Also budget for a car and car insurance if you’re planning to live in the US.
The US generally has very bad public transportation, and a very car-centered culture, so you’ll need to buy a used car. Only a few cities in the US are feasible to live without a car (e.g. New York, San Francisco), and most are way too dangerous to use a bicycle for a daily commute.
You can get a decent used car for something around USD $5k to $10k, but bear in mind used car prices are quite high at the moment—about 50% higher than just 2 years ago.
In most areas of the US, I’d recommend something substantially bigger and heavier than UK or European people are used to driving, given the safety concerns. We have a lot of bad drivers, and if you’re into longtermism and longevity, you’ll want to minimize risk of death/disability from car crashes. My heuristic would be, get a vehicle with at least 4,000 pounds mass, 6 airbags, and some active safety features. Bear in mind that gas is much cheaper in the US than in many other countries, so the extra mass doesn’t matter very much in terms of running costs.
This doesn’t seem obvious enough to me to include—I eventually co-owned a car at age 36 but never had one before that (living in suburbs of Philadelphia and Boston). It does seem worth talking to people in the area you plan to live about whether they find it feasible to not own a car.
Julia—excellent advice.
Also budget for a car and car insurance if you’re planning to live in the US.
The US generally has very bad public transportation, and a very car-centered culture, so you’ll need to buy a used car. Only a few cities in the US are feasible to live without a car (e.g. New York, San Francisco), and most are way too dangerous to use a bicycle for a daily commute.
You can get a decent used car for something around USD $5k to $10k, but bear in mind used car prices are quite high at the moment—about 50% higher than just 2 years ago.
In most areas of the US, I’d recommend something substantially bigger and heavier than UK or European people are used to driving, given the safety concerns. We have a lot of bad drivers, and if you’re into longtermism and longevity, you’ll want to minimize risk of death/disability from car crashes. My heuristic would be, get a vehicle with at least 4,000 pounds mass, 6 airbags, and some active safety features. Bear in mind that gas is much cheaper in the US than in many other countries, so the extra mass doesn’t matter very much in terms of running costs.
This doesn’t seem obvious enough to me to include—I eventually co-owned a car at age 36 but never had one before that (living in suburbs of Philadelphia and Boston). It does seem worth talking to people in the area you plan to live about whether they find it feasible to not own a car.