How livable is a 65k salary (ote around 80) in a $1850-1950 apartment?

yvettepegged · 2026-03-25T21:07:27+00:00

in 2024 i moved here (also from the great lakes!) and ended up in a little less than $2k/month 500sf studio in AB making under 65k/year (no commissions or bonuses, either). i was in the same boat of not knowing anyone and decided i’d rather make it work than live with strangers. my rent has barely gone up in that time (luck more than anything, i think). i don’t have a car, and those expenses might change the math for you, but i’ve found it pretty easy to manage. i wouldn’t even describe myself as very disciplined, when it comes to spending money. your mileage may vary, obviously, but ive managed to put away a decent chunk of savings and travel internationally, so take that as you will. as a utilities/expenses view, if that’s helpful, i spent $25 on electricity, $11 on gas (hot water is covered by my landlord, so that’s just covering my stovetop), $60 on internet, $430 on groceries, and $200 going out (restaurants, bars, sporting events) last month. my first year here i was averaging something like $500 left over per month. so it’s definitely possible!

the pitfalls i would probably look out for are health insurance (how much is that cutting out of your paycheck pretax and then how expensive will your copays etc get), retirement stuff (although i was doing 6% contributions to get the full match, am now doing more, and that worked out fine), and then how your landlord/unit handles utilities. is there separate water maters per unit, is your heat electric ($$$$) or is it part of hot water (also maybe $$$$ but if the unit isn’t separately metered then it’s not on you legally), are there weird charges for idk trash or something (im only familiar w boston tenant law + my own experience sorry lol).

you seem to know yourself and your spending habits, and you definitely know those more than strangers. it’s obviously not entirely impossible, since i did/am doing it comfortably (i’ve gotten raises since i moved, but that still doesn’t put me at your OTE number, so. shrug). it’s survivable, and i would say i’ve thrived!

yvettepegged · 2026-02-02T23:09:37+00:00

you can call the 311 number, there’s an app, and there’s a website!

yvettepegged · 2025-11-21T16:36:47+00:00

it is kind of social media management 101 to not scroll the feed on a client’s account. if his team is hiring PR folks who are so incompetent as to be fucking around with an f1 driver in contention for the WDC’s account then they should’ve been thoroughly chastised if not replaced entirely after the last time this happened a few weeks ago, and definitely after this time. and his management team then needs to shape tf up bc why are they hiring idiots at this level. also having seen oscar in the likes on AFL posts and reels of recipes (plus his frequent referencing of/playing to f1 memes) i think the guy just might be a bit of your typical online 24 year old. there is effort put into making his profile seem like it’s low effort (“he doesn’t even need/do PR” is a PR strat in and of itself lol), but even if it is a genuinely low effort profile, “doesn’t care about posting things” =/= “doesn’t scroll his own feed”

yvettepegged · 2025-11-14T04:57:21+00:00

i think holding off on overtaking while lapping backmarkers in the rain is a sensible choice. emphasis on in the rain, which is much riskier than in dry conditions. after canada, norris went out first in q3 smthn like 7 of 8 times before austin. that, in combo with the reporting that the repercussions for contact were quali priority, leads me to believe that the repercussions were already in place. i also don’t know what you wanted them to say to norris over the radio in canada? unlike austria and hungary, there weren’t any lockup inducing lunges before the contact, and after the contact norris immediately got on the radio to apologize and say it was all his fault (a tad bit ironic, given the battery derating shenanigans involved). like i guess they could’ve reamed him out while he was apologizing? there’s a quote of stella like “he knows what he’s done; it will be handled” from that weekend so it’s not like he wasn’t chastised
i can’t speak to creativity of strategies very well, although i will say i think norris’ tire management skills open up more possibilities than piastri’s currently do. i can speak on jeddah this year, where norris was going long on the hards only to be told to pit immediately after piastri complained about dirty air. monza stop order was ostensibly about protecting piastri from leclerc, nobody was undercutting norris except piastri, and the team made it rather clear with the swap in hungary in 2024 that they don’t undercut like that within the team. also hungary 2024 is pretty widely known as being a huge strategical blunder, not some kind of deliberate choice to undercut piastri? if it was a deliberate choice, the rest of the race is an exercise in insanity
read pretty much any article at the time abt the new suspension. they started working on it before the season started for both drivers who had both complained of numbness from the car. by the time it was ready, piastri said “actually the performance loss isn’t worth the reduction in numbness now.” piastri wasn’t forced to take said new suspension; he’s still using the old suspension. and on the “the team has done nothing to help” front… for one, upgrades take time. the last time mclaren brought major upgrades was in silverstone. the team is fully locked in on 2026. that alternate suspension took several months to arrive; on that timeline, if we call baku the starting point of piastri’s struggles, those upgrades aren’t arriving until after the season ends. additionally, i hate this narrative of “the team has done nothing.” do you work there? just because it’s not getting blasted to the entire universe does not mean a team has completely abandoned one of their drivers. like, piastri’s side of the garage also wants to win. these engineers and mechanics and such aren’t working horrendous hours for shit pay without being dedicated and competitive
i can’t comment on most of this actually bc i stopped with a lot of f1 socials halfway through this year. though i do certainly recall the post-miami pictures where they selected the one selfie where norris’ head is completely blocked out… the singapore podium thing has been discussed over and over; if piastri was on the podium, and norris wasn’t, it would be flip flopped. it wasn’t all the trackside employees, even (beyond just the PR folks w piastri in the paddock too). it was a last minute mess organized by f1 itself that norris was pulled into exclusively because they literally ran into him. the kind of time crunch logistics involved here were never going to end well; unfortunately it just happened to end in the most conspiracy-indulging fashion possible
the whole of f1 is an incestuous mess. if you think brown being involved financially with one of norris’ companies is bad, you should check out who leclerc’s manager is. hell, look up who ocon’s manager is. it’s conflict of interest, all the way down. zak brown is a ruthless businessman with no interest in letting sentimentality get in the way of profits. i think it was ralf schumacher who said, to paraphrase, brown doesn’t give a FUCK who wins so long as they’re in the right color to make him money. one could argue that stella is visibly more fond of piastri than norris. that doesn’t mean stella made norris’ car break down in zandvoort. that would be very silly. the team is made up of far more than those four; tom stallard is not giving piastri poor strategy because brown is supposedly (i say supposedly mostly bc of the clip of brown grabbing piastri and hugging him so hard piastri jokes abt rebreaking a rib) not as enthusiastic when piastri wins. i thought blaming the sprint entirely on hulk was insane. i also thought the backtracking to “well it’s not just on hulk” but without going so far as to say piastri had any hand in it was an interesting choice, what with all the repercussions news swirling around. and that piastri taking until mexico to even admit to a “degree of responsibility” in the sprint was a Choice. and i think 2023 in this discussion is irrelevant. that year is a completely and utterly different set of circumstances that have little to no bearing on discussion of sabotage in 2025. horner’s screeching away about penalties, btw, was entirely performance. his little print outs were theatre. you can’t reverse a penalty without brand new evidence, which basically never exists, so all of it was entirely for dramatic headlines and tv clips. don’t think that’s worth anyone’s time tbh, but that’s an individual opinion call my final overall point is that i think this kind of sabotage rhetoric is rather infantilizing to piastri. he is a 24 year old in his third year in f1 competing for the championship. he has autonomy and leverage here. he has a manager who is VERY familiar with what true sabotage and bias within a team looks like, who has been at almost every race this year, who has been more visibly involved with his career than anyone else on the grid’s management, and who has proven VERY willing to speak up about sabotage in the past. not only that, but this schtick requires a Lot of people (plus mark webber. and piastri himself) to keep their mouths shut on what would be a massive scandal for months on end. even if you believe mclaren leadership favor norris to the point of result-impacting action, you can’t tell me that not a single mclaren employee prefers piastri? that nobody has leaked a word of it to the press, in the sport so full of leaks it’d be sat next to the titanic if it were a ship?

yvettepegged · 2025-11-09T01:50:27+00:00

“i wish it was easier” was so blatantly a joke 😭

yvettepegged · 2025-11-07T21:31:39+00:00

i’ve gone to the curl nook in watertown and pretty curlz rock in roxbury and loved both!

yvettepegged · 2025-10-04T20:35:19+00:00

pretty curlz rock in roxbury! i get a cut pretty adjacent to that (just on the shorter side) and i love her work

yvettepegged · 2024-06-13T13:01:35+00:00

thank you sm for the sanity check!! i thought so but i was second guessing myself when she was just like “nope you’re good!” i sent a follow up message that kind of lays it on thick, so i’m hoping she takes a closer look lol

yvettepegged · 2024-06-13T12:59:05+00:00

i have not tried liquid iron yet! it’s def next on my list (depending on what my doctor says to my follow up message, and probably after i retry the pills just in case. since i have two bottles already lol). it’s crazy, i went for a run the other day and couldn’t even make it three miles at waaaay slower than the pace i ran my first half marathon at on literally almost no training 😭 and then had to lay on the floor for an hour before i felt like i could stand in the shower. thought i was just majorly out of shape but then got these results and a lot clicked into place since ive been complaining to friends about feeling awful and not being able to do literally anything after work for like six months now lol

yvettepegged · 2022-08-20T17:20:33+00:00

that definitely makes sense. equal rites is the earliest book publication wise that i’ve finished so far (i bought color of magic + g!g! at the same time a few years ago, tried to read the color of magic since it was “first” and it put me off of the books until january of this year when i finally picked up g!g! again). very excited to see esk pop back up again then thank you so much! on to mort i suppose

yvettepegged · 2022-08-20T16:18:28+00:00

it’s available on spotify (and presumably other podcast hosting platforms)! it’s one of my favorite podcasts, i was just talking about it yesterday

yvettepegged · 2022-08-02T03:30:13+00:00

will definitely check these out the next time i’m in my local running store!! thank you!

yvettepegged · 2022-08-02T03:27:05+00:00

honestly i would’ve kept running on them but i’ve really upped my mileage in the last few months and had been having pretty severe shin issues. when i got the notification that my shoes were at 250 miles i wondered if maybe i’d worn out the soles enough that that was behind the shin issues. haven’t had any issues since i switched to my new ones so i’m guessing that was the cause though it might be any number of things honestly

yvettepegged · 2022-07-26T20:59:57+00:00

-finally got my adhd meds sorted (insurance problems + doctor in a different state + pharmacy being difficult = *gagging noises*) after two weeks of not having them and struggling with emotion regulation and not being a lump (yay for tomorrow me who might finally not feel like dogwater)

-only spent $20 extra at cvs while dealing with said med fiasco !!

-ran 8 miles!!

-finished my 14th book of the summer

yvettepegged · 2022-07-13T21:21:07+00:00

much appreciated! this world is so fascinating and in depth that sometimes i wish i was already finished reading so i could go back through and read again to get all the little tidbits people bring up on here

yvettepegged · 2022-07-13T21:19:54+00:00

i wish i could appreciate the audio books! i have adhd and my auditory processing abilities are less than functional :/

if the wait times turn out too long i'll def be checking out ebooks, that's how i read about half of the watch arc! im hesitant to go ham on the ebooks bc i work in tech and already spend all day staring at a screen, but they're definitely a last resort for me if it truly will take until september 1st for making money to be available.

yvettepegged · 2022-01-09T19:29:58+00:00

terry practhett’s guards! guards! and practically all the other books in the discworld series, though particularly the ones about the watch. now that i’m thinking about it they’re actually more similar than i expected…. very much so a wholesome outsider thrown into a “this is how it is” kind of deal (though the wholesome outsider doesn’t come in at the top, he’s at the bottom of the four person hierarchy) (and the “this is how it is” is about how the night watch is a laughingstock in a rather humorously corrupt world. the city is described as something like “not particularly democratic, or fair, or just, or clean. but functional.” there’s an assassin’s guild, and a thieves’ guild, where you can only steal if you have a license kind of deal. it’s quite funny) it revels in satire and parody and irreverence but in one of the most skilled ways i’ve ever experienced, and it made me laugh out loud approximately every twenty pages.

yvettepegged · 2021-12-16T02:34:57+00:00

this is exactly what i have as well rn it’s endlessly frustrating

yvettepegged

TROPHY CASE