Quote from: 1Referee on October 25, 2016, 07:49:11 AM

Quote from: extrabyte on October 25, 2016, 07:41:44 AM

Living in some countries with $833 salary a month can not be enough because the renting of houses or flats are very expensive and the life standard is high which makes the income of people to be higher too.

Living in Western Europe, $833 is nearly just the cost of your house that you either pay as rent, or as mortgage. And then you only did that. You still have all other costs that you have to pay for. Especially a difficulty in the times where prices of goods only go up.

If I look at myself, then I solidly keep 30% of my salary as being savings. In previous years I could easily have 35-40% of my salary moved to my savings, but just because everything has gone up in price, different tax policies, I am only able to have the percentage sit at 30%. And that while I am doing exactly the same with my money as I have always done.

Well, I don't think it's standard to own / rent an entire house for just a single person. In most countries of Western Europe you can live from $833 as a single person if you can scale down your demands a little bit. You can easily rent an apartment for less than $400, than you have more than $400 left for insurances and food, which is sufficient to live a healthy life if you compare prices. If you have a girlfriend/wife that also earns that much and you two live together, you can live pretty comfortably as fixed costs tend to be lower if you share (a larger) space / energy.

For me, being able to keep 30% of your salary is luxury. I can only save about half of that. But I'm free of debt and consider myself a happy person. Despite not being wealthy I enjoy life very much. That's because I don't think that consumerism is a source of satisfaction - buying things to impress others was never important to me. What counts are positive experiences and good relationships. These are for free.

ya.ya.yo!