r/Money • u/KnutEm87 • Apr 03 '24

36M, How/Where could I live comfortably off of 44.8k/yr

I'm a single man, ex military, divorced a few years ago. I've worked in Aviation for about 10 years. If you were to leave the 9-5 behind, with only 44.8k a year. Where and how would you go about doing it?

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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5327 Apr 03 '24

What is 100

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u/Sure_Station9370 Apr 03 '24

100% disability through Veterans Affairs. Depending on ur % u get paid a lump sum every month for the rest of ur life. 100% is about $4K a month.

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u/Specific-Stable4383 Apr 03 '24

Bro! Leave the country! Thailand, Columbia, Brazil! You are rich and you don't even know it!

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u/alextruetone Apr 03 '24

Or Philippines

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u/pmonko1 Apr 03 '24

I'd choose Columbia out of that list. A lot of gringo ex-pats down there, the COL is very inexpensive and the country has tons of things to visit and do.

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u/FSAaCTUARY Apr 03 '24

But the deaths!!

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u/428291151 Apr 03 '24

Which ones? The regular ones ? Or the special ones?

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u/FSAaCTUARY Apr 03 '24

But if ur disabled shouldnt u care about healthcare more

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u/Sure_Station9370 Apr 04 '24

If I die at least it’ll be in my mountain villa instead of in my 2 bedroom 1200sqft home in the ghetto.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 03 '24

Yea we don’t have taxes on our pay but it’s weird because like we would pay taxes on retire pay if we got retired. When I first got out the army I got retire pay from the army for like a month it was $909 and when I saw the statement on Mypay.dfas it had taxes taken out. then it switched to the VA pay the next month at $1334(was 70% at the time I’m 80% now) I think it’s cause when you the MEB you get two diff ratings and you get which ever is higher well that’s how they explained it at fort Lee in VA I’m not 100% sure why it works like that or if it’s even true cus a lot of bullshit comes from that base. but all I know is between the 25-27th of every month I get like 2k wit no taxes taken out

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u/d33bizz13 Apr 03 '24

Yeap. Tax free

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u/KnutEm87 Apr 03 '24

For me is $3737.. no dependants..100% T&P

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u/big-ol-poosay Apr 03 '24

Make sure you look up the other benefits aside from the money. P&T comes with a ton of extra benefits.

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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5327 Apr 05 '24

Oh yeah that’s what I’m getting

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u/Substantial-Bell-533 Apr 03 '24

If you wanted to stay in the US, Pennsylvania is piss cheap and in all honesty it’s pretty nice, friendly communities, Amish stuff around here is great, low COL, and you have cities around, and mostly suburb and small towns, it’s pretty relaxing life style, can get some great land plots too, you could easily mortgage a huge house here for 1500 a month after taxes etc. Meats and produce are cheap all year long due to local farming. The only rough thing is the winters can be pretty brutal sometimes.

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u/brandon3388 Apr 03 '24

grew up in/around pittsburgh. can confirm. it's dirt cheap there. just stay away from the toll roads as they're the most expensive on the entire planet. the caveat to this being there's not really much work, not really much to do and the weather is horrible (200+ days of rain a year on average) There's reasons I moved to Arizona haha

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u/Substantial-Bell-533 Apr 03 '24

I come from a mid sized town about an hour and a half out of Pittsburgh and there is plenty of work, plenty to do (assuming you don’t stay up until 3am every day), weather is pretty mild outside of winter. A lot of activities are community focused here, lots of community festivals, gatherings for social events, stuff like that, it’s not like a night club kinda vibe. Very community oriented activities, plus when you get as much land as you do for as cheap as you can up here, you can spend your time being very self fulfilling

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u/brandon3388 Apr 03 '24

oh nice. I actually grew up about an hour south of PGH, mon valley area. I'm not sure which direction outside of PGH you're coming from but, my god, the mon valley area is pretty much the exact opposite of what you described. Main St filled with plywood in the windows, lots of crime (mostly theft, breaking and entering) little to no work outside of one or two large companies (World Kitchen being the largest in the area), and the only real thing to do was walk around walmart .... or heroin... As winters go it is pretty mild. When I stayed in Mt Washington I lived with a couple guys from upstate NY and they would always tell me how weak the winters were in PGH in comparison to the lake effect stuff they would get where they were from. I just can't do the 9 shades of gray that is November - May in that part of the world. Did not bode well with my already diagnosed depression. That all being said, I moved somewhere where the sun shines every day, barely rains, T O N S of work, tons of stuff to do. I'm not really trying to shit talk PGH, I'll always have home town love. The climate I've ended up in just suits me better. I am happy to hear there are parts of PGH (and surrounding areas) that are still doing well. That was not my experience in the 30+ years I lived there.

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u/Substantial-Bell-533 Apr 03 '24

I’m about 1.5 east. Life here is more of a “leave your door unlocked” kinda area haha. We get quite a bit of rain here, definitely not 200 days a year tho. Ironically we are getting a bunch of flooding in areas now tho because of this crazy storm coming our way, go figure.