It's Easy To Live On Less When You Start Out With A Lot

So I joked with my therapist this week that the company behind Lexapro should adopt the slogan"Lexapro--making you not give a shit about other people's stupidity since 2002!" but I think I need a larger dose to let this slide. Yahoo has this article up about living on 25% of your income, and it's such bullshit. I know the SF Bay area is an expensive place to live, but $1900 a month is still a fair amount of money. The woman profiled also still has an emergency fund, and I'd assume other secondary assets like a wardrobe and household goods from when she was making $8,000 a month, although she's also depicted as being a free spender before. She's also single--it's a lot easier to make it on less without those pesky dependents.

It's a hell of a lot harder to climb up financially than it is to downsize. You're always waiting for something unexpected that will wipe out your savings. And constantly rising costs again stretch you--public transit's going up here in July again, and I think they will cut the #1 bus that I take down to the Capitol because much of the route is paralleled by the light rail. It's all just luck in a lot of ways. And I'm well off these days, although I am a state employee and am starting to worry about another round of layoffs. But I'm well off because I am making a god salary and I have been able to cut my mandatory expenses way down.