Cost of Living Breakdown

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Langy

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

I live in a small city and $1500 is pretty typical for ordinary two bedroom apartments. Status 2 around here is probably a lot more than that.

[dcarson]

You don't have to go that low tech for servants to by normal. Look at 50s movies and TV shows. Any solid middle class home had a maid or housekeeper. The amount of labor required to keep a home clean before automatic washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc was significant.

I believe that percentage of family budget spent on food has dropped in half since WW II also. So how COL breaks down can change fairly quickly.

[Kalzazz]

When I lived in part of Kansas City, $400 got me a single small room in a house with no internet or cable. Some of the other people in the house did not have a car, and it was definitely a very major disad for them

Unfortunately, they also took 'OPH - Bugs Kal for rides without end, all day, every day' for even more points

I was sooooooo glad to leave

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Langy

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.

Why rental? It says you have an appartment, not rent one. So your housing would only include utility bills and the occasional maintenance expense.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Why rental?

Because owning it would cost about a hundred times as much? And, incidentally, status zero rent exceeds $600/month in many urban areas in the US (GURPS CoL rules are basically unrelated to reality).

[D10]

I thought this was going to be a more broad breakdown, with costs of livings for different TLs and wealths and status and etc..

I really want to see something like that done, at the moment I have a monthly income of 650 dollars and its 50/50 in bills and fun

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Langy

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.

Agreed. In a small Kansas city (population 25,000), $615 got me a 2.5 bedroom house, separate from utilties. Even there, that was considered a pretty good deal.

In my current Colorado city (population 87,000), it took about $850 to get me a 2 bedroom place.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Because owning it would cost about a hundred times as much? And, incidentally, status zero rent exceeds $600/month in many urban areas in the US (GURPS CoL rules are basically unrelated to reality).

Why would it matter how much it costs? Maybe you privitised it from the government. Maybe you live in the apartment by registration without having privitised it. Maybe you inherited it from you [grand]parents. Maybe you had it given as a present instead of a car for graduation. Maybe you worked hard, lived at negative status, and saved up money. It's not like people don't do those sorts of things.

The point is Status 0 says you have an apartment. So its cost is already included in being Status 0, just like the car and whatever else is included.

[Jinumon]

Not to be the wet blanket, but aren't we getting a little off topic?

I think we can all agree that rent/mortgage payments can very widely in cost. This is just to try to get a better handle on it. I'm always looking for more options in gaming. I can also understand that it changes as time goes by, but certain constants remain. Shelter, food, conveniences, comforts, location, transportation, etc.

I love rules, and I'd like to find something that works.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jinumon

I think we can all agree that rent/mortgage payments can very widely in cost. This is just to try to get a better handle on it. I'm always looking for more options in gaming. I can also understand that it changes as time goes by, but certain constants remain. Shelter, food, conveniences, comforts, location, transportation, etc.

Not just shelter, but also privacy. That's one of the differences between having a home of your own, whether rented or owned, and having a room in a building with shared facilities, or renting a room from a family who lives in a house.

It can be bad enough if you're a person doing fairly mundane things, to lack the privacy and the formal and informal rights that comes with having a home of your own (I tell you this from personal experience), but if you're a player character then you're quite likely to end up involved in adventures, sooner or later, and then you'll be profoundly inconvenienced by not having your own home, but instead having to put up with nosy limited-sympathy room mates, or a landlord family or the like.

Even just socially (yes, I've been there too) shared accomodations with people of a different category from yourself (e.g. anti-intellectual potheads) can be crippling. You can't invite anybody over to your place, because you're literally afraid that they'll meet the people you live with, and that they might make the assumption that you're like them, when you most profoundly aren't.