I hear what you are saying - but realistically - what could YOU live off of a month? Conjecture about others is fine - I’m asking for a fairly accurate assessment of you personally. What’s your financial minimum?
Without moving? About 6K a month.
$900 a month is the bare minimum in order to remain in my $550 rental, pay the utilities, gas, and eat. Sometimes we don’t make that. It sucks.
For $500 a month we could keep our house, eat fairly well, and have some “mad money” but we have the dual advantages of no kids or outstanding debt.
I seriously couldn’t even pay the electricity and property taxes on my house for that. And I live in a modest bungalow!
Good, I thought I was going to be at the extreme, but you have me beat. Without moving, our family of 4 requires about 4,500/month. If we moved I am sure we could get that down to $2000/month, but I love this house and neighborhood.
Without moving? Probably $1300 for myself and my fiance. This includes walking to the train rather than driving (saving gas and car insurance), bagged lunch, copious coupon clipping, exc. If we moved then that could drop to $1000, but our place is conveniently located and we love our neighbors; plus window unit air conditioning in Houston really rather sucks.
I could live on far, far less than I am now if I was alone. And my family (of 6) could live on far less if we lived elsewhere. But in my current home, and keeping my current family 
we could scrape by on about $3000/month.
That, however would entail giving up some of our lifestyle and just barely covering our “absolute must” expenses.
My rent + Internet/Phone + Food + Month Bus pass + Meds = $770.00/month
If it’s summer I could save the $83.00 on the pubic transit and walk
Let me imagine that I didn’t have a wife or lived in a house and I just wanted to live cheaply. I have never commuted to work by car, either walking or public transit. But there is a real tradeoff between rent costs and both living close to work and living in a place that has decent public transit But I would give up my car first. I think I could live on $500 a month in addition to rent, about half for food and the rest for laundry, clothes, etc. This means giving up nearly all luxuries.
We can hire prostitutes and fund sex tourist trips to southeast asia with the money we save.
Not that I’ve thought that through or anything.
You only spend $100 a month on food and you can still eat out? Is there a secret to this that I don’t know?
I could probably snag a college student to rent a room, since I’m about ten miles fron the university and have a place for horses and would allow pets. If so, I could cut my housing expenses to about $400. Add another $200 for animal expense and $100 for human food expenses. Car is paid off (hopefully it’ll continue to thrive), but I drive about 500 miles per week, which means I spend $250/mo in gas costs. I’m assuming I have a job which provides insurance,
I can’t wait for that day in 2018 when my mortgage will be paid.
StG
I could easily cut down quite a bit, since a lot of the ‘fluff’ in the household is due to the sweetie (who prefers luxuries over basics; I’m the opposite; one day I hope we find a middle-ground >.< )
Foodwise…well, it’s been a while, but I distinctly remember working min-wage and living off 5 dollars a week in food. That got me a 5 pound bag of potatoes, a tub of margarine, and whatever fish was about to go ‘off’ at the market.
I gained weight, eating that way. 
Eating out is maybe a once a week thing for me, and thats fast food type. I very rarely go to someplace fancier, so it might only be $20 a month.
Thinking more on it though, Its likely a bit closer to $150 overall. I go to the store every 2-3 weeks and my grocery bill is generally $60-80.
But then I just plain don’t eat a whole lot.
My SO and I would probably need at least 3200 a month. 1800 for rent, 450 for cars and gas, 500 for utilities and a couple hundred for food/pets. And that would be with being frugal.
I actually have a spreadsheet at home that tracks all our income and debts, so I could probably answer this with almost to the penny precision. But off the top of my head, I’d say $1,400 is the lowest we could go. That would basically assume 1) we eliminated our credit card debt from the equation (which we will soon), 2) I stopped using my car and exclusively used my bus pass, 3) we cancelled cable/internet 4) we never ate out or, well, did anything. Ever.
Yeah, I’m all for saving money, but that’s so not for me.
Well, even if I did everything I could to cut expenses, I don’t think I could do less than $1200 a month (I’m single and childless.)
$500/month rent and utilities (right now it’s more, but let’s say I move into a cheaper place. In these parts, this is about as cheap as it gets, and that’s with roommates in a crummy place.)
$400/month student loans
$50/month phone (right now it’s more, but I imagine I’d sell my current phone and get a cheaper plan or a pay as you go type thing.)
$200 food+groceries (and that might be a small estimate…only $200 a month for one person? I’ve never budgeted anything before or kept close track, so I honestly have no idea how much I spend a month on food/groceries.)
And that’s, what…still $50 left over? I can use that as a buffer.
Keep in mind, in this scenario, I have sold my car to not pay for insurance or gas (which would be another $150-$200 a month.)
This also assumes my credit cards are paid off…which isn’t a stretch since I only have about
$400 between the two of them. One will be paid off by February, the other by March.
I could live on about $700/month with fairly reasonable lifestyle changes: Move to a smaller place and share a room Sell my car and bike/walk/bus everywhere. Eat lots of beans and rice and whatever vegetable is cheap that week.
I could probably get down to < $100 if I really tried. Santa Barbara is warm enough that I could live out of a tent year-round. My work provides both free food and showers. Of course, then I’d be the guy who is clearly living out of a tent and eating snack room food all the time. Not sure how long my job would last in that situation.
Without making people at work aware, i could probably get it to $300 or so. That’s $50 for a gym membership (so I don’t shower at work), $100 for food/incidentals, $150 to someone on craigslist (estimated) to let me crash on their living room floor with sleeping bag and store some stuff in the corner, as long as I promise to be out of the house between 7am and 10pm every day.
By my estimates, were I to quit my unemployed SO and cut down on my most dispendious extravaganzas (like smoking…) I could live on ~450 bucks a month. Survive on about 150-200, but that *really *wouldn’t be any fun.