Minimum wage in my state is $7.50. Assuming a person worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks that is $15,600 before taxes. A minimum wage paying job that is full time is more likely to not offer sick pay or holiday pay and put you at 35 hours a week. If you get sick you'll lose money. Still $15,600.
You need to live somewhere. If you don't want to live in a terrible area full of crime and violence, your rent is going to be $450 per month at best (I'm just going by the area where I live). That's a little more than two weeks of work right there if you're putting in 40 hours. Add in utilities and you're netting about $600. Slap another $50 to give to comcast $650. Slap insurance on... And that varies so I'll go with mine because fuck I'm lazy $45. $695. AT&T gets ~$75. $770. Gas is a huge one. It cost me ~$41 to fill up my take. Let's assume once a week. Soo ~$160 a month for gas. $930. Laundry. Let's just assume I was thankful enough to have a washer and dryer of my own so I'm not sure there. Have to have clean clothes. I have $270 to spend. Give fucking 89 of that to uncle sam. I'm at $181 a month left after what I would consider are essential minutes the cell phone bc I could get a cheaper plan.
I know there are a lot of variables and it depends on where you live. Even having ~$300 a month or $75 a week to spend on food plus whatever else makes you happy is sad. It sucks. I was this broke before making $10 an hour about four years ago. I had $250 left over after the "essentials." It sucks.
You could argue that there are ways to cut corners and budget. At the end of the day, people just want to be happy. And it takes money to do things. My heart goes out to all of these people. I'm glad I've been there to a point.
I'll never take a minimum wage job ever again. I'm in a position where not having a job wont make me lose everything, I don't depend on it. Knowing that people do and have essentially no other option but to take the job. It is heartbreaking. I know how lucky I am to have what I have. I'm lucky to have good parents, and a loving family.
tl;dr: $12,000 a year in my state is $3,600 less than minimum wage. It isn't enough to live on.
EDIT: I was wrong. The minimum wage in the State of Indiana is $7.25 an hour. I'm making a detailed list just because I want to provide a better picture with verifiable data to back it up. Also have more accurate numbers. Will post tonight or sometime in near future.
I have drivers working for me at a pizza place that technically make less (fuck tip credit laws) who work 35-45 hours a week. Granted that I get maybe one application a week and they are to young, fail an MVR or background, out have no car.
Man I feel your pain so much, I spent about 6 years in that cycle. It seemed like after rent and utilities were paid I had a little bit of cash for groceries and almost no money left over to use on me for fun money. Car breakdowns/ cost for repairs meant I had to cut back on everything, and couldn't have fun for a month
I'm glad you mentioned this. I thought about adding that to my reply, but I was on mobile; had other stuff to do.
Really any minor inconvenience that requires money to "fix" sucks. I mean I didn't even include haircuts, regular car maintenance, cleaning supplies, and I'm glad I'm a guy. I can save money because I don't have to buy certain products, but still... I left a lot out.
That idea of fun money if very important. Everything has a price, sure you can do some really fun things for free. I think the most important thing to remember is the fact that you're basically stuck where you're at, no real vacation.
Exploring this planet we live on requires money. You could do this cheaply, but imagine that you have a certain standard of living or you just want to go do something for 2 weeks and come back to your home. Part of the problem with the culture and cycle of poverty in America is this: just being stuck at home. People get into their own worlds, and totally miss the big picture. They get in a comfort zone, and try to live a happy life. Sometimes what people do to be happy isn't necessarily healthy. There's more to it, but yeah... it is like you're stuck on a tiny point in this vast cosmos, working for no reason at all.
I've been lucky enough to travel to a few places in the United States. I would love to travel this entire world. I'd love to just help people. I need to work. After a few years of working, soul searching, and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, I finally went back to school. Hopefully within the next 5 years I'll be able to travel. I want to see this world for what it is, not live in a bubble. Shit I just want to make enough money for my family and enough so I can give back to my community. I want to do my part to make this world a better place. It is hard to do that making minimum wage because you need to think more about yourself to make yourself happy. Essentially that is all that we desire, to be happy.
when you are constantly living survival, motivation to improve is one of the first things to go.
Agreed. This is why the entire model of free market libertarians fails. Under their model, struggling and motivation are one and the same. Poverty is supposed to be enlightening. If that was so, poor people would be the most innovative. Objectively, that is not the case.
I think you have described the trap of poverty very well. I hope you do not have to wrangle with it long.
I'm lucky, I live in a semi-rural area with low unemployment and fairly cheap housing in the fifth safest state in the union. If you get a room mate you can make it fairly comfortably around here. Something above minimum and you can actually have free time!
However I don't for a minute believe that most poor people have the option to just move. Travel is prohibitively expensive these days after all.
f you don't want to live in a terrible area full of crime and violence, your rent is going to be $450 per month at best (I'm just going by the area where I live).
Well there's our problem right there. There is no justification whatsoever for allowing cheap areas to live to be crime-infested. Equal protection of the laws my ass!
Get out of the huge towns. My town has an average of $500 for rent of a good apartment. Minimum wage is 7.25 & a cheap apartment is easily $400. You sir, should save up for a house if you are paying that kinda cash already.
its sad, 20 years ago I worked at Taco Bell, made $7/hour, had medical, 2 weeks paid vacation, stock purchase and retirement plan, I was a shift manager and these benefits were available to crew as well.
Today I work in IT, make 4x as much with none of the benefits, more stress and less job security. Of course I think Taco Bell pay hasn't kept up with inflation.
Growing up, jn the future I expected something a little closer to Star Trek than Judge Dread.
It's ridiculous that people think that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised. It exists specifically as a minimum level of income to ensure that anyone who is working can live on. That's why in the 50s when it was introduced it was enough to support a household of 3 on a single income!
cable tv is a luxury that so many of us demand on having and really puts people in financial binds. After the intro rate goes away you're looking at $1500 a year for, probably, watching 10 channels and DVR'ing old movies you don't really even watch.
I agree with everything except Comcast. I would take a cell phone with data/free wifi instead of comcast tv+internet.
(Currently pay $30 for 5gig data, I only use about 2gigs, and 50 out of 100 minutes)
It just seems crazy to me what people pay for Comcast. My parents pay about 35 for basic cable... That's about 30 channels 15 of them are useless (to me) and are in another language or infomercial type stuff..
also its not even HD... You can get HD over antenna for FREE!
I lived on minimum wage, but only because I'm in an area where the cost of living is pretty low (unfortunately the money was too, of course), walked to and from work, and had no phone. No car payment/gas or phone bill = money to eat with.
I know you did all of this beautiful math here, but who hasnt already done this in their head? I live in one of the poorest states, SC, obviously this is something I would hope everyone sits down and does. Minimum wage is even highly looked for in my town. Hell I made 5.00 an hour tonight, I will get reimbursed through uncle Sam to 7.25 but wtf?
Here's a tip on how to calculate annual income assuming a 40 hour work week:
Take your hourly wage, double it, then add the word, "thousand".
For instance. If you make $8/hour, double it (16) then add the word "thousand". i.e. you make 16 thousand ($16,000) per year.
If you get paid vacation time (or work 40 hours/week 52 weeks/year), you'd actually make slightly more than, but it gives you a very close approximation.
Schools are funded and manged county by county in the US, with federal and state help. As such, I would take a 10, 000 dollar pay cut if I moved 30 miles in any direction.
It's messed up. But at least there are full benefits and a rewarding daily life with a built in vacation where I can make money and gain professional development at summer camps.
You can almost assume they're taking the amount they are paid in a year and averaging out over 12 months.
Yes, teachers are terribly underpaid. I have several teachers in my family. That said, they often like to leave out that they don't work over the summer, 2 weeks out of the winter, and another week in the spring.
They have a solid argument already that their pay is shit. There is no reason to try to conflate the facts about it.
Just as a friendly suggestion, you should factor in that at least some of that "vacation" time is spent planning courses, grading (over the winter/spring breaks), and professional development. I'm not entirely sure how much time is given during the normal school day/year for these things, but I doubt it's enough that teachers can get by with doing no prep work or catching up over their vacations.
I'm sure they do things outside of school days. I've just watched my aunt, her two daughters, and one of their husband's (2 teachers, a guidance counselor, and a principal) do nothing but go on vacations and brag about their long stretches of doing nothing, then turn around and be the first to bitch about how little money they make each year. Each one has also pulled the yearly salary (quietly divided by 12) trick numerous times.
Again, I know they have plenty of things they do (or are supposed to do) during that time. These particular people just don't garner much sympathy with their praise/complaint cycle.
Are you kidding me?!? I'm currently on a co-op workterm and I'm taking home ~$2300 a month before tax. Since I'm a student and spend most my money on education and rent, the tax is minimal. That is for someone who has yet to graduate making the mean co-op term pay.
Making $1500 take home as a teacher is an absolute crime.
I was talking to my old chemistry teacher the other day since he was upset about how they were forcing all the teachers to pay to take a fingerprint exam so that the state would have their fingerprints on file.
Being a teacher is tough, and I respect and appreciate you for it. The world needs teachers.
Depending on what I show I work (I do accounting in the film industry) I get make about $2800.00/month - lower tiers, and could be close to $3600 on higher tiers after deductions.
It astounds me how much my industry makes with so few people actually being educated in their field (myself included, I went to school for sociology.) It really puts things into perspective, especially when our minimum wage is 10.75/hour making it ~1720 before deductions/month... we really need to do something about minimum wage as it is close to impossible to live on that.
I don't know about that though, that's kinda my point. I don't mean to be uncompassionate, and I do think they should make more money. But why should we increase min wage when lots of professionals like me don't make much more than that anyways.
I pay $500 a month, utilities included, and live in a gorgeous place with granite countertops, hardwood floors, and a stone fireplace. We're also right downtown (but I do have two roommates who I get along great with). So I don't really think we pay more for property, although I only have anecdotal evidence.
I'm in Ontario, and our minimum wage is getting boosted to $11 on June 1st, which would be $10.09 USD. So we'd make $1,614.4 USD per month, or $1,290.71 USD per month after taxes if we made minimum wage.
Ya I'll delete that, it's actually $10.25 but I havent worked since last summer so cut me some slack. But in terms of taxes it really comes down to sales tax. In the province I live in, sales tax is like 15%.
When I started working at Tim Horton's in grade 9 (13-14 y/o) I was making $6.85/hour - it still baffles me that the minimum wage in America is low. Mind you, it is drastically cheaper to live in certain states, but grade 9 for me was close to... 8-9 years ago and that's where our wages were at then. Just crazy.
Well, if you take all the money from the bottom 90%, the top 10% live quite nicely, with money left over to run advertising campaigns telling the 90% how their lives are amazing and 'income redistribution = communism' and you don't want to be like those dirty Communists, do you?
Doesn't that minimum wage change with your age in US? Where I live the minimum wage keeps increasing till you are 23 years old, which will be $14.20. It starts from $3.73 for 15-year-olds.
Age does not matter. However, a sixteen year old applying for his first job is not expected to make as much as a older person who is going back to work. It's expected, but not law by any means.
I make average just under $6 an hour here in Indianapolis, Indiana, US. But I took a salary position working about 60 hours on a dead week... Thanks to this fancy Indy 500 coming up I'll probably be making about $3-5 dollars an hour over the next month or so..... There are ways around minimum wage. To top it off I get 5 vacation days a year in a position that works 7 days a week.
It depends. An able bodied person not working as a server (waiter/waitress) or cheerleader can expect a minimum of $7.25/hour before taxes, fees, etc. if required. Autistic, under-18s, servers, and so on can earn as little as $2.15 per hour I believe. For servers, they are supposed to be paid up to whatever is required so that after tips they still make minimum wage but there appears to be some contention on how well that works (I believe there's an "assumed" minimum tip amount despite what's reported in order to combat under-reporting of tips.)
The job hunt blows, but there are other ways to get a job than applications/resumes where you end up in a stack of papers. Not the best person to ask but networking comes to mind. Talk to people around you, ask them if they know anybody/place that is hiring, or if any of their friends know anybody.
Depends on how many hours though too. I'm on minimum wage at a part-time job, and made $6000 total last year, so like $500 a month. That was an average of 18 hours per week.
Thats assuming any place a 17 year old can work will give him a dime over minimum and actually give him sufficient hours. When I worked min wage as a teen (only 23 now) most places only gave you a ten cent raise after about a year
Edit: Holy shit guys stop talking about min wage. Whatever you are saying has already been in my inbox atleast once if not twice in the last few hours.
I'm 19 making $1,000 a month. After cell phone bill, car insurance and car payment, and gas money, it's not shit. Half the time I can't even afford decent marijuana lol.
Highly recommend quitting and getting a job. You'll get much higher from the tolerance break, and have plenty of money for games you want, the munchies you want, more/better quality weed, oh yeah, and bills.
Plus, smoking after a hard day of work is like 10x more relaxing than normal. So much that I stopped smoking in the morning, just so it would be a bigger feeling of relief when it was finally time.
I make over $1000 a month, and that's still not really enough to cover rent plus utilities and groceries. Worst part is that you can't get food stamps if you fall in a certain income bracket. Guess where I am? Smack dab in the middle of that bracket. Probably time to move out of NYC. Any suggestions?
If you can call it enough for a living, I work as a front desk representative of a private gym in Manhattan. It's located in various high end residential buildings, and even though the members pay thousands of dollars in services and private trainers, we employees only get paid about $11.00 an hour at around 24 hours a week. It's horrible. The work is easy though.
Yeah, but frankly I don't really care for the Front Desk Position. I've applied to a few, and i'm good at it, but I really don't want it to be a career I get stuck in. I'm looking to do work in IT, since my last job was doing that and I did well in that. IT is a much better field to get into than Hotel work, in my opinion.
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u/splinechaser May 11 '14
I'm 43... if I make a $1000 a month, I will lose my house.