagna, pasta, grilled cheese sandwiches, fried zucchini, yummy.

Undertoad: Maybe electricity is just cheaper in Oregon, but we had a well insulated apartment with compact flourescent bulbs at got away with less than $30 per month.

The one thing we were lacking in was health insurance. I was notionally insured by the VA. Supposing that we didn't intend to live forever on $15k, we were looking at a policy for about $100 a month that at least would have gotten us treatment for any problem, if a bit of debt for down the road as well. Medical debt, at least in the US, is fairly innocuous as far as debts go.

Thanks for giving me a chance to elaborate. (;

--Joe

Thank you for taking my request in the spirit intended.

I guess it is cheaper to live in the US than the UK. And no doubt this is because we have higher taxes. Mine pay for a safety net that I'm unlikely to fall far enough to use - falling as Shawnee says, in the middle. I just dangle from a single straining hand from time to time.

Par example:

When I last had a car, a kind soul smashed my rear passenger window outside Leyton Tube station. During the day and with nothing in the car worth stealing. In fact the car itself opened with any key (or even a screwdriver) thanks to previous vandalism, so it was sheer badness. I drove the car home and sat on my bed and cried. It was approx 10 days til payday and I had zero money. I had a Travelcard to get to work, food in the fridge and freezer, warmth, light, all the basics.

BUT I couldn't leave the car parked on the street in London missing a window - apart from the fact it was winter it would have shouted, "Abandoned Car!" to every single pikey within hailing distance. Two streets away there was an abandoned factory and burned out cars were a regular decorative feature.

I got the money by a happy coincidence, and got the window fixed that night. But my point is, I can deal without material things. I just can't deal with a minor problem becoming a major one all for the want of some ready cash.

I work hard, if not well. I am not afraid of hard work and have had 3 jobs before, in order to make ends meet, and worked a 60 hour week at 2 jobs in order to pay off debts. I would just like to feel more secure. I'm one unfortunate incident away from having to run home to my parents and throw myself on their mercy. At 34.

Still - am moving to London to share with a friend soon. He is very respectable and if not rich then at least organised. Let's hope I rub off on him rather than vice versa.

I've been to London, and I can understand how things would be more difficult there. I think there's a much higher standard of living in England in general than in the United States. Much more expensive, and I'd guess more pressure to keep up too.

The thing that struck me most in London were the cars. Not a dent, scratch, or peeling clear coat to be seen in central London, that I saw at least, and not much anyway throughout England. Didn't get up to Wales or beyond to see what it's like up there.

And of course, prices of rent just blew me away.

Thanks for letting me babble. I hope things turn out well for you.

--Joe

Edit: Sorry to hear about your car. I think the only way I could deal with that well would involve the help of family. Glad you got it sorted.

The last couple posts in this thread reminded me that I'm either wicked fucking lucky or completely blessed...

Ha! I just noticed your tag line. Richard Bartle is my ex's absolute hero. Bartle now lectures at Essex uni, my ex seriously considered moving south to take his degree down there.

Not sure about that - I used to work for a British company and traveled there a few times - Also worked with many Brits now living in the US. Everything in the US seems to be bigger, louder, and more "over the top". Stereotypical Americans - we want bigger houses and cars - better teeth and more plastic surgery. We have big massive lawns that require tractors to maintain. Our 52" flat screen TVs barely take up any room in our 5000+sq ft homes. Check out the growth trends here: http://www.nahb.org/news_details.aspx?newsID=2847

Size isn't the only dictate of living standard. I think the US naturally offers more variety of food, cars, job opportunities etc. Of course I don't know what the actual numbers are for standard of living -so this could just be a bunch of crap - but in my experience, the general public here fares better than the UK - (nothing against the Brits - I loved the time I spent with my British colleagues)

I think I'll embrace the thread drift we've created here. (;

I guess England stretches a bit further north than I thought, and that I've only been to southern England, so I may or may not have gotten an accurate picture.

I guess it's hard to compare England to America. It seemed that there's a much different dynamic between the classes there than here.

In general I noticed mainly how the roads were dominated by new and nice cars and also how expensive everything was. I got the impression that there was an immense amount of money flowing through England in general and London specifically, and that everybody was getting their slice, even if it was terribly small.

Perhaps I shouldn't talk in ephemeral terms like "standard of living", I suppose it doesn't mean much.

As for the other nations of the UK, I didn't get to see them. It's a pity I didn't get to see Wales, I've been rather curious about that side of my family since I discovered that I'm a dead ringer for Christian Bale. (; Well, an exceedingly thin Christian Bale anyway.

Cheers,
Joe

Edit: Gah, and now I find that Bale was born to English parents...being American is so confusing.