How much money do you think you will need to survive for a month ?

How much money you need is all relevant to your lifestyle, your country and your needs. So long as I have enough money to put food on the table and to keep my family warm and comfortable then I am happy.

It depends on where you live, what you do, and what your spending habits tend to be. Regardless of what I earn, I give myself a salary of $4000 a month, and it is more than enough.

I would need $800 to "survive." This would allow me to slowly build up money on the Internet. I could pay rent, storage, electricity, food, and phone. I couldn't go to the movies or anything though.

Hello i am retired now from my job, i get a monthly pension of 21k INR, my family consists of my wife, son his wife and a granddaughter, the montly expenditure is about 15k, this includes grocery, internet and medicines.. Thanks for sharing. Welcome always. Cheers. Professor

In order to survive, I'd need about $50 a month. I'm going to my local community college, so I live at home. Most of the bills, like the electricity and water and my insurance and stuff is taken care of my mother and father for the time being. Probably until I get out of college. I said I should need about $100 for gas and other repairs for my car. You never know when something happens to your car and you need money.

I think I could make do with as little as 1000 dollars a month flat out in my area. The major chunk of that would be rent, water, power, electricity, probably taking up to 750 dollars at the cheapest, then 250 dollars would be food and little hygiene things. If rent was more reasonable at around 400-500 a month, I could probably be happy with clearing 800 a month only. I could probably survive on zero though, if I lived on the streets, dumpster diving and begging. Could probably even live on the street and work and only need about 300 a month for food and etc.

Very good discussion LittleFan! As per my way of living and the cost factors at my locality in Eastern India, I may say that INR50,000 ($1000) is needed for me every month to compensate all my expenses! Of course, this includes my children's educational expenses that is summed up annually once! I think this is the mean average value of cost of living at my place, covering almost all fields of regular expenditures that you have specified in your discussion! Thanks for this nice topic and hope, everyone participating this discussion must have their minimum necessities of funds every month!!

In my home country living expenses are quite expensive. I don't know exactly how much I spend each month. For example I pay my water bill in May and October. I pay the phone bill, gas bill and electricty 4 times a year. I pay my Internet bill every month. I buy food about 5 times a week. Fruit and vegetables are cheaper in the summer. I spent lots on heating my home in the winter. I need at least £1000 a month to survive. I love to go off traveling and at least one trip overseas a year for me is essential. When I travel some countries tend to be more expensive than others.

There's only me and my husband in my family now and we're a normal household, we pay bills and buy food, and save money if we can. If I am to think about the expenses that we need to have to survive in a month, I think its aroun $150. And that's excluding school fees. (sigh) There's too much to worry about. When we would have kids in the future, I think our earnings are not enough.

I'm still in home town ,living in India. I don't want rent to pay ,no food expense at morning and most in dinner. My expense comes for Petrol for my vehicle , lunch ,and some time evening party with friends ,some miscellaneous So it around 10000 thousand Indian rupees around 300 Dollar

that is a pro . you know ,human desires endless and what is more , money is the most impontant thing in china ,a little shame but it is true

I can not save any my month every month . I always spend my money in shopping , eating , playing game with my friends . Though I know this is not a good habit ,I still keep it now . I can not give it up . Do you have any advices for me ?

It depend you live in a metropolitan or a small town. I live in Austin,TX,which is expensive, I think at least $700-400 for rent and 300 for living.

as you mentioned ,it is luxurious to do some crazy things ,such as buy a city or something.and i think we should enjoy our lives instead of misusing it.life is what we make it.just be content and we will be happy most of the time. so i think ,as to my situation,400 dollars is enough to run a month for clothes ,food,travelling and other using.

Hi Wildlittlefan, A million a month??? Are you serious? Single mom here...I take care of myself and my daughter on 10.75 per hour job. At one point I had 4 daughters here and less money....still did it and not on welfaire. You get creative. At one point we had no car...no phone...no cable...no hot water...etc. Still..I got groceries, my kids and myself were clean and well dressed. Oh at one point we lived in a tent for 4 months. I have to say that we never "felt" poor. We just did what we had to do. No one went hungry and they all got regular dental checkups. At one point their dentist gave them all a free cleaning. He told me that he did that because their were kids who had insurance to get free ones that didn't show up for them and my kids never missed them even though I was paying out of pocket. I just saved it out of my income tax each year. I am not into doing a lot of math tonite but at a glance...I can live easily on a real lot less than a million a month. A few hundred???? well at that I'd be going back to tent days because there are not many rents that are under 700.00 per month and then you have to have at least electric and you have to eat...probably need to get back & forth to work.

Well if it is just survival without any extras just to pay our mortgage and property taxes we need $1450. Then utilities usually run about $300 per month. There is food and miscelaneous necessary expenses, if I was really careful maybe we could get away with $500 for those but that would be difficult since we have a family of 5 but not impossible with a lot of effort, meal planning, and very careful shopping. So we would need at least $2250 per month to survive in our current home with no extras and no entertainment. Of course we could cut out cable and save $90 a month, which were included in our utility costs above.

I would be able to survive easily on 2000 a month. Paying mortgage, electric, gas, water, cable and phone bill. That would leave me about 900.00 for food and savings and entertainment. This would change drastically though in the winter months to maybe having 600.00 due to the heating bill. I would still do ok with the 2000 a month. I truly believe we can live on very little. If I didn't have a mortgage payment I would be ok with one thousand a month.

Most of my spending just go to the mortgage, basic food, electricity, etc. I seldom buy things or hang out on the street as we have the old saying: if you go out to the street without any real intention, it usually costs you something. But then, different people have different lifestyles and some may need to make purchases to release their day-to-day pressure.

As a student in China, I don't have to spend a lot of money. I think I only need 700 RMB, which is about 110 to 120 dollars, because my room's rent is only 100 RMB and my food only cost about 500RMB evry month. And since I take three tutorial jobs, I earn about 500-600 RMB every month. So even as a student I can support myself, especially after I found myLot.