What do your monthly bills total?

[garbon]

Oh I voted no clue before I read your post and saw what you specified. I know all of that.

Well? What's the real answer then?

Depending on month (i.e. when I need to use a/c), I'm on the borderline of bucket 2 and 3.

[Zanza]

For some, health insurance is a monthly bill. For others it's an auto-deduct from your paycheck. You can decide for yourself how you want to count it.

Okay, I didn't count it as I don't really notice it. My employer pays it directly to the health insurance company.

The weird taxes are like the living tax that they have in England. (I don't remember what it's called.) As well as the "watch TV" tax, etc.

Living is still free in Germany, TV tax is 18 Euro/month.

[Zanza]

Hey, um, Zanza, did you vote 1000 or did you do the conversion to $? I think it's in a similar range, but I was actually thinking in dollars even though I didn't put that up there. 

If the poll doesn't specify it, I obviously vote in Euro.

1000 EUR is about 1300 USD.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Somewhere between $1000 and $1200.

You might laugh at our television tax but it beats paying for health insurance 

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Jesus Herbert Hoover Christ I'm paying more for my house per month, including amortized taxes and insurance, than most of you pay total. 

[Valmy]

Somewhere between $1000 and $1200.

You might laugh at our television tax but it beats paying for health insurance 

Man between you and Zanza I almost want to return to the mother continent.  You guys need any electrical engineers?

[Malthus]

I don't think that's misleading at all. I'm not asking what your assets are; I'm asking what you pay for your basic living expenses. If you own your car and your house, then should you, god forbid, get laid off or fired, you could live on a much lower budget than you're used to. That's more what I'm wondering.

Fair enough.

To my mind it sorta works out to the same whether I lease a car or not, because I have to save up cash in a sinking fund for the next car; but I could, if necessary, spend that cash on something else and drive this one into the ground.

The biggest single irreducible fixed expenses are property tax and insurance. If I lost everything, I'd still have to pay those unless I sold the house. Car I could live without, as I live, literally, right next to a subway station - I'm so close that in the basement, you can hear the trains moving.

Property tax plus insurance on my house is about $700 per month.

[Syt]

My monthly bills are between 1000 and 1200 EUR.

[Zanza]

Man between you and Zanza I almost want to return to the mother continent.  You guys need any electrical engineers?

My impression from having lived in the US and living here is that living in the US is generally cheaper, unless you live in a very expensive area.

[Ed Anger]

Roughly 5 to 6 thousand, depending on when insurance is due.

[Malthus]

Man between you and Zanza I almost want to return to the mother continent.  You guys need any electrical engineers?

My impression from having lived in the US and living here is that living in the US is generally cheaper, unless you live in a very expensive area.

Doesn't that depend on whether your work covers health insurance or not?

My impression is that this can take a pretty big bite.

[11B4V]

In the green by a good margin. Other than that noneya.

[Syt]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/15/2300321/mcdonalds-buget-low-wage/?mobile=nc

McDonalds Tells Workers To Budget By Getting A Second Job And Turning Off Their Heat

McDonalds has partnered with Visa to launch a website to help its low-wage workers making an average $8.25 an hour to budget. But while the site is clearly meant to illustrate that McDonalds workers should be able to live on their meager wages, it actually underscores exactly how hard it is for a low-paid fast food worker to get by.

The site includes a sample"'budget journal" for McDonalds' employees that offers a laughably inaccurate view of what it's like to budget on a minimum wage job. Not only does the budget leave a spot open for "second job," it also gives wholly unreasonable estimates for employees' costs: $20 a month for health care, $0 for heating, and $600 a month for rent. It does not include any budgeted money for food or clothing.

Basically every facet of this budget is unachievable. For an uninsured person to independently buy health care, he or she must shell out on average $215 a month — just for an individual plan. While some full-time McDonald's workers do qualify for the company's $14 a week health plan, that offer caps coverage at $10,000 a year and is often insufficient. If that person wants to eat, "moderate" spending will run them $32 a week for themselves, and $867 a month to feed a family of four. And if a fast food worker is living in a city? Well, New York City rents just reached an average of $3,000 a month.

The sample budget is also available in Spanish. On another section of the site, it concludes, "You can have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it."

Neither McDonalds nor Visa returned requests for comment by the time of publication.

Last year, Bloomberg News found that it would take the average McDonalds employee one million hours of work to earn as much money as the company's CEO. This immense wage disparity in the fast food industry has sparked a series of protests and walk-outs by low-wage workers working at fast food chains around the country — in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Seattle, to name a few cities, workers from chains including KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell have spoken publicly about the need for serious wage increases across the industry.

UPDATE:

A McDonalds spokesperson provided this statement to ThinkProgress:

    "In an effort to provide free, comprehensive money management tools, McDonald's first used the Wealth Watchers International budgeting journal when this financial literacy program launched in 2008.

    As part of this program, several resources were developed including a sample budgeting guide, an instructional video and a web resource center that had additional tools and information.

    The samples that are on this site are generic examples and are intended to help provide a general outline of what an individual budget may look like."

[Caliga]

Just did the math... looks like just shy of $2,000.

[garbon]

Well, New York City rents just reached an average of $3,000 a month.

This bit is rather ridiculous though as we all already knew that you can't afford to work at McD's and live in most of Manhattan.  Not that I disagree with what the article is saying as a whole.