Let’s say you were a family of 4 - 2 adults and 2 kids. Just daycare costs so much. How are you folks managing inflation and expenses. I wish I was an employee of OpenAI which whole industry is salivating on.
Rent a studio, all sleep in the same room, bring in your parents or in laws for childcare, eat ramen every meal, boom so cheap!!!!
Insufficient specifications... I will assume that you'll be following the general rules for standard of living outlined by CA dept of Social Services for family caregivers (safe home with indoor plumbing, electricity, temperature control, and 2-3 bedrooms depending on kids' ages and genders). So no Van Life, overcrowded studio apt, or living in a garden shed in someone else's yard. Still there are some questions that change the number a lot. 1) stay at home spouse? When I think of minimum spending, I think of having one income earner and one spouse working hard to make life run as cheaply as possible. E.g., that spouse can do all the childcare, sort through used goods on FB marketplace & Craigslist (e.g., buy a $2k car and put $1k of work into it to have a daily driver for the working spouse), grow or gather food if there is space, mend clothing or objects that wear out, etc. Having one spouse stay home may actually net a higher surplus/savings rate depending on wages, tax rates, and subsidies. (Ex https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/12/10/case-study-average-everyday-complainypants-seeks-redemption/) 2) health care costs? Some people are healthy & well covered by their employer insurance. Others need to max out large copays... 3) Location? At a minimum decent lifestyle (double-wide or large single-wide trailer on the bad side of town or maybe a cheap 2br apartment, shopping at Grocery Outlet, not going out much) can be really expensive in the priciest areas. E.g., the rent + utilities is easily over $3000 for a small but clean mobile home with good maintenance in Mountain View, CA, whereas it would cost less than $1000 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. So, if you're location-independent, have low standards, and don't have large external costs, I imagine you could probably barely support a family for about $2k/mo of spending (after taxes and transfers) even renting or leasing your major pieces of property (car, housing). That gets you just a bit under the Federal Poverty Level of $30k/yr. But you can have basic amenities like adequate food (not luxury--lots of canned & dry goods, limited meat and fish), washing machine (probably line drying clothes though), non-rationed HVAC use (very cheap places usually have bad weather at least some of the year), healthcare (pick a cheaper state that expanded Obamacare, maybe not Mississippi) with subsidy, and a reliable ish beater car that is used sparingly. If you have to be anywhere from San Jose to San Francisco, CA, housing eats at least $2.5k. Maybe you could take transit and not use a car? That would save a couple hundred dollars for maintenance, amortized registration, and fuel. But then your electricity costs 30 cents per kwh and your natural gas is expensive, so you probably just swelter in the summer and get cold in the winter. At least the weather here is good most of the time. Food & necessities are a bit more here too, so I would guess it would take at least $4k/month to live a very cheap but not deprived lifestyle as a family of four without existing capital in the core of the Bay Area, assuming you do not manage to get a Section 8 or other low income affordable housing arrangement. This would be very low income in the area. I voted sub 5k since you could probably get by on 5k almost anywhere.
Why are you so interested in what people think you could live on. You have to make it work for yourself