>Though I and my wife do not presently live in Massena, we live nearby, and we’re doing exactly this — we do not have an automobile, nor do we want one. We use the rural county transit bus, which we have found to be extremely cheap and quite reliable; and it has certainly saved us thousands and thousands of dollars by liberating us from the onerous expense of keeping a car.
This part has me screaming shenanigans. Unless you basically don't leave the house, you need a car outside of like 8 American cities. More believable would be a pair of used bikes.
I agree that his deliberate deletion of a car and Internet access from the example budget undermines his point, but adding $200 to support the cost of owning a cheap car and $45 for a prepaid cellphone plan with ample tethering doesn't change the overall equation significantly.
So you have a ton of people trying to make it off that.
The cold weather is really the red flag for me.
>Considering that the property has a well on-site, water is free, and as far as heat goes, well, one could either pay a little extra in electric for that — or they could have the Amish deliver their scrap wood from their sawmills to burn in a wood stove, very cheaply.
He glosses over heating, but for a full house that can easily be 200 or 300$ dollars.
Snow tends to cause problems. Now if he wrote this living in Florida or something it would be more practical. No risk of freezing. Walking or biking is possible year round.
I'd actually love to see a bike first city, but outside of a few college towns I don't think it exists in the states
You can bike year round in Florida and bike or walk to work if you are in vicinity. Even go to grocery store or in some cases use a golf cart. At least one car is still preferable.
That’s obviously not true, if you change what you “have” to go to.
There are thousands of American towns that are about 10k population - large enough to have a Walmart and other stores, small enough to walk across in an hour or so.
My admittedly unscientific survey of small Midwestern towns with Walmarts (that are NOT suburbs!) is that you can walk to the Walmart on sidewalks. At most, you have half a block to the nearest sidewalk, or have to cross the street.
Some of the middling-old sections only have one sidewalk. The oldest have them on both sides of the street, and the newest developments have them also, usually.
The Walmart in the area from this article is separated from the main town by a four lane road with no sidewalks, across which the nearest crosswalks are more than half a mile away in either direction—so you’re either playing high stakes Frogger, or, depending on your starting location, you might conceivably have to walk nearly two hours out of your way round trip along the shoulder of this road to use a crosswalk. They also get five feet of snow per year, so a good part of the year that walk is extra dangerous and miserable.
I can’t say for sure, but I think this is much more typical of American Walmarts than it is to be able to easily walk to them.
The two smallish towns I've spent significant time in (Tomah WI and Palestine TX) both have difficult to walk to Walmarts. But glad to hear it's not universal!
I see from Google maps that here in Illinois the situation seems to be a bit better... (E.g. Morris, Rantoul and even Du Quoin). Du Quoin seems very inexpensive and seems like it would make a better argument than somewhere truly rural (it even has Amtrak service)
Once it gets cold you won't be walking much anywhere. I guess grocery delivery from Walmart can mitigate this, but that fundamentally changes the situation.
One way (not the only way and I get this won't work well for people with medical needs or kids) to handle this is stock up on rice, beans, nonperishables and have a good first aid kit. You go out to get your "freshies" but it's not an issue to be stuck at home for a week except in the most dire circumstances.
I am sitting in front of PC probably around 10hours a day and drink and sit rest of my day (excluding sleep) and still it is not a big deal for me to have a 7km walk to the city or back is not a big deal.
I think in US it just cultural. "You are walking?! With your feet?! How?!". Unless you more likely to get shot walking via some neighbourhood I can't understand that.
> I'm going to guess that you're a really good shape that a 2 km walk isn't a big deal, but I don't think most Americans can do that.
Shit that's horrifying.
I have health issues and walking 2km a day to try to help fix. So I see 2km a day as basic. 6-10km run a day would be "fit" IMO.
things as humans are designed to walk.
Living in suburbia means I have to walk "for the sake of it" although I cam make it useful e.g. get some milk!
As for cold. Anything above minus 5 should be OK just wear stuff like skiiers wear which can be got cheap off brand.
77% percent of young Americans aren't fit for service.
2 km of walking in a day, even in great weather is exceptional for me. I probably average 1km or less.
And I'm not a car owner. My family members will literally hop in a car and drive 30 minutes over walking .5 km to the grocery store. They like the other one more they say.
Are you sure you mean .5km? That's only 0.3 miles, 1500 feet. That is the distance if you drive to a Walmart supercenter and park in the center of the parking lot and walk to the door.
500 hundred metres? This is long for you? If there is snow you can't walk? Why? Snow is much beteer than rain. And still it is just a couple of minutes. You most probably would not get wet with proper clothes.
Are you from US by the chance?
The average American walks 2.4 miles per day according to the CDC, this person is truly exceptional even among people the most car centric American towns.
You’ll walk more than 500m through the aisles in Walmart buying your groceries.
Huh? I'm not in great shape but I get 2km of walking a day just with my commute. According to my watch I've averaged 13k steps a day this week (something like 9-10 km a day, I think?). Ironically the days I walk the least are when I decide to bike to work instead of taking the train...
Right, I mean obviously the scenario in the article is unrealistic budget wise (and good winter equipment is going to be at least several hundred dollars), but I'm pushing back against the idea you can't walk when it's cold ...
..in what National Weather Service described as "once-in-a-generation storm". Walking 2 km on a normal winter day (or even a mild blizzard) is not dangerous.
This is true. I recently read that the real reason that the Vikings left North America was that the Native American authorities informed them that their site on L'Anse aux Meadows was not zoned for boat repair and construction.
It's just a tradeoff. ~20 hours of low wage employment is more than enough to cover a car. Instead they choose to spend those ~20 hours walking/waiting for the bus. Certainly not a trade I would make.
Agreed, looking at the map of Massena this seems like bullshit. I've lived without a car for my entire life across multiple states and it is incredibly onerous in even mildly dense areas.
Frequency is often as important as the route from experience; because a route that's reasonably distant from your location can be walked to/biked to etc but a low-frequency route means it's something you need to plan your entire day around. And if you miss any bus then you're stranded (which, given that they don't have internet I'm curious how they manage...)
Most of the bus routes here seem to run maybe twice a day, once early in the morning and then once late in the afternoon. There's a few more frequent ones that run on the hour but it looks to be closer to the denser cores.
> a low-frequency route means it's something you need to plan your entire day around.
Okay but the dude is making $5K/y which means he basically has no job and he sits around in his house all week or goes hiking etc. His most exciting day of adventure will literally consist of taking the bus to the library to check out a book, and bringing it back home (while reading it on the bus, perhaps). He can totally afford to plan his entire day around the event.
This part has me screaming shenanigans. Unless you basically don't leave the house, you need a car outside of like 8 American cities. More believable would be a pair of used bikes.