Tuesday 20 February 2001

Pic of the day: Spare some change for a poor consultant?

Poor me!?

Today I read an interesting little article about a study by Pew Internet, about internet access in the USA. It seems there were 16 million new Internet users during the last half of the year 2000. That's quite a bit. For instance, it's more than three times the population of my native Norway. I guess this is a hard blow for our plans for world conquest. Oh well. Life goes on.

Another fascinating detail I found out was that in the research, poor people are lumped together in "household income below $30,000 a year". Wow! That means I'm now officially poor, right? Alms, please? Alms for the poor?

***

OK, I may be overdoing this a little. Particularly since my household consists of one person, and my income is somewhere near $27,000. I think it is pretty obvious that I'm better off than a single parent earning $31,000. Even if you factor in the tax break and (in Norway) the rather symbolic state support of ca $1100 per year for one child.

In The Sims, the People Simulator from Maxis, children are hardly an economic cost at all, except that you have to make room for a bed somewhere in the house. Then again, in The Sims children don't need new clothes every half year as they grow plus whenever the fashion changes. And they eat the same dinner the adults do, instead of crying loudly until they get their own favorite food. You can also order them to clean the bathtub or shower, or do the dishes after meals. Try to do that in real life and see what happens.

Still, I maintain that doubling the number of persons in a household doesn't double the cost, unless you're very unlucky with the new person(s). While shacking up may not be the big saver it is in The Sims, and while children will never give a surplus no matter how much they love to paint, you can cram in a lot of people before you need to double the space. And you're not likely to need two fridges, two stoves, and two showers. (Toilets is another matter...)

***

I'd estimate that if you live outside the more fashionable districts, you can live comfortably on $25,000 a year alone. Add $10,000 for the next person, and $5,000 for each more.

When I say comfortably, I mean comfortably, not extravagantly. You may not dine out with wine every weekday, or drive around in a car that is meant for anything other than cheap transport. But you shouldn't need to go without dinner or in worn-out and mended clothes, or pedal-bike for an hour to get to work ... like many people did a generation or two ago.

Last year, I earned between $26,000 and $27,000 (as per today's exchange rates). I generally had no problems paying my bills and buying a small computer, and also spent close to a month's pay on my friends, mostly SuperWoman of course.

Of course, you have to make some choices when you live on a housewife pay. For instance, I've chosen to use collective transport instead of having my own car. If I had needed a car in my work, then I would have had to choose differently. (Or choose a different job.) Also I rent instead of buying my own apartment, this is also a choice. Renting saves money in the short run, while buying saves up money that can be released when you sell at a later time. Also I can't do costly things on a whim. For instance, I can't suddenly fly over to America to meet my friends there. Well, I could, but then I'd have to cut down on something else, like no new computer that year.

But earning more money also usually means choosing away something. You may have to work harder, or longer. (You could work smarter, not harder, but as an employee you won't be rewarded for that.) You may have to take a more stressful job, or move to a more expensive area. Or you may need to spend years on a particular education first. There is usually a reason why some people are paid more, namely that otherwise you won't get qualified people for that job. It's rarely dumb blind luck, except of course for some CEOs. :)

Superwoman is disgusted by my low salary and cannot understand that I want to stay in such a low-paid job. And she got rather irritated when I told her that I hadn't even bothered to apply for a raise, when our previous boss recommended that I do. But it's not quite as easy as I portray it to her. We work for the government, so the total budget depends on governmental decree, not on results. Basically, I can't have a raise without someone else missing out on theirs. The unions have their representatives way into this process, and would probably be ticked off. So I prefer to have a lower salary and instead have people cut me some slack.

Everything has a price. My friend does not fully understand the extent of this yet, but she'll learn in time. I pay a price for the kind of life I have chosen to live, and you pay another price for yours. I can just hope that you get as much back as I do.