Could you live on $35 a day?

[Ethes]

Which comes down to a little over 800 euro's a month which is perfectly doable as a student.

Rent: €300 a month, including utilities (cheaper is possible)
College fee: €175 a month
which leaves a little over €325 for food, clothing, etc which is perfectly doable. You might even be able to save a little. Groceries won't cost you over €200 a month of you try. For students a little over €800 a month is a perfectly normal amount to live on in The Netherlands..

[Reeve]

ok, I'll round it down to AU$18 US$19 EU14.50.

Kinda should've assumed people would be young and single without familys on mmo, my bad. That's what a single full time student gets with full rental assistance.

That's pretty good, actually. If you have full rental assistance, $19/day is more than enough to live on.

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 03:22 PM ----------

This is what I agree with, being unemployed and sitting around living on that, you deserve it. It's a lot harder for a student to get a job because the employer has to fit to your timetable a lot of employers just don't do that. At least that was in the 40 or jobs I tried to get.

I worked 30-40 hours/week throughout college. I never had any trouble with my school schedule.

[Psii]

As a small business owner, I sometimes live on a lot less then -35$/day lol.

[Zka]

And those 28€ per day, that's actually a fortune in east european countries, enough to support a whole family and a nice living.

I confirm that. My family of 3 are living on about 900 eur per month, which is pretty fine. (fortunately I earn more, but we put the rest in savings)

In this country, long term unemployed people receive about $100 per MONTH as welfare. Or if they are "lucky" they get some public welfare job that actually means they have to WORK and then they receive about $220 per month. This is to motivate them to return to employment, but there are simply no opportunities in some regions for unskilled people. Hurray for slavery!

FYI cheapest goods:
bread: $1 / kg
cheese: $5 / kg
chicken filet: $7 / kg
apple: $1-2 / kg
milk: $0.8 / liter
electronics: above western prices
rent and power costs of a small 50m2 apartment: $250/month and that is really really low, if you want cheaper you must share apartment with others or live in the streets
some cost of living info on the web

But at least the very shitty healthcare is "free" :P

[Gheld]

Let's see. If you cook your own food, it costs about 5 bucks a day to feed yourself.
If you take the bus instead of owning a car that you can't afford, that's another 5 bucks a day.

Which leaves you 25 bucks a day. or about 750 dollars a month, which is more than enough for rent. So you should even be able to save some money, or take up smoking like a lot of people on welfare do.

EDIT: and if it's not, boo friggin hoo. Unless you are physically disabled there's no excuse to be on welfare. Absolutely none.

[Deleted]

Yep. Its more than salary most people get here (Estonia). Salary for most people here is about 300-400 euro/month, people with jobs that require high education get 1.5 - 2 times more.

[Roveredo]

More than 1 billion of people live with less than US$ 1 per day, so i would say yes.

[larrakeyah]

You can live on that. Should be reduced to 0 though. If you are jobless in Australia it's because you want.

[Wildtree]

I don't know how Australia handles that.. And I don't know anything about US welfare either.
But for Germany... The money you get is for the living expenses only.
Rent, Electricity, Gas, Heating expenses. Those are separate payments and go to the respective recipients separately.
So, if the $35 would mean to live off it per day, then it's very easy to go by with it. All you have to pay out of that amount would be your phone bill. For that you only get a small amount of fund. Like 5 Euro per month or so.
You also get a clothing budget twice a year in Germany, for Fall/Winter and for Spring/Summer.
Yet I know that you don't get $35 per day in Germany to live off it. I think it's more like 400 a month. Additional household members will add more to it, but it's less. The 400 applies to the head of the household.
Numbers may be off a tad, since that stuff gets changed all the time, and I'm simply too long away already from Germany to be 100% up to speed.

[Voodoou]

Are there not also housing programs to go along with this? In the US, for example, you get foodstamps/unemployment insurance, but you also have access to Section 8 housing assistance if you're poor enough. I can't imagine that Australia only has one benefit program. If my housing were paid for I could make do with $35/day if need be.

in the US.. this exactly.. without housing there are VERY few places in the country where 35 dollars a day would be possible. I currently live in a pretty inexpensive area (rent is 470.00 a month for a livable 2 bedroom house with a garage that isnt falling over to rent, electric is about 60-100 a month, phone we use magic jack so its a lot cheaper, internet is I think around 25, city utilities 53 and gas is around 60-75 if you average it out for the year since it snows here)... so without food it would be 23.6 minimum a day.. so technically this is possible without govt housing for a SINGLE PERSON, but not with kids and would never cover an emergency, gasoline or bus fares. You wouldnt have the money to buy a bike and walking would mean you were VERY limited on where you could look for work. SO perhaps technically possible but here's this.. in the US no one gets this much in welfare unless you count up housing, foodstamps, utilities assistance ect.. and that little in food per day means extremely unhealthy living.. and if you had children they would be malnourished after 5 yrs old(there is a program to help feed under 5 yr olds properly).

Now lets talk about cleanliness.. soap , toothpaste, shampoo, razors, pads for women, toilet paper costs a TON when added up. Add a child and it grows. VERY few poor people have access to free laundry machines.. so guess what.. at least 10-20 bucks a month in just machine fees and then add detergent to that. This government worker sort of sounds like an idiot politician we had recently in the states that claimed poor ppl lived in the lap of luxury because they had things like a refrigerator, air conditioning/heaters, microwaves, cable TV and a few other weird items. SO the ref. is obviously a retarded addition (how else do we keep our food from spoiling in modern society) but its also usually FREE with where you live along with the other things(if you live in an apartment which most poor in the states do)... save the microwave which costs like 100 bucks and lasts years and years and is IMO the most essential cooking appliance these days. That govt. worker seems to know very little about living poor and should be educated by being forced to live that way for a few months.

Lastly getting ppl back to work.. this is the main issue isn't it? Cutting peoples money does not help them unless they are VERIFIED to be bums and not trying. If childcare was provided MANY would return to work. If training was offered like it is in at least California(for women and older folks who need to be retrained) for free MANY would return to work. However.. in our society there simply is NOT enough jobs for every single person so in some cities it is EXTREMELY difficult to impossible for someone to find work.. let along sustainable work! This lady in the video acts like these people aren't trying because their children are over 8 yrs old.. My guess is most of them truly are or have just plain given up. People are so damned quick to judge others based on their own experiences instead of looking at life through someone elses eyes. Me for example.. if you glanced at me you would think I am a lazy cow who refuses to work when in reality I am disabled and fought for YEARS to get reimbursement and coverage for my disability to find out that govt doctors do not keep proper records and I was screwed out of the work benefit that I put taxes into and had to settle for the "welfare" version of disability, you US residents will know this as SSI.

ok I think im done rambling and I think I fixed most of my many typos and made this at least followable =P

[Quario]

Lol, the average salary in Romania is roughly 120 Euros per month, and i don't just mean students with shitty jobs, but regular people with families, now that's what you call survival, and yes, i live with well under $35 a day, it's not much of a life but what you gonna do.. Rich corrupt politicians need their countless cars and villas too..

[Dezerte]

Would be roughly 440€/month for me. My current apartment rent is 420€... so, no.

[S7orm]

where i live that would barely cover the rent (5-600€/mo for a 60mq apartment) and bills for a single person (water, gas, elettricity and that damned monopolized DSL)

but as i still live with parents, that'd be easy

[Mortai2]

My fiancee and I currently live on about $45 per day, including rent, utilities, and food. We tend to have the most wiggle room in food, and I've done it before so if I had to, yes, I would be able to live on $35 per day. Not having any disposable income is something I'm extremely used to, seeing as how I've never really had it at any point in my adult life.

Some day :P

[Kurioxan]

Let's talk again if you want to get a house when you are married. Renting is 10x worse as it is wasted money.

As in the amount of money, unless you live there it's hard to say as every country has a different value on money.

Exactly money has different value according to country, well currently living in the Uk, so 13 is not much no.

And no, i will not buy a house, that, is a huge waste of money.
Specially considering my lifestyle, i have lived in 4 countries so far and im 25, i like to move, i like to change and get to know new places.
Considering interest, making loans for any reason is bad, unless its a life or death situation, never make a loan.

"you and your wife" can easily live in a rented place for quite some years, decades even and wait until you are financially sound to actually buy a house.
Buying a house before your 40s (or whatever age you are financially stable, and by stable i mean being able to pay 50% of the house cost in cash right there) is nonsense tbh.

[Dezerte]

Basic welfare in Sweden gives you about 650-700€/month (single person), for reference.

[Deleted]

$35 a day would barely cover food. Wouldn't even begin to pay bills. But you know what? I fully support getting people back to work. Welfare should be to help you in a bad situation, people should never get paid to do nothing but lay on their backs and have kids.

now that's another problem, job availability... I know what it's like being in a situation like this. And as a matter of fact, no it's not impossible but just really hard to live like this. You should really keep an eye on what you're spending, a good tip would be to write everything you spent money on down and check wether you bought something that was really necessary or not. Being honest with yourself is a big winner in these situations.

[Kasierith]

Depending on where I live, yes.

[conscript]

Not unless I was to sell my house or car. My mortgage by itself is $430 (~13 days per month) and my car is another $280 (8 days). That leaves roughly $315 to cover gas, electric, water, food, and most importantly student loans. Unless I default on my loans (around $300 per month and that is income adjusted from the ~$1400 they should be) there is simply no way I could live on that amount.

[Xanjori]

Would be roughly 440€/month for me. My current apartment rent is 420€... so, no.

Yeah our appartment comes to 450€ a month, I think the cheapest you can realistically go down to is about 300€~.

In my current situation I dont me and my partner could survive on that as we have pets and are paying off a few bills, the dog currently costs us around 150€ a month (food+outstanding medical bill.) If we had no pets etc it would be fine, but then my partner would be horribly depressed.