Adrianna Tan
Half of Reddit personal finance conversations are:
‘Can’t believe people can’t live on (some arbitrary amount)!’
And ‘I can’t even rent a shitty apt in the worst part of where I live on (some arbitrary amount)!’
‘Well just move to for a lower COL then!’
Yeah, where there are barely enough jobs that pay 0.5 * (some arbitrary amount) and it is objectively often worse for queer POC
Adrianna Tan
People should really think about how most people don’t want to leave family, job opportunities, to go somewhere they have no ties just for ‘lower COL’ (which can and does change quickly).
Then you’re truly fucked when you lose your remote job.
Adrianna Tan
Every major global city around the world has the exact same housing pressures and costs.
If you’re not experiencing extremely high costs of living, there probably aren’t the same degree of opportunities for an outside there. It’s a totally different convo for someone retiring or someone who is *from* the place.
If I weren’t living in San Francisco, I’d be living in my country on the side of the world where the housing costs and salaries are kind of the same.
Adrianna Tan
That’s not to say there’s nothing of value in your podunk city / town. Just that maybe there is a reason a home costs 100K there (you need to be extremely privileged to make much more than that, there).
People aren’t not coming to your podunk city / town because there aren’t better places to live than New York / San Francisco / Seattle / LA. It’s that the switching costs are extremely high, and once you make the move you can’t easily go back.
So you have to be motivated by something: a deep desire to buy cheap propert, a love for that community, family connections.
I have much better luck moving to any other big global city in the world than to some podunk city / town. That’s just the way it is.
Adrianna Tan
@chefraven people truly don’t account for the human and community costs.
ChefRaven
@skinnylatte we had a financial planner years ago, who kept trying to convince my husband and I that we should move to another state when we retire that’s cheaper.
So we’re supposed to leave our home, our community, the place where our children live and soon probably our grandchildren. My husband has lived in California his entire life and I have lived here for 40 years.
Not to mention the fact that our mortgage is cheaper than it would probably cost us to rent an apartment anywhere else.
Adrianna Tan
@gcvsa ooof, that sounds rough. I hope your time in public office will help with insurance and housing to an extent.
Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐
@skinnylatte I ended up living in Vermont because I was homeless and unemployed with nowhere to go, and this was the only place that a friend offered me a place to live.
Ten years later, I've been homeless in this town twice more, because of the extreme housing crisis and stagnant economy, but thankfully have been marginally housed for over 7 yrs.
I just ran for my first public office and won a 3-year term. I'm still living in poverty, underemployed, and brown and queer in a very white place.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.