From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 22:13:14 MDT
--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal@smigrodzki.org> wrote:
>
> Sounds like the horrors of life at the minimum wage are vastly
> overestimated.
Depends on where you are at and how you model it. You are assuming that
housing is affordable where your model is at. Housing is frequently NOT
affordable for single individuals with no dependents, as anything that
is affordable gets sopped up in government housing programs that
targets low income families exclusively. Get yourself a dependent and
the best you can do generally mandates by law that you pay 1/3 of your
income as rent.
My current take home is about $1750. I rent a teeny 8'x10' room plus a
10'x10' storage unit for my belongings for $450 total per month. This
is what I paid for a two bedroom apt two years ago in the same
community. The ONLY single apartments (unsubsidized) in the area now go
for $700/mo or more.
Fortunately I own my Jeep outright, so I only have gasoline and
maintenance expenses. Thats about $60/mo for gas and $500-1000/year for
maintenance. There is little mass transit available and none at 5 am
when I need to arrive at work, so a vehicle is mandatory for me, as it
is for most all of rural and suburban America.
As a mechanic, though, I spend $300-600 month on tools.
Given the tight living conditions I am in, I have no kitchen available,
just a small microwave and a small table top fridge. So I eat out for
lunch and breakfast at work. I spend a lot of evenings eating dinner at
my parents house. Food budget is $300-400 as a result.
This all leaves me about $200/month of mad money for books, software,
education or for unexpected expenses.
This is the life of a fellow grossing $26k a year in a northern New
England town. A study by the local paper here last year determined that
a single individual with no dependents needed to earn $11.57/hr just to
survive in this area.
I expect my tool expenses to go down within a year, so that should
improve things considerably. I currently own about $6000+ in tools for work.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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