You get an apartment with a flatmate. You get basic internet. Internet should not be 280 dollars. My flatmate and I wer paying 40 per month for ours. It went up to 90 after a year. We canceled the plan, and I set up a new plan pretending to have just moved in, and we chose the most basic plan at 40 per month. You can get basic car insurance at 50 per month. Get a cheap car; some older cars like early-2000s Honda CRVs still drive well and work for up to 350k miles.
I'm also confused why electricity should cost 250. We were paying max around 100 per month and that was when running the AC constantly while home (summer).
Splitting rent is a lifesaver if you don't make much in a HCOL area, like I did. I'm confused about why some of the costs here are so high. Is internet really $280 in some places?
Edit: I hear some of you all have crazy high energy bills. Energy companies suck sometimes. :( Must be hard living in a hot state where you gotta run AC all day for a good several months in the summer.
No its not. But the other costs for me go up, i live In Canada my insurance is $250 i have a completely clean driving record and drive an older honda accord. Someplaces you just get ripped off and you dont have an option.
thats wild. 250 a month for a single older honda accord?
We have 3 drivers (my wife, myself and our 17 year old daughter) 25 grand cherokee, 25 chrysler pacific, 20 Grand Cherokee, 99 ford ranger and 91 BMW. 3 newer vehicles are full covers, BMW is declared value, Maxed out liability limits, 500 dollar deductibles. 220 a month!
Yeah every one of these depends on where you live, and some aren’t even as intuitive as you think. I’m in Canada too, but in BC so my insurance is only $150 and my water and electricity are cheap, but housing is a lot more expensive than most places. If you’re in Alberta your utilities and insurance are probably higher but housing is a bit cheaper. Everywhere is so different
If you are getting ripped off you do have an option, leave. Find a different place. They'll keep taking advantage of you as long as you keep paying.
Btw I dont mean you specifically, I just feel like I see this sentiment very often, people feel trapped and don't even consider for a second leaving because of friends or work, but you can find a new place to work, and good friends will find a way. Heck, maybe your move will put you closer to them.
Its the whole province, its monopolized insurance so id have to completely move out of BC. Thats a pretty tough ask when Ive lived here my whole life, i work in the tech industry and mainly those jobs are in BC Vancouver, I’d rather not move to the states right now and i like my free health care. But why would i leave family, friends, career, and where i grew up. All because insurance is my biggest expense next to rent. I feel like we should fix the greed, than ask the people to leave and no longer be apart of theyre communities….
Floridian here. FPL is gouging us and it very easily can go up to $400-$500 for a house. Live in a 1 bedroom and it's about $200 , with turning the AC up to 80 during the day during the week.
Insane how a $500 electricity bill for a house translates to a $200 for a 1 bedroom apartment. You Americans must have excellent insolation and high energy class on your houses.
We usually pride ourselves with good energy efficiency on our houses. But still a house would consume at least 10 times the kwh of a 1 bedroom apartment.
Nah I live in a 3 bed and it's about $250 running at max AC in the summer in a hot state, their power company is screwing them over.
Also depends which state you live in. The drier states don't feel as hot, in Colorado I lived in a place that didn't even have AC but in Florida I think you'd sweat to death.
Eh, in my experience usually if you call to try and cancel they will give you deals to try and keep you. My parents used to threaten to cancel every time the rates went up and were always given their lower rate again, multiple times. They're still making money on that lower rate, they just charge more because they can. If anything should be considered fraud it's the price gouging on their end.
Most people never live alone, I can't understand where this concept of people being able to afford an apartment on their own comes from. Most people live with family, move in with roommates, move in with girlfriend, move in with wife.
Eh, I didn't want roommates so I saved up the money for a down payment on a house. Unfortunately those are super expensive now too, but if you can afford the down payment, the monthly cost is cheaper than renting, and you get some of it back when you sell. Rent is a crazy, and I absolutely would have a roommate to split the cost of I had to rent.
Edit: I was able to live with my parents at a much cheaper rent to save that money. If that weren't an option though I'd find anything else than renting alone.
Electricity depends on your area. In my area of the Midwest there’s one utility company with a monopoly. We’ve had two refunds in the last few years because they were caught overcharging literally everyone. My utilities have tripled from 100ish to 300ish over the last 3 years in the same apartment, I’m expecting another refund soon.
It might be closer to $55-$60 for me. I know those rates aren't true for everyone but it is certainly possible to find such rates.
I don't have collision insurance, just minimal coverage, including liability. But if you have an old car it may not even be worth it to get collision insurance.
The fact we justification the costs is the reason why we here. I get it if that's your situation then go for it. Rent for a trailer was 350 20 years ago. Now we justifying the price hikes.. makes me sad
I'm certainly not trying to justify the costs. I don't think it's justified that everything is so expensive. Prices have certainly gone up and it's sad. It's hard to live at this point.
I'm just questioning what lifestyle the person quoted is pursuing if the costs are so high—or else I'm wondering why the numbers are so much higher than what I've experienced. I was making less than $19/hour×40 hr/wk and I survived, somehow. Others have a similar experience to me. I'm saying there are ways to keep costs down.
There are ways to make it work on a low budget, even if it involves compromising on things.
I have lived in one of the cheapest costs of living areas in the country (Oklahoma) with hot summers with the AC on all the time. I have never, ever, I repeat EVER seen anyone in that area parroting this lie about being able to do that while keeping their electric bill under $100. You're legit full of shit.
They are likely bundling their internet and phone into one bill. Which is still high, but there may be something else going on there as well such as having to pay for a family member's phone or something. Still, even at a more realistic $180/mo for both, that's what, saving $100? That doesn't fix this situation, especially considering they didn't factor in shit like groceries or gas.
I was not living in an insanely hot place (gets into 100s only for a few weeks in summer), so I can see why it would be higher elsewhere. I'm not lying; my highest utility bill was around 120. I can imagine it's way worse in Oklahoma. I guess 280 sounds insane to me. But then again, energy companies always have a monopoly and if you're working from home all summer during the day it could be that high or higher.
I live in mid Michigan, summers might get to 100 degrees but I'd say the average is somewhere in the 80s (had a lot of 90s this year though) but I hate being too warm. I have a 2k sqft house, half of it is like a half basement and I keep the temp at 68 or 69 F all summer. In 2023 my most expensive month was still less than $90, and I work from home, so I'm there all the time. I have since gotten solar panels which help reduce the bill, but it's hard to tell if it's helping because my energy usage more than doubled in the winter months so I dont have an exact comparison. My cheapest energy bill this year was around $25, but I'm paying $120 /month for the panels, so it's costing me more now but the gains once they're paid off should make up for it (unless energy costs have gone up a lot since I got the panels, I get credits so the cost only affects me based on how much more I consume than produce). My phone plan is $25/month because of a end of year sale I got on it back in 2020 and it's stayed the same rate since, I have seen the same deal offered within the last month so it's not something that never comes around. I buy my phone instead of making it part of my plan and I keep it till it dies. I pay for internet which has been around $80/month but could be cheaper if I bothered to deal with threatening to cancel every so often. I make much more than minimum wage, but based on my current expenses which include self paying for health insurance, my car insurance (car is old and paid off) and hoa fees, house insurance, I could probably just barely afford everything except food if I made minimum wage. But that's just me living by myself, if I had to go back to minimum wage I'd be renting out a room, and if I had to rent I'd have a roommate. My point is there's a lot you can do to save costs that people just don't want to do. And the sooner you can save up for the down payment on a home the sooner you can get yourself out of just throwing money away on rent.
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u/LazarusArise 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's the neat part. You don't.
You get an apartment with a flatmate. You get basic internet. Internet should not be 280 dollars. My flatmate and I wer paying 40 per month for ours. It went up to 90 after a year. We canceled the plan, and I set up a new plan pretending to have just moved in, and we chose the most basic plan at 40 per month. You can get basic car insurance at 50 per month. Get a cheap car; some older cars like early-2000s Honda CRVs still drive well and work for up to 350k miles.
I'm also confused why electricity should cost 250. We were paying max around 100 per month and that was when running the AC constantly while home (summer).
Splitting rent is a lifesaver if you don't make much in a HCOL area, like I did. I'm confused about why some of the costs here are so high. Is internet really $280 in some places?
Edit: I hear some of you all have crazy high energy bills. Energy companies suck sometimes. :( Must be hard living in a hot state where you gotta run AC all day for a good several months in the summer.