April 21, 2009 • 22 mins
How much money does a person or a family need to live? Josh and Chuck are curious to find out, too. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to discover how needs, wants and peer pressure affect the amount of money we need to live.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from house stuff Works dot Com. Join Josh and Chuck,
the guys who bring you Stuff you should know, as
they take a trip around the world to help you
get smarter in a topsy turv economy. Check out the
all new super Stuff Guide to the Economy from house
(00:22):
stuff Works dot Com, available now exclusively on iTunes. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. Chuck is cracking up? What
is going on? Chuck? I just can't believe I said
that episode growth. Yeah, we can't repeat what Chuck just said.
He's a dirty, dirty boy. They're all gonna wonder. His
name is Charles W. Bryant. My name is Joshua M. Clark.
I go by Josh. He goes by Chuck or compass
(00:43):
head and chuckers Um, and this is stuff you should know.
Thanks for tuning into our podcast. Are you on uppers? Yeah? Okay,
I did a bunch of amial nitrate. Man, everything is weird.
Good for you, Thanks so, Chuck Um. Times are tough
right now. Indeed, as you know, they're particularly tough for me.
I am broke all the time, right, I know that. Actually,
(01:06):
we have this cool monthly Yeah you know that because
I like to bump money off a chunk cords in
a while. Um, we have this monthly expenses calculator on
the side. Have you been on it? It's it's unnerving.
It's got all this great stuff and you know, like
how much you estimate how much you spend on gas
a month, cable, your phone, insurance, all this, and then
(01:28):
you put in at the top your your monthly gross income.
Somehow I'm living on negative two and fifty four dollars
a month. That's awesome. I have no idea how I'm
still alive. But Uncle Sam has well, Uncle Sam's in
trouble too, but they take quite a bite. Well imagine
if I had put my net income in here, and
I'd be in the hole like a grand every morning
(01:49):
when I wake up. Um. But yeah, so, I mean,
like I said, times of tough. We're all very very
happy to be here at how stuff Works dot com.
How stuff Works dot Com. We love this place. I
love it. Seriously. Please don't fire un exactly as we know.
Remember we met that guy Chris in our in our
our podcast. Yeah, so no, I'm sorry. Our spoken word album.
(02:13):
I just got the Crop the Kakai from our producer Jerry.
She's like, I don't even say audiobook kid, um, but yeah,
so so it's a little rough right now. One of
the things I've learned is that as long as I
have gas in the car, beer and cigarettes, I'm set.
Because really, honestly, um, I have virtually discontinued eating. Like,
(02:36):
I don't eat breakfast. I rarely ate breakfast anyway. I
don't eat lunch um, and dinner is usually kind of small,
that kind of thing. Uh. And it's amazing how quick
your stomach shrinks, right. Um, you just I'm not hungry.
I'm rarely hungry, usually by about seven, which is when
I'll eat dinner. If I do, um, i'll be kind
(02:56):
of hungry. But if I just say no, I'm not
really hungry, it goes away. Sure, um and some coffee
and that helps. But the problem is is there's like
there's an arc where it's like, you know, appetitius suppressed,
appetiti supress, and then all of a sudden, the caffeine
just screams into your stomach and it really points out
how empty your stomach is, so you have to know
(03:17):
where the cut off point is, right. Um, but no,
I've been writing a lot of health articles lately, and
it turns out that there is a well known fact
and the medical establishment this isn't crack pop fringe stuff
that you're really unhealthy because you don't know that that
I will probably live longer than I normally would have
because of a calorie restricted diet, which we've talked about.
(03:40):
We have, and I have found out quite happily that
I accidentally fell uh backwards, thank you backwards, I'm like
hung up on profanity, uh into a calorie restricted diet
and I will live longer even smoking cigarettes. Well, good
luck with that, my thanks. But the point is is
(04:03):
I've found that you can't get by the very little money,
and um, that just so happens to be what we're
talking about right now. That was the longest setup in
the history of stuff. You should know, which is good
a new records. I wasn't knocking it. Did I get
a medal of it? Because I would totally pawn it
right now, Yeah, to my cigarette. So yeah, Josh, you
(04:23):
can get by then I think, what's the name of
the article? How much money do I Really Need to
Live Written by Jane, our colleague Jane McGrath, who is
our fine, fine financial and money writer, and she also
has her own podcast, Stuff you Missed in History Class
with Candice Gibson at the Tricks Extraordinary. Actually, no, it's
not Candice Gibson any longer. Our dear Candice got married
(04:45):
Candice Keener. Candice Keener now c K So, Chuck, what
what do we How much money do we need to live?
I know how much I need to live, But I mean,
as far as the government's concerned, don't they have some
sort of estimate that I may have heard of. I
think you're talking about out the poverty threshold. Yes, which,
again reading this article, that's a very little money that
(05:08):
the government considers the poverty line, right. I looked it
up in two thousand nine. For for a single person,
the government thinks you can get by in ten thousand,
eight hundred and thirty dollars a year. Yeah, you actually
lived below the poverty line one year? You didn't. I
did not too long ago. Wow, Chuck. This is when
I was in the film business and I was working
(05:28):
as a p A and I made very very little money.
But like with this article. I had very cheap apartment.
I had l a Yeah, there's such a thing there
was at the time. I've had a really good deal
going and uh, you know how it works, dude. I
didn't buy much food. I thought really cheap food. Uh,
and I was able to do it. I was shocked
(05:49):
when I got my UM statement at the end of
the year. I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
I lived on that and I didn't feel like I
really missed out on that. That's crazy. Well, it's because
you're hanging out with Matthew McConaughey the whole time. True, Yeah, Maddie.
So that that's that's for one person, ten grand and
thirty dollars um. That's absolute poverty, which they've been Uh,
they've been looking at this kind of stuff since the
(06:09):
nineteen sixties. Right. Well, let me say, also, a family
of four as far as in two thousand nine supposedly
can get by on two thousand, fifty dollars. A family
of four. That's insane to me. But yeah, so this
is this is uh, this all comes from the sixties.
There's an analyst named Mali Orshansky, and he came up
with the poverty line. Right. Basically, what he did was
(06:31):
he estimated the total annual cost of a healthy diet
in America, and then he multiplied it by three because
he'd read in nineteen fifty five U. S. D. A
Report that said that Americans spend about one third of
their income on food, So that would make sense. You
figure out how much food you need and then multiplied
by three, and then you have the poverty line. That's
the least amount of money you need to make. And
(06:53):
the bureau adopted that. They like, this is a great job. True,
and unfortunately they've been using it ever since with very
little adjustment. Right, they ad just for inflation, the inflation
of uh increases in in the price for food, that
kind of thing. But really it's still based on that
original formula, right, with the one third number. I think
(07:13):
that's what's causing a lot of issues. Some people think
say that one seventh of your income is what you
actually spend on food now. And also you have to
take into account like back in the in the fifties
and early sixties, you didn't have to get a loaned
by a car, right they become exponentially more expensive. You
also didn't have cable TV. You also didn't have wireless internet.
(07:36):
You also didn't have cell phones any internet for that matter.
That is true, Thanks for that one. We have so
many more bills today that the formula should have been
changed years and years ago, right, but the bills. I
think this is the crux of the matter is want
versus need, And that's kind of the crux of the
article is do you need wireless internet? People think they
(07:57):
can't live without their cell phone, but not too long ago,
all of us lived without a shell phone and it
wasn't that big of a deal. Well, there's this thing
called the relative needs. Do you remember when we talked
about the five day weekend? We talked about relative needs
and it was, uh, like, say your neighbor gets a
really big TV, and all of a sudden, you need
a TV. But you need a really big TV. Right,
that's a relative needs. But not all relative needs are
(08:20):
kind of want to grabby needs, like I need to
beat my neighbor. They also reflect the competitiveness that we
have in the marketplace and in the labor force. Right,
Like if you have a cell phone and the guy
who's up for a job next to you has only
a landline, and has to go home or use a
pay phone to stay connected. Who's going to really come
(08:41):
out on top or you might just miss the one
call that you need, you know. Sure, Yeah, So I
mean there there are certain things that you can say, yeah,
that's kind of frivolous. We did without them, but the
fact is everybody else has them. You kind of have
to have him to stay competitive. Like, um, I've been
trying to find any way I can to cut down
on a monthly expenses. In one clear way is to
(09:02):
just get rid of my cable. But I'm not going
to get rid of my cable entirely because I still
need wireless internet because I work at home a lot,
you know, and we we have a research based job,
so we need the internet exactly, and and the cell phone. Like, yeah,
you can pare it down, like I could have a
pretty bare bones um uh cell phone plan and it
would save a few bucks, But if you really look
(09:22):
at it's like, oh, I'm saving like thirty forty bucks
a month, which technically adds up over the course of
a year, but really you're like, ah, that I just
went through that in gas, you know. So it's kind
of a frustrating balancing act, trying to pare down monthly expenses. Right, yes,
absolutely so. So what are some of the things you
can do their chuck if you want to really look
(09:44):
at how to live on the least amount of money. Well, Josh,
I was raised by my mother and father, but namely,
my mother raised our family of five on a elementary
school principal salary. In the it was just your dad working,
just my dad. My mom quit teaching to raise the
kids and then went back to teaching later once I
(10:05):
was older, and she did a sterling job. By the way,
thank you, thanks mom. But my mom is and what
wasn't is a master um economist micro economist. She was
able to She clipped coupons, which is one of the
things that we highly recommend. I mean, she had a
box filed with coupons, alphae tized, it was already organized.
(10:26):
We shopped at the discount to clothe the ears, like Marshall, Like,
my mom was pretty good like that too. And she
could never understand why I would I just refuse to
wear nights of the round table clothing. She's like, it
looks exactly the same, Like, no, see that that's a
little flag was supposed to be the polo. It looked
just like the polo thing, except instead of a polo mallet,
(10:47):
the top of the mallet it was a flag. And
I gotta tell you, when you're eleven, every kid around
you sees that flag. Hero win on that flag. Well
try me, buddy. I Not only that, but in my family,
we shopped at the store that had the the flaws
in the clothing. Oh an outlet store. Yeah, well now
it was an outlet store. It was called I can't
(11:09):
remember what it's called, but factory store. No liquidator, No
I don't, I'm out of It's basically like you'll it'll
be the name brand and be like, hey look at
those Converse shoes, but they're missing two eye holes, or
your your your genes are missing a zipper, that kind
of thing. Well, what's funny is as I've grown older,
I've come to see the value and stuff like that.
Absolutely like who pays full price, who pays retail? Not me?
(11:31):
And that goes back to my point is growing up,
I always felt like I was maybe missing out here
and there, and not that we were I mean poor
by any means. Always felt like I had everything I needed,
but I didn't get the members only jacket, and I
didn't get the parachute pants, and now it's no no.
I think, God yeah for my mom not getting you
(11:52):
those things. And the end result is as an adult,
I have a natural inclination toward being a little more
frugal and watching my money in some ways. But I'm
also my father's son who is notorious for blowing money
on flights of fancy, so I always I also have that,
So it's a nice balance. That is a good balance.
Like I won't I'll walk around behind my wife turning
(12:12):
out lights, and I'll try and recycle everything under the
sun and reuse it. But I'll go out and like
blow five hundred bucks on the guitar without even thinking,
and he will people I have been there with him
when he did. It was a great guitar. What was it? Uh, well,
it's a nice guitar. Okay, he Chuck's afraid you're gonna
break into his house and take his guitar, So coupons wait.
(12:33):
Let me also say that I want to give a
shout out to my mom, who was a very very
great woman at being thrifty but also making her kids
feel like we were rich as I've grown older, I've realized, Yeah,
not everybody ate turkey loaf and drank green kool aid
for dinner, you know what I mean. Yeah, So now
I'm kind of like, hats off, it's off the mom's
mother stays approaching. Let's just yeah, here's two more So,
(12:54):
clipping coupons is a good way, Josh buying generic. I know,
I go that was a great grocery store in Atlanta
called Kroger, and I think I don't know if they're
nationwide another and yeah, they're pretty big. But man, I
buy the Kroger brands. It's always cheaper. It's just as good.
Especially they're delicious private stock brand, right, Chuck, do you
remember the generic? Like the generic brand. There's a brand
(13:17):
that was like it was a like it was a
white box and it would say in black block letters
brand Flakes and then there was a UPC code and
that was it. Did your see the beer? No, it
was great. My first this is when my brother lived
in Los Angeles, my first visit ever to l A.
Me and some friends from U g A went and
stayed with my brother. We went to the store and
(13:41):
to get some beer, and literally the first thing where
I went to was the six pack of white cans
that said beer and we loaded up. It was awful?
Was it bad? Could you stomach it? Did you finish it? Well?
Of course I was in college. I have never seen that.
I would love. I'm going on eBay find well, it's
not around anymore, and somebody's got it in their garage somewhere.
(14:02):
Probably yeah, some Yeah, we could probably find some Billy
beer on there. Oh yeah, from Billy Carter some alright,
so check, we've got coupons, we've got generic. There's also
a Cooking at home is huge. Number one. If you're
like out and about and you're not cooking, but you're poor,
(14:23):
you're say goodbye to vegetables in your diet because you know,
no fast food place sells vegetables, and if they do,
they're no longer nutritious. They have been slathered in fat
and deep fried so long that you might as well
just eat, you know, blocks of cheese. That's it. Um.
So yeah, you if you can cook at home. Number one,
(14:43):
it's cheaper. Number two's healthier. Um. And in the article,
uh Jane cites a source that that says that if
if you bring your own lunch to work every day
you can, you can save about nine and sixty bucks
a year. Struck me as very low, because don't hear
you can't get lunch for less than ten bucks. I
(15:04):
let's go with ten because the mass a lot easier.
But that comes to if you go out every day,
which there's a lot of people who work with us
that do um and that's like bucks a year. That's
a lot of cheese. I feel guilty when I eat
out lunch, Yeah I do. I feel like it's a
complete waste of money. If I don't like bring my
sandwich or something and I'm forced to eat out, I'll
(15:27):
try and skip lunch. But yeah, it makes me like
I don't want to go home and say, you know,
it's been twelve dollars on lunch. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
I don't. I don't either. I know what you mean.
I value a buck. I'll treat myself sometimes generally I
don't eat lunch. I'm a Gordon Gecko adherent. But let
me give you a little tip. And I know you
already know this. If you ever happen to be hanging
around the courtyard downstairs around twelve twelve thirty, you see
(15:50):
rocks in read strike up a conversation with her because
she has a policy of buying lunch or whoever she
runs into while she's out there. She bought me lunch
one day, she bought me lunch twice. Well, we just
needed time. This better alternate. Yeah, we can both just
be there with big dough eyes like hey Roxanne. So yeah,
need versus want, Josh. That's what it comes down to.
If you're uh suffering in these tough times, I think
(16:11):
what you need to do is take a good hard
look at your finances, break it down, line it, out
it and buy item and really think about it. Do
I need a cable or can I get rid of
it for the next six or eight months? Especially with
the new digital transmissions apparently that opened up If it works,
it opened up a lot more channels than than it
was available with just ravities, and it's a lot clearer too.
(16:31):
So that's something. I went without cable a couple of
times in my life for extended periods, and I thought
I was gonna miss it, man, But after a little while,
you you can just kind of forget. It's like not eating. Yeah,
I've done it a bunch of choice before, and you
get used to it really quickly. Right, Although we're not
saying that you should not eat people that's Josh's bag. Nice,
thanks Chuck. It's not healthy. We're not encouraging that. So yeah,
(16:54):
I think the irony is in this article we never
really say how much it takes. It's more like a
relative thing. Yeah, So, as you were saying, I think
it's it is time for us to take a good
long look at our finances. It seems like we we
were coming out of a phase where, you know, just
conspicuous consumption is a thing in the past. See somebody
(17:16):
riding around in a hummer, It's like, did you miss
the memo? Like, I realize you can't sell that thing
to anybody or give it away for free. But it
seems like at least the US is kind of taking
this new tech where we're getting a little more frugal,
and you know it, there's a big difference between you know,
being wealthy and rich and and you know, being able
(17:37):
to take care of yourself and your family. And it's
good that it's in I feel it. Feel good about that.
And the other thing is is don't forget to save.
Saving is huge. It's an important thing where you are
not a nation of savers, and apparently it's we're becoming
more and more of a nation of savers, which is heartening,
is a good thing. Yeah. You know what I hope, dude,
is that this whole recession blows over and that we're
(17:58):
all better for it in the end. Ultimately we will.
But you know, like the uh, the Great Depression era
grandparents that everybody gripes about, it's like kind okay, yes,
I understand, you can use this coffee can for eighty
different things, and you have been. We're that generation, dude,
we're in in the making. We're going to annoy the
(18:18):
kids that come behind us badly. Yeah. It always works. Yeah,
So look forward, you whipper snappers to hearing from Chuck
and I because we're gonna tell you all about how
bad it was. And opp nine. I'd like to also say,
if you want to learn more about, um, how much
money you need to live, you can go to UH.
You can type that into how stuff works dot com
in our handy search bar, and there's a monthly income
(18:40):
or monthly expenses calculators and there's a bunch of really
great personal finance links in that article. It's a good one.
By again by Jay McGrath. Um, so let's do the
blog thing, Chuck, right, Uh, speedy plug. We have a
blog now. We've been writing on it. We have people
uh posting comments and it's a lot of fun and
we encourage you to check it out on the right
out of the homepage. And also, I'm glad you said
(19:01):
that because you just gave me my new hotel pseudonym
what is it? Speedy Club. That's pretty good. We actually
had a bunch of people right in with suggestions for Yeah,
we need to do that for listener mills because there
were a lot of them that were French. Didn't you
notice that? No? Ye, so should we? And quickly our
audio spoken word record album are spoken word album called
(19:25):
The Stuff You Should Know, super Stuff Guide to the Economy.
It's up on iTunes worth every penny we're coming to realize, um.
And you can type in super Stuffed and the search
bar of your iTunes while while you're searching the iTunes
store and it should be the first thing that comes up.
And if you want to buy it, great for you. Right,
help support Josh and Jerry and Chuck. So we begging
(19:47):
for Nichols anytime soon is it time. It's time for
listening rail. Okay, Josh, I just have one today. This
is from Patrick. Yeah. Uh. Patrick was writing in about
dejab wu, the deja episode. He wanted to respond because
we talked about biological deja vu, and he has some insight.
(20:11):
He has an affliction and this is really odd. He's
had it since he was twelve. Now, occasionally I'll experience
an intense sensation of deja vu, almost like a dream.
I remember some senior dialogue that feels incredibly familiar. It
sounds like normal dejab It's so far right. However, during
this episode, I feel dizzy, start to mumble, and I
usually need to brace myself against something for about twenty
(20:33):
to thirty seconds. I recover. I have a slight headache,
and the dizzy spells occur in clusters, so I'll have
five or six of these in a given day and
then not experience them for a month or so. However,
I'll just have one really intense deja vu episode that
will cause me to completely lose consciousness for about thirty seconds. Okay,
can I interject here? What is this person named Patrick? Patrick?
(20:55):
I would like to strongly urge you to go see
a neurologist, like, immediately, I'm not done, okay, pay attention
to things. Uh some other weird traits. These happen once
a month, almost to the day, which is interesting. After
the episode is over, he can't remember anything about it. Uh,
no memories of it. He attempts to write things down
or describe them while they're happening, but it's just gibberish.
(21:17):
Usually happens in the morning, but in all kinds of situations, standing, sitting, running, stressed,
calm whatever. He's gone to the doctor. No one can
explain it, he said to E. E. G. S And
an M. R. I. And various theories have included seizures
in her ear problems, salt deficiencies, and low blood pressure. Luckily,
it doesn't interfere too much with my daily life, aside
(21:38):
from interrupted conversation every now and then. Patrick. Long story short,
Patrick is the stigmata? Is he? I think? So that's
my theory. He's very open. I appreciate Patrick here. Doctor,
I hope you don't have anything really wrong with you.
I mean, as long as you're not going bonkers or
you know, it's not you're not hurting yourself, that's that's cool, right,
(22:00):
so yeah, that's my professional medical opinion of course my
formal trainings and pediatrics. So right, he did actually ask
us to, uh to posit a opinion on it, but
we can't do that. I did no idea, I already did. Yeah,
but that's funk. Okay, So that was that. That was Patrick.
We appreciate you, Patrick the Stigmata and uh, if you're
(22:21):
a stigmata, you suffer from some sort of religious affliction,
or you just want to say hi, you can send
us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com brought to you
(22:42):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from house stuff Works dot Com. Join Josh and Chuck,
the guys who bring you Stuff you should know, as
they take a trip around the world to help you
get smarter in a topsy turv economy. Check out the
all new super Stuff Guide to the Economy from house
(00:22):
stuff Works dot Com, available now exclusively on iTunes. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. Chuck is cracking up? What
is going on? Chuck? I just can't believe I said
that episode growth. Yeah, we can't repeat what Chuck just said.
He's a dirty, dirty boy. They're all gonna wonder. His
name is Charles W. Bryant. My name is Joshua M. Clark.
I go by Josh. He goes by Chuck or compass
(00:43):
head and chuckers Um, and this is stuff you should know.
Thanks for tuning into our podcast. Are you on uppers? Yeah? Okay,
I did a bunch of amial nitrate. Man, everything is weird.
Good for you, Thanks so, Chuck Um. Times are tough
right now. Indeed, as you know, they're particularly tough for me.
I am broke all the time, right, I know that. Actually,
(01:06):
we have this cool monthly Yeah you know that because
I like to bump money off a chunk cords in
a while. Um, we have this monthly expenses calculator on
the side. Have you been on it? It's it's unnerving.
It's got all this great stuff and you know, like
how much you estimate how much you spend on gas
a month, cable, your phone, insurance, all this, and then
(01:28):
you put in at the top your your monthly gross income.
Somehow I'm living on negative two and fifty four dollars
a month. That's awesome. I have no idea how I'm
still alive. But Uncle Sam has well, Uncle Sam's in
trouble too, but they take quite a bite. Well imagine
if I had put my net income in here, and
I'd be in the hole like a grand every morning
(01:49):
when I wake up. Um. But yeah, so, I mean,
like I said, times of tough. We're all very very
happy to be here at how stuff Works dot com.
How stuff Works dot Com. We love this place. I
love it. Seriously. Please don't fire un exactly as we know.
Remember we met that guy Chris in our in our
our podcast. Yeah, so no, I'm sorry. Our spoken word album.
(02:13):
I just got the Crop the Kakai from our producer Jerry.
She's like, I don't even say audiobook kid, um, but yeah,
so so it's a little rough right now. One of
the things I've learned is that as long as I
have gas in the car, beer and cigarettes, I'm set.
Because really, honestly, um, I have virtually discontinued eating. Like,
(02:36):
I don't eat breakfast. I rarely ate breakfast anyway. I
don't eat lunch um, and dinner is usually kind of small,
that kind of thing. Uh. And it's amazing how quick
your stomach shrinks, right. Um, you just I'm not hungry.
I'm rarely hungry, usually by about seven, which is when
I'll eat dinner. If I do, um, i'll be kind
(02:56):
of hungry. But if I just say no, I'm not
really hungry, it goes away. Sure, um and some coffee
and that helps. But the problem is is there's like
there's an arc where it's like, you know, appetitius suppressed,
appetiti supress, and then all of a sudden, the caffeine
just screams into your stomach and it really points out
how empty your stomach is, so you have to know
(03:17):
where the cut off point is, right. Um, but no,
I've been writing a lot of health articles lately, and
it turns out that there is a well known fact
and the medical establishment this isn't crack pop fringe stuff
that you're really unhealthy because you don't know that that
I will probably live longer than I normally would have
because of a calorie restricted diet, which we've talked about.
(03:40):
We have, and I have found out quite happily that
I accidentally fell uh backwards, thank you backwards, I'm like
hung up on profanity, uh into a calorie restricted diet
and I will live longer even smoking cigarettes. Well, good
luck with that, my thanks. But the point is is
(04:03):
I've found that you can't get by the very little money,
and um, that just so happens to be what we're
talking about right now. That was the longest setup in
the history of stuff. You should know, which is good
a new records. I wasn't knocking it. Did I get
a medal of it? Because I would totally pawn it
right now, Yeah, to my cigarette. So yeah, Josh, you
(04:23):
can get by then I think, what's the name of
the article? How much money do I Really Need to
Live Written by Jane, our colleague Jane McGrath, who is
our fine, fine financial and money writer, and she also
has her own podcast, Stuff you Missed in History Class
with Candice Gibson at the Tricks Extraordinary. Actually, no, it's
not Candice Gibson any longer. Our dear Candice got married
(04:45):
Candice Keener. Candice Keener now c K So, Chuck, what
what do we How much money do we need to live?
I know how much I need to live, But I mean,
as far as the government's concerned, don't they have some
sort of estimate that I may have heard of. I
think you're talking about out the poverty threshold. Yes, which,
again reading this article, that's a very little money that
(05:08):
the government considers the poverty line, right. I looked it
up in two thousand nine. For for a single person,
the government thinks you can get by in ten thousand,
eight hundred and thirty dollars a year. Yeah, you actually
lived below the poverty line one year? You didn't. I
did not too long ago. Wow, Chuck. This is when
I was in the film business and I was working
(05:28):
as a p A and I made very very little money.
But like with this article. I had very cheap apartment.
I had l a Yeah, there's such a thing there
was at the time. I've had a really good deal
going and uh, you know how it works, dude. I
didn't buy much food. I thought really cheap food. Uh,
and I was able to do it. I was shocked
(05:49):
when I got my UM statement at the end of
the year. I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
I lived on that and I didn't feel like I
really missed out on that. That's crazy. Well, it's because
you're hanging out with Matthew McConaughey the whole time. True, Yeah, Maddie.
So that that's that's for one person, ten grand and
thirty dollars um. That's absolute poverty, which they've been Uh,
they've been looking at this kind of stuff since the
(06:09):
nineteen sixties. Right. Well, let me say, also, a family
of four as far as in two thousand nine supposedly
can get by on two thousand, fifty dollars. A family
of four. That's insane to me. But yeah, so this
is this is uh, this all comes from the sixties.
There's an analyst named Mali Orshansky, and he came up
with the poverty line. Right. Basically, what he did was
(06:31):
he estimated the total annual cost of a healthy diet
in America, and then he multiplied it by three because
he'd read in nineteen fifty five U. S. D. A
Report that said that Americans spend about one third of
their income on food, So that would make sense. You
figure out how much food you need and then multiplied
by three, and then you have the poverty line. That's
the least amount of money you need to make. And
(06:53):
the bureau adopted that. They like, this is a great job. True,
and unfortunately they've been using it ever since with very
little adjustment. Right, they ad just for inflation, the inflation
of uh increases in in the price for food, that
kind of thing. But really it's still based on that
original formula, right, with the one third number. I think
(07:13):
that's what's causing a lot of issues. Some people think
say that one seventh of your income is what you
actually spend on food now. And also you have to
take into account like back in the in the fifties
and early sixties, you didn't have to get a loaned
by a car, right they become exponentially more expensive. You
also didn't have cable TV. You also didn't have wireless internet.
(07:36):
You also didn't have cell phones any internet for that matter.
That is true, Thanks for that one. We have so
many more bills today that the formula should have been
changed years and years ago, right, but the bills. I
think this is the crux of the matter is want
versus need, And that's kind of the crux of the
article is do you need wireless internet? People think they
(07:57):
can't live without their cell phone, but not too long ago,
all of us lived without a shell phone and it
wasn't that big of a deal. Well, there's this thing
called the relative needs. Do you remember when we talked
about the five day weekend? We talked about relative needs
and it was, uh, like, say your neighbor gets a
really big TV, and all of a sudden, you need
a TV. But you need a really big TV. Right,
that's a relative needs. But not all relative needs are
(08:20):
kind of want to grabby needs, like I need to
beat my neighbor. They also reflect the competitiveness that we
have in the marketplace and in the labor force. Right,
Like if you have a cell phone and the guy
who's up for a job next to you has only
a landline, and has to go home or use a
pay phone to stay connected. Who's going to really come
(08:41):
out on top or you might just miss the one
call that you need, you know. Sure, Yeah, So I
mean there there are certain things that you can say, yeah,
that's kind of frivolous. We did without them, but the
fact is everybody else has them. You kind of have
to have him to stay competitive. Like, um, I've been
trying to find any way I can to cut down
on a monthly expenses. In one clear way is to
(09:02):
just get rid of my cable. But I'm not going
to get rid of my cable entirely because I still
need wireless internet because I work at home a lot,
you know, and we we have a research based job,
so we need the internet exactly, and and the cell phone. Like, yeah,
you can pare it down, like I could have a
pretty bare bones um uh cell phone plan and it
would save a few bucks, But if you really look
(09:22):
at it's like, oh, I'm saving like thirty forty bucks
a month, which technically adds up over the course of
a year, but really you're like, ah, that I just
went through that in gas, you know. So it's kind
of a frustrating balancing act, trying to pare down monthly expenses. Right, yes,
absolutely so. So what are some of the things you
can do their chuck if you want to really look
(09:44):
at how to live on the least amount of money. Well, Josh,
I was raised by my mother and father, but namely,
my mother raised our family of five on a elementary
school principal salary. In the it was just your dad working,
just my dad. My mom quit teaching to raise the
kids and then went back to teaching later once I
(10:05):
was older, and she did a sterling job. By the way,
thank you, thanks mom. But my mom is and what
wasn't is a master um economist micro economist. She was
able to She clipped coupons, which is one of the
things that we highly recommend. I mean, she had a
box filed with coupons, alphae tized, it was already organized.
(10:26):
We shopped at the discount to clothe the ears, like Marshall, Like,
my mom was pretty good like that too. And she
could never understand why I would I just refuse to
wear nights of the round table clothing. She's like, it
looks exactly the same, Like, no, see that that's a
little flag was supposed to be the polo. It looked
just like the polo thing, except instead of a polo mallet,
(10:47):
the top of the mallet it was a flag. And
I gotta tell you, when you're eleven, every kid around
you sees that flag. Hero win on that flag. Well
try me, buddy. I Not only that, but in my family,
we shopped at the store that had the the flaws
in the clothing. Oh an outlet store. Yeah, well now
it was an outlet store. It was called I can't
(11:09):
remember what it's called, but factory store. No liquidator, No
I don't, I'm out of It's basically like you'll it'll
be the name brand and be like, hey look at
those Converse shoes, but they're missing two eye holes, or
your your your genes are missing a zipper, that kind
of thing. Well, what's funny is as I've grown older,
I've come to see the value and stuff like that.
Absolutely like who pays full price, who pays retail? Not me?
(11:31):
And that goes back to my point is growing up,
I always felt like I was maybe missing out here
and there, and not that we were I mean poor
by any means. Always felt like I had everything I needed,
but I didn't get the members only jacket, and I
didn't get the parachute pants, and now it's no no.
I think, God yeah for my mom not getting you
(11:52):
those things. And the end result is as an adult,
I have a natural inclination toward being a little more
frugal and watching my money in some ways. But I'm
also my father's son who is notorious for blowing money
on flights of fancy, so I always I also have that,
So it's a nice balance. That is a good balance.
Like I won't I'll walk around behind my wife turning
(12:12):
out lights, and I'll try and recycle everything under the
sun and reuse it. But I'll go out and like
blow five hundred bucks on the guitar without even thinking,
and he will people I have been there with him
when he did. It was a great guitar. What was it? Uh, well,
it's a nice guitar. Okay, he Chuck's afraid you're gonna
break into his house and take his guitar, So coupons wait.
(12:33):
Let me also say that I want to give a
shout out to my mom, who was a very very
great woman at being thrifty but also making her kids
feel like we were rich as I've grown older, I've realized, Yeah,
not everybody ate turkey loaf and drank green kool aid
for dinner, you know what I mean. Yeah, So now
I'm kind of like, hats off, it's off the mom's
mother stays approaching. Let's just yeah, here's two more So,
(12:54):
clipping coupons is a good way, Josh buying generic. I know,
I go that was a great grocery store in Atlanta
called Kroger, and I think I don't know if they're
nationwide another and yeah, they're pretty big. But man, I
buy the Kroger brands. It's always cheaper. It's just as good.
Especially they're delicious private stock brand, right, Chuck, do you
remember the generic? Like the generic brand. There's a brand
(13:17):
that was like it was a like it was a
white box and it would say in black block letters
brand Flakes and then there was a UPC code and
that was it. Did your see the beer? No, it
was great. My first this is when my brother lived
in Los Angeles, my first visit ever to l A.
Me and some friends from U g A went and
stayed with my brother. We went to the store and
(13:41):
to get some beer, and literally the first thing where
I went to was the six pack of white cans
that said beer and we loaded up. It was awful?
Was it bad? Could you stomach it? Did you finish it? Well?
Of course I was in college. I have never seen that.
I would love. I'm going on eBay find well, it's
not around anymore, and somebody's got it in their garage somewhere.
(14:02):
Probably yeah, some Yeah, we could probably find some Billy
beer on there. Oh yeah, from Billy Carter some alright,
so check, we've got coupons, we've got generic. There's also
a Cooking at home is huge. Number one. If you're
like out and about and you're not cooking, but you're poor,
(14:23):
you're say goodbye to vegetables in your diet because you know,
no fast food place sells vegetables, and if they do,
they're no longer nutritious. They have been slathered in fat
and deep fried so long that you might as well
just eat, you know, blocks of cheese. That's it. Um.
So yeah, you if you can cook at home. Number one,
(14:43):
it's cheaper. Number two's healthier. Um. And in the article,
uh Jane cites a source that that says that if
if you bring your own lunch to work every day
you can, you can save about nine and sixty bucks
a year. Struck me as very low, because don't hear
you can't get lunch for less than ten bucks. I
(15:04):
let's go with ten because the mass a lot easier.
But that comes to if you go out every day,
which there's a lot of people who work with us
that do um and that's like bucks a year. That's
a lot of cheese. I feel guilty when I eat
out lunch, Yeah I do. I feel like it's a
complete waste of money. If I don't like bring my
sandwich or something and I'm forced to eat out, I'll
(15:27):
try and skip lunch. But yeah, it makes me like
I don't want to go home and say, you know,
it's been twelve dollars on lunch. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
I don't. I don't either. I know what you mean.
I value a buck. I'll treat myself sometimes generally I
don't eat lunch. I'm a Gordon Gecko adherent. But let
me give you a little tip. And I know you
already know this. If you ever happen to be hanging
around the courtyard downstairs around twelve twelve thirty, you see
(15:50):
rocks in read strike up a conversation with her because
she has a policy of buying lunch or whoever she
runs into while she's out there. She bought me lunch
one day, she bought me lunch twice. Well, we just
needed time. This better alternate. Yeah, we can both just
be there with big dough eyes like hey Roxanne. So yeah,
need versus want, Josh. That's what it comes down to.
If you're uh suffering in these tough times, I think
(16:11):
what you need to do is take a good hard
look at your finances, break it down, line it, out
it and buy item and really think about it. Do
I need a cable or can I get rid of
it for the next six or eight months? Especially with
the new digital transmissions apparently that opened up If it works,
it opened up a lot more channels than than it
was available with just ravities, and it's a lot clearer too.
(16:31):
So that's something. I went without cable a couple of
times in my life for extended periods, and I thought
I was gonna miss it, man, But after a little while,
you you can just kind of forget. It's like not eating. Yeah,
I've done it a bunch of choice before, and you
get used to it really quickly. Right, Although we're not
saying that you should not eat people that's Josh's bag. Nice,
thanks Chuck. It's not healthy. We're not encouraging that. So yeah,
(16:54):
I think the irony is in this article we never
really say how much it takes. It's more like a
relative thing. Yeah, So, as you were saying, I think
it's it is time for us to take a good
long look at our finances. It seems like we we
were coming out of a phase where, you know, just
conspicuous consumption is a thing in the past. See somebody
(17:16):
riding around in a hummer, It's like, did you miss
the memo? Like, I realize you can't sell that thing
to anybody or give it away for free. But it
seems like at least the US is kind of taking
this new tech where we're getting a little more frugal,
and you know it, there's a big difference between you know,
being wealthy and rich and and you know, being able
(17:37):
to take care of yourself and your family. And it's
good that it's in I feel it. Feel good about that.
And the other thing is is don't forget to save.
Saving is huge. It's an important thing where you are
not a nation of savers, and apparently it's we're becoming
more and more of a nation of savers, which is heartening,
is a good thing. Yeah. You know what I hope, dude,
is that this whole recession blows over and that we're
(17:58):
all better for it in the end. Ultimately we will.
But you know, like the uh, the Great Depression era
grandparents that everybody gripes about, it's like kind okay, yes,
I understand, you can use this coffee can for eighty
different things, and you have been. We're that generation, dude,
we're in in the making. We're going to annoy the
(18:18):
kids that come behind us badly. Yeah. It always works. Yeah,
So look forward, you whipper snappers to hearing from Chuck
and I because we're gonna tell you all about how
bad it was. And opp nine. I'd like to also say,
if you want to learn more about, um, how much
money you need to live, you can go to UH.
You can type that into how stuff works dot com
in our handy search bar, and there's a monthly income
(18:40):
or monthly expenses calculators and there's a bunch of really
great personal finance links in that article. It's a good one.
By again by Jay McGrath. Um, so let's do the
blog thing, Chuck, right, Uh, speedy plug. We have a
blog now. We've been writing on it. We have people
uh posting comments and it's a lot of fun and
we encourage you to check it out on the right
out of the homepage. And also, I'm glad you said
(19:01):
that because you just gave me my new hotel pseudonym
what is it? Speedy Club. That's pretty good. We actually
had a bunch of people right in with suggestions for Yeah,
we need to do that for listener mills because there
were a lot of them that were French. Didn't you
notice that? No? Ye, so should we? And quickly our
audio spoken word record album are spoken word album called
(19:25):
The Stuff You Should Know, super Stuff Guide to the Economy.
It's up on iTunes worth every penny we're coming to realize, um.
And you can type in super Stuffed and the search
bar of your iTunes while while you're searching the iTunes
store and it should be the first thing that comes up.
And if you want to buy it, great for you. Right,
help support Josh and Jerry and Chuck. So we begging
(19:47):
for Nichols anytime soon is it time. It's time for
listening rail. Okay, Josh, I just have one today. This
is from Patrick. Yeah. Uh. Patrick was writing in about
dejab wu, the deja episode. He wanted to respond because
we talked about biological deja vu, and he has some insight.
(20:11):
He has an affliction and this is really odd. He's
had it since he was twelve. Now, occasionally I'll experience
an intense sensation of deja vu, almost like a dream.
I remember some senior dialogue that feels incredibly familiar. It
sounds like normal dejab It's so far right. However, during
this episode, I feel dizzy, start to mumble, and I
usually need to brace myself against something for about twenty
(20:33):
to thirty seconds. I recover. I have a slight headache,
and the dizzy spells occur in clusters, so I'll have
five or six of these in a given day and
then not experience them for a month or so. However,
I'll just have one really intense deja vu episode that
will cause me to completely lose consciousness for about thirty seconds. Okay,
can I interject here? What is this person named Patrick? Patrick?
(20:55):
I would like to strongly urge you to go see
a neurologist, like, immediately, I'm not done, okay, pay attention
to things. Uh some other weird traits. These happen once
a month, almost to the day, which is interesting. After
the episode is over, he can't remember anything about it. Uh,
no memories of it. He attempts to write things down
or describe them while they're happening, but it's just gibberish.
(21:17):
Usually happens in the morning, but in all kinds of situations, standing, sitting, running, stressed,
calm whatever. He's gone to the doctor. No one can
explain it, he said to E. E. G. S And
an M. R. I. And various theories have included seizures
in her ear problems, salt deficiencies, and low blood pressure. Luckily,
it doesn't interfere too much with my daily life, aside
(21:38):
from interrupted conversation every now and then. Patrick. Long story short,
Patrick is the stigmata? Is he? I think? So that's
my theory. He's very open. I appreciate Patrick here. Doctor,
I hope you don't have anything really wrong with you.
I mean, as long as you're not going bonkers or
you know, it's not you're not hurting yourself, that's that's cool, right,
(22:00):
so yeah, that's my professional medical opinion of course my
formal trainings and pediatrics. So right, he did actually ask
us to, uh to posit a opinion on it, but
we can't do that. I did no idea, I already did. Yeah,
but that's funk. Okay, So that was that. That was Patrick.
We appreciate you, Patrick the Stigmata and uh, if you're
(22:21):
a stigmata, you suffer from some sort of religious affliction,
or you just want to say hi, you can send
us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com brought to you
(22:42):
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