me_irl

No, even $2500/month is a lot in some places in the US. In the Midwest that would get you a really nice place, but in New York City that gets you a studio apartment. The US is huge with a wide range of cost of living.

that's a cheap mortgage where i live. it would pay for a 100 year old falling apart shack.

the average mortgage here is like 6K a month now.

the average studio in my city rents for 3.2K a month... you want a 2bed? that will be over 4K

it costs that much because people are willing to pay it and they have the money to pay it. it's that simple.

USA has lots and lots of very rich people, who are willing to pay lots of money for these things.

is rent actually that bad in the US?

Short answer: Not really, but sometimes.

Much longer answer:

You can't take the USA as a whole. There are studio apartments near me for $600/mo, and you can get a 3 bedroom for $1200 easily. You can scrape by on minimum wage here (it won't be fun, but you'll survive). If you get one of the "good" jobs, like at the Amazon warehouse, you're living large on that $20/hr. Even better if you have a partner who also works. I know a couple who both work full time at the Amazon warehouse and they don't have any kids, so they're DINKs, and their rent is less than 1/6th of their gross income.

But I'm in a very low cost of living area. My friend who lives in a wealthy coastal city pays $5400/mo for her 3 bedroom with a beautiful view of the San Fransisco bay. The cost of living varies wildly by location.

My sister-in-law wanted to move closer to my wife and I, so she could see her niblings more often. I gave her a check for $10,000, and took her to a foreclosure auction. She now has a two bedroom house, with a nice (but not huge) backyard, and she left that auction with enough money in her pocket to renovate her new house a bit. No mortgage, she owns it outright.

I bought my huge house, sitting on acres of land in 2009, right after the crash. So it's not a typical result just to be clear, but I paid $40k, and spent another $20k fixing it up before we moved in. $60k, all told, to fully own a house and a ton of land. I have a creek running through my back yard, and I can stand there and fish whenever I want. I've got woods on my property, great for hunting. My property/school taxes come to under $1200/yr total, so my "rent" is about $90/mo. Between my wife and I, we made $560k last year, so we're in the bracket where we don't worry about money at all. Our essential bills come to about $30k/yr, the rest gets saved/invested, with a bit going to fun stuff.

You can't do that where I grew up. Condos (basically an apartment you own instead of rent) in my home town go for literally millions of dollars. The cheapest place I could find doing a quick Zillow search was $499k. The good places go for 4-5 million bucks. And holy shit, the taxes are high.

The USA isn't so much a country, as much as it is 50 smaller countries in a trenchcoat. You know how annoying it is when someone says "Do Europeans really do [thing]?!?!?" without mentioning the country? That's basically the same situation as asking "Is the USA really like [thing]?" without mentioning the state.

Some of us grow/hunt/raise most of our food. I harvested and butchered two pigs yesterday. That a lot of almost free pork. Some of us shop at Erewhon, where a single imported Japanese strawberry can cost you $20. They have $100 melons. They sell a half gallon (roughly 2 liters) of water for $26. I get my water from a well, and it's basically free.

The coasts may as well be a different world entirely than the flyover states. I moved to a flyover state because I knew that my life goals were incompatible with living in a coastal city.

$4500 was in my head because that was the projected mortgage+taxes+fees for a 2BR apartment in brooklyn I saw the other day.

There are some apartments in NYC that are that expensive to rent. Average here is $3,650, but that's skewed by a lot of stupid expensive places. Median is a little lower.

Other parts of the country can be much cheaper, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

You are also missing private retirement funds

Good call.

(and if car dependent 100/month seems very low for transit costs)

That's a good point. I rely on mass transit, which is much cheaper.