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That cost of living calculator for Detroit was way off for me
I was using that MIT living wage calculator online to figure out if I could afford to move my shop to a bigger space near Eastern Market. It said a single adult in Detroit needs like $36k a year to live. But I sat down and added up my actual numbers from last year. Rent, utilities, insurance, truck payment, tools, food. I was at $52k easy. That thing doesn't account for having a work truck or the fact my landlord raised rent 8% in 2023. Anyone else find those calculators useless for real budgets here?
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smith.nancy1mo ago
Building my own spreadsheet from bank statements is exactly what I ended up doing too. I drive for work and my costs look nothing like what those calculators expect for a normal person. My fuel alone last year was almost $4,000 just running around. The MIT one also didn't factor in stuff like my commercial auto policy or the random repair costs when a truck breaks down. Once I actually laid out every expense from my debit and credit card statements over 12 months, I had a real number that matched my life, not some generic guess.
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owens.anthony1mo ago
That thing doesn't account for having a work truck" is exactly the issue. Those calculators are for someone living a basic life with no business costs. I had the same problem when I tried to use it for my side hustle. My van insurance alone is double what a regular car costs, and my gas bill looks crazy because I'm running parts all over metro Detroit. You gotta tack on at least 30% to any number they spit out if you have a work vehicle. Best thing I did was just build my own spreadsheet from my actual bank statements for a full year.
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the_terry1mo ago
Over a full year" is the real key right there, people try to budget from a single paycheck and their numbers are all off. That's the whole problem with how we do money these days, everything is designed for this nice neat life that nobody actually has. You can't really fix any of it until you look at the actual mess of real expenses, not what some online form thinks you should be spending.
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