Standard of Living Factors?

Okay, so it seems technical setup has gone without a hitch. My plan remains an official "this is the experiment yay!" launch on 11/1/11 (which happens to be my birthday). But in order to really launch, I need clearer parameters on what the hell I am actually trying to measure/accomplish/think about.

What constitutes an "acceptable" standard of living? This will vary widely according to perceived tastes but of course that can be altered (Apple can make you want things you never knew you did, for example; same can be done with insects as protein sources, in theory). So perhaps the best way to go about this is to err on the side of austerity?

So I found this statistic on city-data.com:

Residents with income below the poverty level in 2009: 

Tempe:	19.2%
Whole state:	16.5%

Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009: 

Tempe:	9.4%
Whole state:	7.6%

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Tempe-Arizona.html#ixzz1a7qEnBbW

That means almost 20% of people in Tempe (a city of 161,000: 20% is 32,000 people) are living at-or-below an annual income of $11,500 (for single-person households....it's $22,500 for a family of 4). One in FIVE people are getting by for rent, utilities, food, clothing, education, and healthcare on $46 a day ( or $17,000 a year, an averaging of the single-person income and family-of-four).

$46 a day to spend sounds like a lot, but my rent alone is $456 a month, x12 = $5,472 a year, not even counting utilities. (They come out to about $3.75 a day for me, or would be $1,365 a year). So right there, almost 7k a year gets eaten up in the living expensive of shelter. That's $10,000 left to survive on.

Now personally that would be plenty, if I'm just looking to pay for food and transportation costs, and just for myself (but a single-person household would be $11,500, not $17,000, so I'd be down to $4,500 for yearly food budget already. Okay, that sucks). But most likely that's a figure to be shared by, let's say, a young adult couple with no children.

I think what I want to look at is finding how much money has to be spent in order to have a highly satisfying standard of living, with methods that are easily replicated, along with play-by-play recommendations about how certain factors could be adjusted (lower costs with bulk ordering for larger groups, for example) while still discussing the tradeoffs (bulk ordering from Costco = death to the environment because supply chains are evil, well not really, but I simplify highly). Because don't forget, sustainability + overall wellness is a big part of this too, not just "how cheap can I be?"

So...I guess it means I have to keep thinking.