Hey everyone, this is Aliyah from the United States and I am here today with my first whiteboard video.
So today I am talking about the cost of living in California where I live and I'm going to be telling you a little bit about the state in general and this will give you an idea of what it's like to live here [snorts] and if you are considering
visiting or staying here for a while moving here these will be the costs involved.
So let's get started.
So, the first thing I want to talk about is what a living wage would be in the state of California.
A living wage is the amount that you or um your family would need to be able to live to be able to earn enough to support themselves with all of their basic needs like housing, food, and so on.
So, a living wage in California as one adult living by themselves supporting themsel would be about $30 an hour.
That is assuming that they work full-time, which is about 40 hours a week.
What if you had a partner, a significant other, or a spouse?
If you were both working full-time, how much would each of you need to make per hour to support your household of two in California?
That would be almost $20 an hour, just under, $19.50 per hour.
Now, let's say you were a family of four.
You had two adults, both working full-time, and two children.
How much would those parents need to make each to support that family of four?
Each parent would need to make $35 an hour.
Now, if you had a family, a partner, and two kids, but you were the only parent that worked while your spouse stayed at home and took care of the kids or was a homemaker, how much money would you have to make?
you would have to make more than $35 an hour, right?
You would have to cover the cost of what your spouse could have been earning.
So, if you are household with two adults, two children, but only one working adult, you would need to make $55 an hour to have a living wage in California.
So, let's move on to some typical expenses that you might have um to cover your basic needs.
So, now let's talk about the cost of food.
The annual cost that you would spend in an entire year to feed yourself.
If you were an individual adult, you would spend about $4,600 a year.
If you were two adults, both working full-time without children, you would spend about $8,400 a year to feed both of you.
If you were a family with two adults and two children, doesn't matter who brings in the income to support that number of people, you would need to spend $13,400 on food every year.
Okay.
Now, let's talk about some specific food items that you might buy in a supermarket.
Okay.
So fruits like bananas are usually priced by pound.
About four bananas would be on average $1.
Rice can really vary because it depends on the type of rice and it depends on how much you want to buy at one time.
Usually rice is something that people buy in bulk and that makes things a bit cheaper.
Um, so I just chose long grain white rice and the cost for 10 pounds of that is about $7.
And the price for meat, of course, is going to be higher than grains and vegetables and fruits.
And that is about $7.50 50 for one pound of ground beef.
So those is the costs to keep in mind for some staple foods.
Now the next one is going to be a bit shocking.
Okay, the next category is child care.
So, if both adults in the family are working, especially if they're both working full-time, someone needs to take care of your children while you are at work until they are old enough to go to school.
Some people are lucky and they have family members or friends who can watch their children full-time, but if you don't have that, you have to pay to send your children to some form of child care during the day.
And so your kids under the age of five will go somewhere that looks like this.
A place that has toys, a place with teachers, and a place where they can nap and get their needs met during the day while the two parents are earning an income.
If you were one adult, if you were a single parent and you had one child, you would spend $15,000 a year in child care.
If you have two children and you're a single parent, you will spend $29k, $29,000 in child care a year.
If you are two adults with two children, you will spend the same amount 29K in childare.
So the cost is the same.
The cost is the same, right?
Between the number of parents, it has to do with the number of children that you have that need to be placed in childare.
Okay?
Okay.
Now, this is the big one.
Housing.
Housing in California is significantly higher than in many other states.
And that is because for the most part, the people that live in both Northern and Southern California um have very nice weather throughout the whole year.
And so there is a premium to live in a place where there is not a harsh winter.
And for that reason, the housing market is very impacted.
So if you are a single adult and you live by yourself, your housing costs for the year will be about $22,500 a year.
So to put that in perspective, that is just under $2,000 a month.
it is about $1,900 a month.
Okay?
And that makes sense given that that person will probably live in either a studio apartment or a one-bedroom apartment.
Now, if you are a couple and you live together, you will definitely save some money on your housing.
Okay, your housing for two people will be about tw $24,500 a year.
Um, the reason for the increase is probably that you'll need a little bit more space.
You'll probably need at a one-bedroom or a twobedroom to fit two people comfortably.
And assuming that you know you're living in an apartment and not a house, that'll be a little bit over $2,000 a month.
Okay.
If you are a family of four, now this doesn't specify between owning and renting.
would be in either situation, paying a mortgage or paying rent every month.
And so the average amount for a fourperson family in housing costs is $30,300 a year per month.
That is about $2,500 a month.
that is a realistic, you know, amount that somebody could be paying for their mortgage for a small house, um, or in rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
Now, I will tell you, I live in a two-bedroom apartment, and we pay more than $2,500 a month.
We pay almost $2,800 a month for a two-bedroom.
So that gives you an idea of how in the Los Angeles area it's even higher than these numbers.
So what we pay as two adults is more than the average fourperson family in the whole state of California.
Um one other really big category that has to be considered when living in California is the cost of transportation.
Most people have to drive a car to get around um to meet their basic needs.
To go to work, to go to school, to to really have enough mobility to get around um for your daily life, you need a car because we are lacking in public transit infrastructure.
We don't have good um we don't have good train systems um especially here in Los Angeles.
So the cost of transportation is basically the cost of owning a car and maintaining a car and the gasoline that you would need to purchase to keep driving around all the time.
So for one person the cost of transportation per year is about $10,600.
For two people, the cost of transportation is about $12,300.
I'm not sure why it's not double, but I think they're factoring in some sharing of resources like sharing a car potentially or um driving together saves money on gasoline for example.
Um so you're not always driving by yourself um everywhere.
And then for a family of four, the cost of transportation is about $17,800 a year.
In this part of the video, let me talk about some things that people do for entertainment or for recreation, things that people do for fun and the average cost of those things in California.
So, let's talk about going to the movies.
So, one movie ticket these days is about $17.
So, if you go with friends, each person will pay $17.
If you are taking your family, there's four members of your family.
You will pay about $70 rounding rounding up to take your family out to the movies and that is not including the cost of popcorn and drinks.
Let's talk about um streaming services.
So stream the cost of streaming services keeps going up as well.
Let's just look at Netflix as an example.
That starts at $8 a month, but it can go up to $20 a month depending on the plan if you don't want to be have to watch ads or not.
And usually people like to subscribe to more than one streaming service to have access to the shows and the movies that they want to watch.
So, let's say you have three streaming services that can get up to $60 a month to have access to movies and TV shows available to watch at home at any time.
And then there usually are additional sports packages, too.
If you really like watching sports like basketball, soccer, or football, American football, you know, that could be another $10 to $15 a month um added onto one of these plans.
Okay.
Now, let's talk about um fitness.
A lot of people like to go to the gym and have a membership at a gym to get their exercise in.
Gym memberships range from about $40 to $70 a month.
So, to make sure that your membership is worth it, you you want to make sure that you're going to the gym at least once a week to take advantage of the services that you're paying for.
Fitness can be a lot more expensive than that, especially if you go to a boutique studio, something that offers um a particular type of fitness like Pilates or yoga or hit highintensity interval training.
Those types of gyms will cost a little bit more even.
They'll for a membership monthly it'll be in the $100 to $200 range a month.
Another thing people like to do for fun is hang out with their friends.
Okay, so I'm going to put the cost of a few different types of foods and drinks that people usually enjoy.
So when you are out at a restaurant, one soda can cost between three to $6.
Okay, depending on how nice the restaurant is.
Obviously, if you buy a pack of soda at the grocery store to take home, it will be a lot more affordable.
But the reason that it is more expensive at a restaurant is because they're serving it to you.
So, if you want to enjoy a soda or a lemonade or some drink like that that is not alcoholic, that will be the price.
Usually, they're refillable.
Now, let's say you are going out to have a drink with your friend.
The price again can really vary.
Of course, it's cheaper if you buy beer at a liquor store and take it home.
You can get a whole pack, but if you're going out to a a bar or a brewery to enjoy with friends, craft beer has become really popular.
And so, so there's a bit of a range between, you know, the beers that are from big brands and um beers that are, you know, made on site at the brewery, for example.
And so the cost can really vary from about $8 to $14 at the most.
That's for like a really fancy beer.
Um I would say between $8 to 12 is is really realistic for going out to drink.
And beer is known as the the cheaper alternative.
Okay.
These days, if you want to enjoy a cocktail, a cocktail is going to be about $14 on the cheaper end and up to $20.
And that is because of the current inflation we are experiencing.
In the last couple of years, I would say it would probably be more like 134, $15 for like a craft cocktail.
The costs have definitely gone up to $18, $20.
You typically see that on a menu.
Knowing that these are the costs associated with living in a place like California, it's hard to say that it's the best option.
There are things that could definitely bring you here.
Like family, like a significant other, like a job.
If if your job pays you at the cost of living or higher, then you can definitely have a comfortable life here.
But of course, many many families struggle to pay rent.
They struggle to put food on the table.
More people live in types of housing that are really too small.
Instead of um a couple living in a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment, you'll have like a family of six, right?
um because that's what it takes to afford housing that is priced that high.
Larger families like that usually make it work by having multiple incomes combined to be able to afford to live in California.
We also have a higher minimum wage than many other states.
Our minimum wage is now $16.50 50 cents per hour.
But like I shared that on its own is not enough to support yourself.
For two people to have a living wage, they and live together.
They both need to make about $3 and a half more dollars than the minimum wage to have a comfortable life in California.
That should put things into perspective on whether or not you know your earning potential is going to allow you to have a living wage in California.
If you are going to be working in the service indust industry, you will likely be paid minimum wage or maybe slightly above.
It's really more the professional jobs that allow you to afford um a higher quality of life.
That being said, salaries are affected by inflation as well as the cost of some of these goods keep going up.
Even individuals with good wages find themselves struggling to pay the increasing cost of rent and the increasing cost of some of these items for basic needs and also for for living, right?
For for enjoying life.
So if you are thinking about moving to the United States, I would definitely compare some of this data.
The prices in California are always going to be more than other states other and and the cities in California like San Francisco and Los Angeles are always going to be more expensive than other cities um across the country.
There are many benefits to living here.
The fact that we don't struggle with a harsh winter matters a lot to people.
So, you know, you can add up some of the figures that I gave for the cost of transportation, housing, health care, and food, and compare that to a salary that would apply to you, whether you're a single person, you're a member of a couple, you're
the member of a family that would be pooling resources to live together.
And that would help you give you an idea of whether or not you would be able to afford living in the state of California.
Personally, um I do enjoy living here.
You know, it is home.
I'm fortunate that I can continue to afford to live here and I hope that continues.
You know, you have to think about job security.
You have to think about how close or far away your family is to you.
And my family is all here.
I'm glad that I got to share some of this information so that you can have um a better idea of what it's like to live in a place like California.
Take care everyone.
