Cost of Living Breakdown

[Jinumon]

Hey All,

I've been looking for a breakdown for Cost of Living for a while now, hoping that I might be able to use it to sort of construct my characters' own lifestyles (perhaps Status 2 food, but Status 0 everything else if he has certain acquired tastes). I've been unable to find one, so I figured I'd ask the community, as well as provide one possible breakdown, if there is no preexisting one.

Housing: 50%
Transportation: 20%
Food: 10%
Recreation: 10%
Miscellaneous: 10%

At TL8, where a GURPS$ seems to be about 2 USD, that would be $600 for renting a large apartment or a house payment, $240 to keep a vehicle insured, fueled, and maintained, $120 in food, $120 on things like cable, internet, and the occasional road-trip, and $120 on things like toiletries, replacement clothes, medications, etc.

Anyway, what do you all think?
Jinumon

EDIT: Found pretty much what I was looking for, so here's what I've come up with

Originally Posted by Jinumon

Ended up finding what I was looking for, and did so on my own time. My college instructor got it started by saying American's spend 1/3 of their income on housing, and I started looking from there. Granted, this list isn't exhaustive, and there will be some variations based on TL, but I think it serves a good baseline.

Out of G$600:
Housing: $240 (30-40%)
Transportation: $60 (10-20%)
Food: $60 (5-15%)
Health and Hygiene: $60 (5-15%)
Clothing and Miscellaneous: $60 (5-15%)
Entertainment and Luxury: $120 (15-25%)

My figures come from an experienced Market Researcher: http://budgeting.thenest.com/typical...gets-3299.html

The percentages are more accurate figures, the dollar amounts are simplified into tenths of CoL for simplicity.

Keep in mind that this could allow for mixed Living Styles while maintaining a certain Status, in the same way that wearing any outfit worth $240 counts as Formal Attire for Status 0.

For example, think of a medieval farmer who owns his own land (Status 0):
Housing (Status 0): $240 (in amounts payed to the thatcher, carpenter, blacksmith, and in taxes to his king)
Transportation (Status 0): $60 (in feed and maintenance for the mule that plows the field and pulls his cart to market)
Food (Status 1): $120 (in plenty of fresh food, homegrown and cooked, and doesn't have to be carted miles to a city)
Health and Hygiene (Status 0): $60 (getting patched up by the wise woman after being kicked by his mule, or when he occasionally gets sick)
Clothing and Miscellaneous (Status 0): $60 (in plenty of work clothes and a set of Sunday Best)
Entertainment and Luxury (Status -1): $60 (in the occasion impulse buy or for birthdays, working a farm is tough, and he doesn't have a lot of spare time)

Still comes out to $600, and (while this example isn't particularly radical) it offers a few extra options.

I'll post this on the front page for ease of access.
Jinumon

[Flyndaran]

That would only make sense for TL 8 U.S. some regions for status 0 to 1. A rather narrow category for gaming.

[Flyndaran]

Status 0 Americans probably get by without a car. Buses do exist for more than the homeless, you know.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Status 0 Americans probably get by without a car.

Certainly some Americans get by without a car, but many of those are either Status -1 or live in NYC or someplace cars are impractical. In most of the country, you really can't get anywhere without a vehicle (and there aren't a whole lot of buses). We have about 780 cars for every thousand people in the US--that's counting every man, woman and child in that thousand people. Owning a car is definitely the norm for Status 0 in the United States. And since Status in the US is determined almost entirely by Wealth, I would say if you don't own a car for financial reasons you might be considered Status -1 (which, in my mind, does not mean homeless, it means working poor).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by B266

Status 0: A house (heavily mortgaged) or large apartment, and a car.

So yeah, seems to default to having a car. OTOH, it seems to default to also having an apartment, which means that the OP's estimate of 50% CoL on housing is too high - that's $300 worth in electricity, water, gas and heating for a single person. Also note that this value is also unlikely to grow as fast with increasing Status as the rest of CoL - spending something like $1,500 on that sort of stuff at Status 2 seems like a silly waste (now, a housekeeper is a nice thing to spend money on as far as Status 2 goes).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jinumon

Anyway, what do you all think?

For anything low-tech, anyone above a certain Status, and a surprisingly low Status at that, is going to have to allocate funds to Slaves, Servants and/or Retinue. And mounts are non-trivial to maintain (see GURPS LTC3).

Personally, I'm against allowing characters, whether played by players or not, to micromanage their monthly expenses. You spend X money, according to the grade of your lifestyle (Status-based CoL, Lifestyle Rating, or whatever), and X is fixed, but if you want to then you can describe, in vague terms, how you spend it.

I don't want to penalize a Status 3 Viking noboleman for keeping a mistress or an expensive pet slave girl. He's already paying for CoL for Status 3, for which such an "item" is entirely appropriate. If another Status 3 viking nobleman doen't have a kept mistress, or a high-maintenance slave, then it's very reasonable to assume that he spends more resources (usually his share of food calorie income, in the form of grain, beer, meat and pasture land) on something else instead.

Trying to save money by micro-managing one's character's budget is a fundamental mistake. It can easily be argued that the CoL-system is too coarsegrained, and that it should be possible to maintain a CoL equal to Status 0.5 or 1.5 or 2.5, if desired. I'd be fine with that.

Also, of course, in some cases, a character can get benefits from allocating his resources in a certain way. My old RPG design project, Modern Action RPG, gave several Wealth ratings for Spending CAsh, Lifestyle, Vehicle and perhaps mosts importantly Legal Counsel, for when (not if, but when!) the character got in trouble with the law. They'd all match in value or rating, to suit the character's status, but one could be one step higher, so that e.g. a gentleman thief could have raised Legal Counsel, because he knows that sooner or later he'll get caught.

Also, part deux, breaking down Cost of Living is fine if you're doing it for worldbuilding purposes. I'll be doing that myself, at a later time, for my current RPG design project, Sagatafl, for use in my Ärth setting. Not so that players can micro-manage their characters' expenditures, but so that I can know how much it actually costs to live in various states of luxury or deprivation, in different economic enviroments such as Urban, Town, City and Megapolis.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That would only make sense for TL 8 U.S. some regions for status 0 to 1. A rather narrow category for gaming.

Sure, but it may be better than have a breakdown for that, than to have no breakdown at all. And if the breakdown is good for Status 0 and 1, then it may be semi-good for Status -1 and 2.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Status 0 Americans probably get by without a car. Buses do exist for more than the homeless, you know.

Depends on what part of the USA you're in, I think. As far as I know, California has crappy mass transit, whereas New York has good mass transit. Maybe very good.

Also, it depends on the kind of place you live. Here in Denmark, you need a car if you live far from the nearest town (and "far" is short by Danish standards), while if you live in a town, and even more so in a city, owning a car is a luxury.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Depends on what part of the USA you're in, I think. As far as I know, California has crappy mass transit, whereas New York has good mass transit. Maybe very good.

Even as a state California almost certainly has above average mass transit. It is only New York _City_ that might be considered to have "good" mass transit. The upstate region probably has the same sort of minimal bus service that the rest of the country has.

Outside big cities "No car" might well be at least a -5 pt Disad if it isn't a factor of Wealth My own personal case might have it being limped in with Poor Sight (Unmitigatable). I won't insist it's a separate Disad but it is a Disad in the modern US.

[Peter Knutsen]

On possibility is to say that you can't fiddle with your character's CoL in order to save money, but that you can spend extra on specific areas, in order to get benefits.

A quirk and dirty solution could be that you buy each such extra as a Perk, and in addition pay 10% extra CoL per such Perk, multiplicatively (meaning if you have 3 such different Perks, you pay 33.1% more CoL, not 30%).

Each Perk then gives you benefits of a speicic kind.

For instance, maintaining a particularly playful and agreeable sex partner (whether a high-grade bed slave, a kept luxury mistress, or just regular dates with the same call girl), means you're harder to seduce, being partially vulnerable to the Sex Appeal skill.

A Perk pertinent to Clothes would mean that you get a Reaction Roll bonus towards whose who would be impressed by expensive clothes.

A Perk pertinent to diet would mean that you get a small HT bonus to rolls to resist or recover from diseases. Although that would make more sense if CoL was somehow factored into disease resistance to begin with, which it is in an indirect fashion in the Ars Magica RPG.

Or if it seems overpriced to pay both $$$ and CP for it, then change it to a 0 CP Feature, but still write it on the character sheet, in order to make it formal and nailed down.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So yeah, seems to default to having a car. OTOH, it seems to default to also having an apartment, which means that the OP's estimate of 50% CoL on housing is too high - that's $300 worth in electricity, water, gas and heating for a single person. Also note that this value is also unlikely to grow as fast with increasing Status as the rest of CoL - spending something like $1,500 on that sort of stuff at Status 2 seems like a silly waste (now, a housekeeper is a nice thing to spend money on as far as Status 2 goes).

You may not know this, but $300 for a rental payment plus utility expenses would be considered a massively great deal in the US. Even $600 would be considered pretty damned good in a lot of areas.

$1500 is no where near out of the question for a Status 2 apartment.