If you think that 32% of $71,456 a year is $6,000 a month, it explains why you still rent and don’t own a house. You can’t do simple arithmetic.

In Massachusetts, Florida and New York, Americans spend 32.9%, 32.6% and 31.2% of their income respectively on rent. Assuming you make $71,456 (the mean American income as of 2022), if you live in the Sunshine State, you’re actually sitting under a dark cloud: paying close to $6,000 a month in rent, based on those income and 32.9% figures.

I really don’t know where they are getting these “average” numbers from. Florida has a median household income of $61,777. (source: US Census bureau) When you want to borrow money for a home purchase, lenders want you to have a Debt to Mortgage ratio of no more than 35%, and a total Debt to Income ratio of no more than 50%. So that equates to a payment of $1650 per month for housing (35%) and all monthly debts that are no more than $2,575 per month. (including housing)

In most places, that gets you a pretty decent place to live. There are places claiming that the median one bedroom apartment in Florida costs are higher than they really are. Rent.com claims that renting a one bedroom in Miami costs an average of $3,250 a month. That’s about average in places like South Beach, but South Beach is a VERY expensive area where oceanfront condos regularly rent out for $25,000 a month. But if you don’t make a pile of money, don’t live in Miami Beach.

Closer to my home, there is the Orlando area. There are over 900 one bedroom apartments there for less than $1,600 a month. Go out to the suburbs, and the rents are even less. You can rent houses that are a short commute away, and pay $1,600 a month for a three bedroom house.

The problem is that people want luxury living in the most desirable areas and think it should be free. IF you are living on minimum wage, expect a minimum standard of living. My mom used to call that “Having a champagne and caviar taste on a beer and crackers budget.”

Categories: economics

7 Comments

EN2 SS · March 5, 2023 at 8:38 am

Obviously you’re racist and aren’t willing to give the freeloaders all that they are entitled to. ;=/

SiG · March 5, 2023 at 9:06 am

At the risk of being the “ackshually” guy, median and average are only the same number in a Gaussian (aka “normal”) distribution. Income is definitely NOT a Gaussian distribution. It’s very heavily skewed to the low end.

All that aside, how they can get those numbers is still way beyond me. 32.9% of $71,456 isn’t remotely close to $6,000/month. I think that requires not being able to run a “four banger” calculator.

    Divemedic · March 5, 2023 at 9:16 am

    Yeah, when people talk about “average” they usually mean the sum of the samples divided by the number of samples. In this case, it would be all incomes divided by the number of workers. This is the “mean”
    Median income would be the income that divides the total workforce in half.
    In the system of incomes, a relative few earning 8 figures would skew the “average” higher. This is seen in the median being much lower than the mean.

      exile1981 · March 6, 2023 at 1:02 am

      Umm that only works if you use common core math. Actually they divided the anual income by 12 months to get 6k but forgot to multiply by the %.

Henry · March 5, 2023 at 11:42 am

Don’t forget that the average (and perhaps the majority of) reporter suffers from innumeracy, an inability to do basic math and statistics. And since “journalism” no longer includes editing or actual fact-checking, numerical errors abound in many news stories, especially when erroneous math supports the official narrative.

    Roy · March 5, 2023 at 6:58 pm

    Oh it’s much worse than that. They’re in the business of writing and they can’t even do simple English grammar.

Honk Honk · March 6, 2023 at 12:08 pm

Math is a construct of the white male patriarchy and all numbers will be redistributed in the spirit of egalitarian equity.

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