We Have Some Problems With Visa’s Sample Budget For McDonald’s Employees

So I was looking around MSN.com when I found this article. I did a search but couldn't find anything about it, if already posted can be deleted. I thought it was a little odd so I traced it to its source and got even more info on it. So apparently 2 years ago McDonald's and Visa teamed up to create a budget for the minimum wage worker (presumably a McDonald's employee) to help them manage their finances. You know instead of doing the obvious thing of raising the amount they pay their employees The budget assumes you work $8.50 and two jobs at roughly 60 hours a week

consumerist.com...

Someone meant really well. We think. A few years ago, Visa and McDonald’s partnered to launch a personal finance site for McDonald’s employees to help them better manage their money. Unfortunately, whoever wrote these materials had no grasp of what it’s actually like to live on $8 or so per hour.

No surprise here. If they knew what it's like to live at $8 they wouldn't spend boat loads of money to tell people how to live at $8 an hour an just raise the amount they pay their employees.

You can download their handy budget workbook yourself. First, in the “income” column, you, the Hypothetical McDonald’s Employee, have two jobs. One job pays $1,105 per month, and the other pays $955 per month. This amount is what someone would earn working roughly 60 hours a week at $8.50 an hour. If you earn less per hour than that or this is after taxes, then you’re either working more hours or have a higher hourly wage. The budget doesn’t specify whether this is gross income or after taxes: even for someone in a low enough tax bracket that they pay no federal or state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare still takes 6.2% out of every check.

Ok so we have this nice budget sheet where you can fill out your monthly expenses. Now everything looks good at first glance. But once you take a second look, things start to become comical.

Savings: $100

No quibble with this. Everyone should be putting some money in a savings account (or shoebox, whatever, but a savings account is a better idea.)

Mortgage/Rent: $600

This is a realistic figure in most of the country if you share a home with family or roommates, but not so much if you live by yourself or don’t yet have good enough credit to get a fixed-rate mortgage on a modest condo.

Car Payment: $150

Not a bad figure, but that’s probably an older car, so hope you have money put away for repairs.

Car/Home Insurance: $100

That sounds pretty reasonable, though again, a person working to rebuild their credit might not get a great rate on carinsurance.

Ok so far so good (except maybe the car payment is kind of low). However the article brings up a good point.

Hey, wait a second, there isn’t any more mention of a car on this budget. How are you supposed to repair and maintain this vehicle? Even changing your own oil and having a friend do major repairs in their front lawn costs money for parts.

That might not be a problem, though, because there’s also no budget line for gasoline. Guess you’ll be making a car payment while you walk to work.

Holy crap, so the budget allows for you to own a car and therefore pay a bank for your loan as well as have insurance, yet no gas. So you get all the joys of paying for the car but can't drive it. That's totally why I buy cars, to line the pockets of corporations...

Health Insurance: $20

Ok I don't even have to show the article's opinion on this budget item. It speaks for itself. I don't know where one can buy health insurance for $20, but man it has either got to be the WORST health insurance ever or hold the Guiness World Record for the highest deductible. So either imaginary or another thing you are paying for that you cannot use.

Heating: $0

Hope you live in the Southern half of the Unites States because no heat for you. Better invest in a metal trash can to burn papers in your living room all winter.

Cable/Phone: $100

Electric: $90

Other: $100

Spending Money: $800

That is the rest of them. Notice anything missing? How about groceries, clothes, cleaning supplies, dinnerware, or furniture. I guess that is spending money or something. Obviously McDonald's doesn't think you need food to survive, but apparently a cell phone and cable are necessary parts of one's life.

After the budget the article goes on to talk about how the site you can get this budget from starts getting condescending with obvious advice. I'd suggest reading the whole article to get all this stuff, but just these things alone are enough to make me first laugh at the lunacy then sigh because this is completely telling of how these corporations think of their employees. Instead of raising the pay they give their employees, they slap together some stupid website with an impossible and loony budget and expect people to accept that. Thanks McDonald's, you're really thinking of the little guy here...

There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family. They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time, uneducated folks, people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc. Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year. Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

Cant really fault a simple sample budget outline for leaving things out and just plain sucking overall. They always do.

You want a real budget you're going to have to sit and go over all your bills, receipts, debts, etc... and make one up that suits you and your lifestyle.

As a side note seeing a McDonalds employee bring home 2K a month makes me wonder what the hell I went to all those years of school for. Not much apparently.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family.

They may not mean to be "for head household earners" but people need work and they shouldnt be made to work for nothing, regardless of their age or experience.

They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time,

So then, they should only employ teens, students and those that only want to work part time - On the cheap of course.

uneducated folks,

Yes, lets punish them for not doing well in piss-poor education systems.

people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc.

I doubt a lazy person could hack mcdonalds.

Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year.

But not every job has to be paid the absolutely minimum while the company rakes in billions every year?

Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

But they are human beings and they need to live like the rest of us.
If you never pay them enough they'll never be able to afford to educate themselves or send their kids to a better school, so the cycle of deprivation continues and then their kids end up working the same types of jobs.

Big corporations need to stop being so tight, pay your workers a proper wage you slack arses.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family. They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time, uneducated folks, people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc. Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year. Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

Shelf stockers at my local market make $13 an hour overnight, $19 on Sundays. Not sure what you're smoking, lumping them in with minimum wage earners and "burger flippers" you so clearly disdain by your language. Yet something tells me you rely on the services of unhappy minimum wage earners.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family. They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time, uneducated folks, people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc. Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year. Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

And this wouldn't be an issue if all the jobs that weren't at a fast food place or a food place at all if they paid a wage that you could be a head of household bread winner with.

But that is not the case, even the educated jobs pay closer to minimum wage than they do to a reasonable wage that you could raise a family on, since if there was, I doubt Food Stamps would have the highest record of Applicants it's had since the great depression?

The crazier part is you think 30k a year is a high wage, when you factor in everything at today's costs, you really are looking at needing a good deal more than that a year, specially if you want to ever handle the unexpected, the vacations, weddings, funerals, things your insurance doesn't cover, when your transmission dies after only 5 years of owning that new car and driving it less since you couldn't afford gas.

Money is the variable that enslaves you all. Money is not your god, do not worship it, nor work yourself to the bone for it, find a means to use it less and less and free yourself from this insanity.

Originally posted by Tranceopticalinclined

Money is the variable that enslaves you all. Money is not your god, do not worship it, nor work yourself to the bone for it, find a means to use it less and less and free yourself from this insanity.

Agreed, bro. If people only grew their own food, think of how much less they'd have to spend, immediately! Community gardens, anyone? And this madness of this suburban gardens... endless rows of flowers, nothing edible, all sprayed with herbicides. It truly is disappointing, what we've turned our world into.

I'd like to point out that this budget asumes you are working 60 hours a week and two jobs. We all know how unlikely that is in this economy. Most likely your local mcdonald's is going to give you 30 hours and a schedule so hectic that you can't fit in another job.

Corporate McDonald's has teams of bean counters specifically tasked to cut labor costs, get as much work out of their employees without having to pony up quality benifits or workmans comp.

Franchise operations are mandated to follow corporate guidelines and they never favor the employees.

Now with the unions dead...you are at the mercy of the corporate structure.

I wouldn't eat that crap if they gave it away. I always patronize mom and pop owned eateries and so should you. Its the only thing you can do if you want to fight the unjust system.

So thats how they all have an iphone 5!! Im gonna follow that model.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family. They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time, uneducated folks, people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc. Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year. Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

I reckon there would be a few more jobs paying 30k a year if they introduced a maximum wage..

And then you take your girlfriend to an oyster house and she spends your rent money in one night ordering some rare oyster from Japan.

I guess they don't count on relationships.

"Uh oh, I spent my car payment for a night at the movies."

60 hours a week? Might as well put a bullet in my head, I am not doing any living anyways..... What is the point? Why must we spend every waking hour working just to put a roof over our head? Am I the only one that considers that utterly insane?

It's really creepy that a lot of the business paradigms in force today are derived from scripture.

We really need to let that old crap go and accept the fact that those guidelines were for a much smaller world.

Thou shalt not pet dogs other than me, for I am a jealous dog.

Arf.

reply to post by purplemer

I used to be a lot more motivated than I am now, but not so much anymore because working my ass off for 40+ years for $30,000 a year OR LESS beat it out of me.

I swear some people here are either living at home with their parents, or still under their parents wing. Or maybe just trolls under their parent's bridge.

Many of you, wait!, none of you bring up those "Paradigms of Business", maybe because you have no real understanding of them, and that would be the case if businesses and corporations had a say in your schooling, wait!, they do.

Things look a bit different after you get older, and believe me, you do not have it all figured out like you think you do!.

He who knows everything is the very definition of the term "Learning Disability".

Pardon me (while I burst into flames) I wander off topic on occasion.

reply to post by TKDRL


Nope, it is definitely insane. It's only in this most recent era, which is actually a small percentage of human existence, that we've been tricked into working on things which are not related to producing food, housing, or clothing for ourselves. Our tireless labor clearly serves to construct vast personal empires for greedy CEOs and boards of directors.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
There is nothing wrong with jobs that pay minimum wage. They are not meant to be for a head of household earner to raise a family. They are for teenagers, students, people who only want to work part time, uneducated folks, people close to or in retirement, the lazy, etc. Not every job can or should be paid 30k+ a year. Burger flippers, cashiers, shelf stockers, cleaning staff, etc fall into that category.

I agree that smarter, more highly skilled people deserve to make more money. But, there is a tremendously unfair gap of wealth that is being eaten up by a very small percent of the population (the 1%). Let's break down some numbers to get a better idea of how severe this problem is.

Numbers based on a 40 hour work week:

McD worker - $8.50/hr $340/ week $17,680/year
McD CEO - $4,206/hr $168,269/week $8,750,000/year

I know McD workers 'only flip burgers' but there is no way that you can say these numbers reflect a fair wage from top to bottom. The McD CEO makes the average McD employee's FULL, 40hr/week, 52week YEARLY INCOME in less than one day of work. There is something seriously wrong with that!

I dont think that ceos should make min wage, nor do i think min wage employees should make millions, but there HAS to be a better balance than what is happening now.

£#@€ing 1%.....

Health Insurance: $20 Ok I don't even have to show the article's opinion on this budget item. It speaks for itself. I don't know where one can buy health insurance for $20,

Did you read original article? McDonalds employees pay this per month for their benefits.

reply to post by CALGARIAN


I read the article I posted. What original article are you referring to? The actual McDonald's budget creation website? That's not an article it's a whole website.

Also remember, people are lucky to find ONE job in this economy, much less 2...
And remember, most service jobs give it's employees JUST enough hours to make them borderline part time, just so they don't have to provide insurance