Poverty in America...Living Wage Calculator

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
reply to post by JRho900

 

I know the feeling. We've cut back in every way possible to make ends meet without incurring any debt. Kind of hard to do when wages stay virtually frozen for years while everything else (fuel costs, taxes, insurance, food, clothing) goes up up up.

It is next to impossible! It is heart wrenching to say the least. If I quit my JOB and sat on my ass. I would get over 900.00 a month in food stamps. Free health insurance. Welfare check. Check for electricity. I would make MORE money sitting at home than if I did working.

I bargin shop for our food. I make an effort. Yet you have millons of people who take the free handouts.

My company is a small business. I am the executive asst. (read gopher with a fancy title) I make ok money. Just not enough to support my family. We are slowly going into debt.

I am about 2000 over the limit for handouts.


My husband is currently trying to get on disability. He injured his back and has a herniated disk with 2 bulging ones. Surgery has failed. He can not sit or stand longer than 5 mins. His leg will give our randomly. With a doctors note stating he is unable to work...........he was denied for disability. (I did not realize they had a medical doctor review the paperwork *eye roll*) So we have appealed. It sucks!

So we are struggling. Right now it is cheaper for us to "self insure" my husband and I. My children are on ours states chip program. If I were to get health insurance through my company it would be over 1400.00 a month for my family. 1400.00 a month? Why because I am of breeding age........no way for me to remove the "maternity" coverage. I am not having anymore children.

So much needs to change.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by butcherguy

 

No only the weddings, but also education, at least from all the 6 some will reach a full education and even post education.

By experience high education is very expensive, when my daughter was in College (UGA) it was like managing two different households but with the same income.

We had the means to provide for the education, I can only imagine how hard have to be for many to send their children to college in this day and time.

Up til now, I had managed to stay in complete denial of this EVENTUALITY! I have one 17 year old that will be starting college in a little over a year.

Now that I am facing my fears fully, I must go stick my head in the oven.

Crap, it's electric.

reply to post by mblahnikluver


Yeah, that's why I decided to post it...if anything they err on the side of being more than reasonable and still the numbers aren't great, are they?

I feel for your friend. It's amazing how many people are in that boat. And yet it doesn't appear that nary anyone in Congress cares. It's not as if they don't know, is it?

reply to post by mblahnikluver


The government assistance is at state level, each state have different restrictions and qualifications.

Here in Ga been a welfare state you get more benefits or same benefits that other states in the same group.

Originally posted by butcherguy

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by butcherguy

 

No only the weddings, but also education, at least from all the 6 some will reach a full education and even post education.

By experience high education is very expensive, when my daughter was in College (UGA) it was like managing two different households but with the same income.

We had the means to provide for the education, I can only imagine how hard have to be for many to send their children to college in this day and time.

Up til now, I had managed to stay in complete denial of this EVENTUALITY! I have one 17 year old that will be starting college in a little over a year.

Now that I am facing my fears fully, I must go stick my head in the oven.

Crap, it's electric.

Hiding my head in the sand. My girls are 18 months and 3 1/2. My son is 6. I am banning make up and hoochie clothes. HA! I do not even want to think about them getting married! EEK!

reply to post by JRho900


Gee...maybe if you get your tubes tied...I'm kidding and hope that wasn't out of line, but hell I hope it never comes to that.

I get what you're saying about being better off on the dole...but I'd still venture to say most Americans will try anything and everything else until there's absolutely no choice. Something does need to change and change soon.

You work hard as hell under one set of criteria all your life and then all hell breaks loose. Like many others, I lost a pension after 24.5 years with the same company working backbreaking hours, and this was after working 33 years overall. Starting over at 46 under a whole new set of rules...well let's just say, I'm very tired.

reply to post by mblahnikluver

I'm thinking the states need to adjust their cost of living numbers. Wonder if that's in progress? What remedy do people really have?

They are tied! The funny thing is if for some odd reason I did get pregnant again and had Aetna, they would deny the coverage for the pregnancy since they paid to have my tubes tied. So you are telling me I have to PAY for maternity care that you would not pay for ANYWAY?

LOL oh the joys of fine print. Basically I would have to put in a claim with my OB to pay for maternity since my tubes are tied.

Children are expensive, I grew up with 3 more sibblings in the 60s and seventies, with only one father working (my mother stay at home) we all went to college.

Sadly college tuition back then was very affordable, (I credits were 5 dollars each) state financed and for many free.

Until privatization came into place and within ten years in the 80s my younger brother went from paying only 200 dollars for an entire semester to paying over 1000 and that was just the beginning

And education has gone down the hill even when the prices keeps increasing.

Thanks profiteers for that

And I most definitely got my cords clipped after my son was born!

My sperm must swim 'funny', to have 5 girls before the first boy.

"You work hard as hell under one set of criteria all your life and then all hell breaks loose. Like many others, I lost a pension after 24.5 years with the same company working backbreaking hours, and this was after working 33 years overall. Starting over at 46 under a whole new set of rules...well let's just say, I'm very tired. "


I can't imagine

I was amazed that in my area, the cost of owning vehicles and feeding the family cost more than housing. This (to me) is typical of over-indulgence. I'm a stay at home mother of two kids, and I spend about $400 a month to feed us - I buy meats on sale and freeze a large quantity at a time and plan my meals to use similar ingredients. I buy fresh and local veggies from farm stands and markets, which saves a lot of money. We have two older vehicles that are paid off ... because there is not a lien on a newer car which with a loan, insurance is much less expensive.

With me not working, obviously we save the $1100 allotted child care expenses (ridiculous.) but we need to budget and plan to keep ourselves out of debt. Obviously we don't live with excesses ... but we make it work. I can't imagine how it'd be if my husband lost his job.

We'd just have to open a brewery. Alcohol is recession proof

reply to post by MotherofBlessings


The observation on car prices and maintenance cost is a good one. The average car now costs more than my parents' brand new 4 bedroom, two bath home in NY did in 1970. That's mind-boggling to me.

Sounds like you pretty well have it under control. Open the brewery now...we could all use a beer. Ha.

Originally posted by MotherofBlessings
I was amazed that in my area, the cost of owning vehicles and feeding the family cost more than housing. This (to me) is typical of over-indulgence. I'm a stay at home mother of two kids, and I spend about $400 a month to feed us - I buy meats on sale and freeze a large quantity at a time and plan my meals to use similar ingredients. I buy fresh and local veggies from farm stands and markets, which saves a lot of money. We have two older vehicles that are paid off ... because there is not a lien on a newer car which with a loan, insurance is much less expensive.

With me not working, obviously we save the $1100 allotted child care expenses (ridiculous.) but we need to budget and plan to keep ourselves out of debt. Obviously we don't live with excesses ... but we make it work. I can't imagine how it'd be if my husband lost his job.

We'd just have to open a brewery. Alcohol is recession proof

We own both of our vehicles too. You are very local to me My husband's Aunt just drug us out to Dutch Wonderland this past Saturday! It was fun but something we would never normally do. (too spendy)

reply to post by JRho900


Haha, nice! It's funny, I have never actually been to Dutch Wonderland. Growing up, my dad always told me that he wasn't going to waste the money to take me there and if we were going to an amusement park we were going to Hershey.

We are very fortunate here to have the amount of farms we do. It is so easy and inexpensive to get fresh, healthy food! I know it isn't like that everywhere - when I lived in Key West it was much more costly for fresh produce and usually not really 'fresh'.

reply to post by MotherofBlessings

In this area, farmers markets on the town squares are making a huge comeback, which I think is great for two reason...one it helps us support local businesses and two it gives us fresher and usually cheaper options. Not a bad trend.

Hershey owns Dutch Wonderland now. I think it was about 30.00 a ticket! Lunch was 40.00 for 6 hotdogs, 2 bowls of fruits and drinks.

I do think they need to look into how much the cost of living has sky rocketed in the past few years.

If I did not live in a townhouse, I would have a veggie garden. I spend about 500.00 a month on food for our family. I do bargin shopping as well.

I am thankful that when we bought our house we kept it with in reason. We own a 3 bedroom townhouse. I know a lot of family who have gone belly up because they bit off more than they could chew.

If my husband would not have gotten hurt we would not be in such a snaffu. We choose to buy based on what we could afford off of one income. A lot of people depend on 2 incomes. So while I might bitch and moan about our finances, we really are blessed that we CAN pay our bills. We are on a tight walk with money, but are trying our hardest.

Here everyone is above living wage. Unless you're working at McDonalds and have a kid. Otherwise you're above it.

Home costs are skewing it a bit. Lots of richy-rich summer types from MA and CT have driven up home costs. Hardly any house is marketed as a real residential property anymore. Everything is being sold as "condo" "second home" or "development site."

Try to just find a small house on a couple of acres that's priced realistically.

According to that chart my household makes 4 times the living wage and we still cant afford to buy a house. A trailer in a park maybe. But the 2 bedroom house on 5 acres? Nope. They're saving that one for Dr. Somebody from MA to summer in.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

The one bad thing about being in a beautiful place, eh?

Here the prices (and values) of homes are going down dramatically. Supply and demand is part of that, I guess, plus as seems to be the case in a lot of places, the over-appraisals during the bank mortgage scams are putting a world of hurt on the market and on people who are trying to sell for reasons other than they're in trouble...people who paid and saved all their lives and counted on the money from their homes to retire on in part. It sucks.


[edit on 22-6-2010 by ~Lucidity]

Remember this?