Veritas wrote:
Yes, you increase the budget due to having to pay rent and increase transportation costs due to the fact you have to get to and from work. The 'proposed budget' also admits your electric and gas varies by season but uses the minimum hypothetical payment only. One of those bills is going to be higher for most of the year. And you have to have excellent health and have little to no dental or vision issues because you have no insurance. Also, places with such low costs of living tend to be quite a bit more limited in the social and transportation services they provide, in case anyone feels it would be no issue taking the bus and going to soup kitchens. God help you if you have a spouse and kids... And, minimum wage jobs usually don't offer 40 hours a week and may have very inconsistent schedules. This could make it difficult to impossible to coordinate getting between multiple jobs if you needed more money. You would almost certainly need your own vehicle, which means paying for gas and car insurance.
But... If you are young, single with no dependants, live next to work, get 40hrs/week, have no car, have perfect health and live in an area with a very low cost of living that happens to offer cheap and reliable public transportation... You'll be fine.
It actually gets significantly easier with a spouse, since now you have two incomes instead of one, while the food prices are the only ones that double, and most don't move at all. (Note that this is also one of the reasons why people generally have roommates, or live with extended family.) Kids make it very difficult if you want to live in a single-family household with one working parent on this type of budget, but, again, that's one of the reasons for the (good) social stigmas on divorce and against having children out of wedlock. Take a look at the statistics; being raised with two parents instead of one is one of the best predictors of poverty later in life.
I'm not actually a fiscal conservative (well, at least beyond the deficit). I'd rather that the minimum wage increased a bit nationally (and significantly in high cost of living cities), and I'm a proponent of more collectivized (e.g. single-payer) healthcare. Hell, I'm even a proponent of more collectivized child rearing expenses. But you have to actually live in reality when you're talking about policy.