How to live on $432 a month in America

There’s a house for sale on the northern plain, in a place you’d never go. It sits by a field just a mile from the river, where a million bass and perch are jumping just now as I write this. By modern standards, it’s a tiny little house — just 600 square feet. But if you adhere to the standard of our great-grandfathers, it’s a fine-sized place, where any young, industrious couple could easily raise a whack of kids. Now, there might seem to be a certain cruelty in talking about housing. I say this because, by all I can tell online, it’s a sore subject among the younger crowd. A long and mostly endless stream of “blackpills” about the cost of housing can be readily found on any social media platform — and often enough, the “boomers” are the scapegoat; the ones who lived their American Dreams and, as the allegations go, pulled up the ladder behind them as they tasted their successes. Then again, for the right young person — there are many opportunities to stop pointing the finger at the ... Read full article.