Move Along. You Can’t Afford to Live Here.

Having a hard time making ends meet? Join the club. It’s a big one.

About half the renters in America can’t afford to pay the landlord.

Pretty outrageous statistic, but that’s just the way it goes. If you can’t swing the rent, you’ll just have to move along.

Find cheaper digs. Get a better job.

But the rent seems to be going up everywhere. And the bosses know half the people looking for work are one or two steps ahead of the sheriff. If that many people need work, the owners don’t have to pay too much. So fix the problem by taking two or three of the lousy jobs so you can afford to pay that rent. 

Move along. Job to job to job.

Now you can afford an apartment, but you work so much you’re hardly ever there. Maybe it makes more sense to head for the sticks, where there are cheaper places to live. Pull up stakes and move along to a much smaller town.

But you find the jobs out where the grass grows long tend to pay even less than where you were before. If you can find any work at all.

So try the other direction. There are cheaper lodgings in the rougher neighborhoods, aren’t there? Perhaps it’s worth the risk.

Move along. Maybe the road to a better life could be paved with potholes and cracked sidewalks.

But the apartment buildings with the leaky plumbing and roaches and ancient furnaces aren’t ringed by milk and honey. Food costs more. The schools are bad. Stores sell junk. The burglars are more efficient than the cops. 

Jobs are scarce in your new neighborhood, so you drive a long way to work. Better buy your gas up there. Costs too much where you live.

Move along.

They’re building lots of brand new apartments all over. You could try one of those. 

But they cost twice as much as the old ones. That’s strange. 

They seem to be intended for people who make better money than you but are afraid to take out mortgages because their good fortune might not last. They might have to move along.

If shelter costs more than you can earn through employment, you’ll have to get more money somehow. Try picking up a side hustle like the ones they advertise on YouTube and Instagram. You don’t have to know or do anything special and you can just collect passive income! Sounds like a plan.

If not, you know what you have to do.

Move along.

But where?