Your first mistake is assuming you can get a minimum wage job for 40/hr (with benefits?). Maybe you can get 2 20hr/week jobs with no insurance, if you can schedule them right and travel between them fast enough.
> renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD
A room in a rooming house where I live costs $400/month, so I find this pretty suspect. Where is this extremely low COL city? Or is this assuming you have 3 roommates?
> With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costing another $350, there's still plenty of space
$350/month for food seems low presuming you're working 40+ hours/week at multiple places. I'm assuming you're going to end up buying some prepared food at some point because you're run off your feet.
Your expenses don't include a car - does this extremely low COL city have an amazing public transit system that will help you get to your not-9-5 shifts? Or are you going to spend an hour waiting for the bus each way? How do you swing that if you have two jobs?
Assuming you don't have benefits, you better not take any prescription medication, or need glasses, or sustain any injuries. Even if you do, what's your co-pay like?
You still haven't purchased any clothes, shoes, any sort of entertainment, or enjoyed your life in any way. You need to wait until you're 65 to begin to live your life in any meaningful way, assuming you made it that far. And you certainly don't have kids to help take care of you!
As I mentioned, elsewhere, this is in Israel - and clearly not a HCL city like Tel Aviv. While I'm not the example, I pay less than this for many things, simply because of city I live in. My cell, with 250GB of data (as an example) is 29 NIS - about $9 USD.
Prescription medication, and glasses are covered by our equivalent of HMOs. Depending on income levels these are literally free. There are no copays - we have socialised medicine.
Yesterday, I bought a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at Fox, the local store. Their cost - 55 NIS (that's ~16 USD). For a further data point, a monthly inter-city transit pass costs ~256 NIS so < $77. It also takes an hour to get from a low cost of living city, to a HCL city where one is paid more than these minimums.
Again, I don't think that someone doing this would have a high quality of life. I'm just saying that it is very possible - but it depends on many things.
Good analysis. I'd like to add the cost of change. At some point you will move places or change jobs. You will have periods of less income and more spendings. This adds up. A few months of saving evaporate.
Your first mistake is assuming you can get a minimum wage job for 40/hr (with benefits?). Maybe you can get 2 20hr/week jobs with no insurance, if you can schedule them right and travel between them fast enough.
> renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD
A room in a rooming house where I live costs $400/month, so I find this pretty suspect. Where is this extremely low COL city? Or is this assuming you have 3 roommates?
> With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costing another $350, there's still plenty of space
$350/month for food seems low presuming you're working 40+ hours/week at multiple places. I'm assuming you're going to end up buying some prepared food at some point because you're run off your feet.
Your expenses don't include a car - does this extremely low COL city have an amazing public transit system that will help you get to your not-9-5 shifts? Or are you going to spend an hour waiting for the bus each way? How do you swing that if you have two jobs?
Assuming you don't have benefits, you better not take any prescription medication, or need glasses, or sustain any injuries. Even if you do, what's your co-pay like?
You still haven't purchased any clothes, shoes, any sort of entertainment, or enjoyed your life in any way. You need to wait until you're 65 to begin to live your life in any meaningful way, assuming you made it that far. And you certainly don't have kids to help take care of you!