The Bare Minimum

As of this January, 2008, the minimum wage in California is $8.00 an hour. I'll use myself as an example. I am a single mother with two teenage sons. If I worked 40 hours per week for $8.00 an hour, I am looking at approximately $1200.00 a month after adjusting for taxes. (I would also not see my kids until around 7:00 at night. Their bedtime is around 9:00, putting our time spent together at about two hours. I wonder what the quality of those two hours would be?) If I stick to the basic list (from the previous post) from Target, that would be about $45.00 a week. Obviously some things would not be purchased every week (aluminum foil, mayo) but others (orange juice and yogurt) would be purchased more often. At Target I can't buy meat, fish, or vegetables, so I need to add approximately $35 a week at a regular grocery store. So now I'm at $80.00. That would be $320.00 for the month. Trust me, $320.00 is a very conservative estimate for feeding two teenage sons real food. Just to break this down a bit more, for each hour I worked, I could buy a gallon of milk and a quart of orange juice. If I were shopping at Vons I would spend over an hours income on two boxes of Easy Mac. Now I'm going to need to put gas in my car. Today the gas at my local Arco station is $3.33 for the lowest grade. I fill my tank for 45.00. I need to fill my tank about 3x a month. $135 a month for gas. I work from home, so I imagine that if I were commuting to and from work it would be quite a bit higher. A phone bill would be about $20.00 with no features. Gas and electric combined would amount to about $100.00 if I only used heat when the temperature in my home hit 55 degrees, and even then only allowed it to reach 60. We are now at $555.00. This leaves us $645.00. I'm assuming that $645.00 would be going to rent. I don't know if you've checked Craigslist lately, but in all of the San Fernando Valley you will not find anything larger than a single or bachelor sized apartment in a less than stellar neighborhood. Most landlords are not going to let three people rent a one room apartment anyway. Let me quickly just go over what we did not buy this month with our $1200.00. We bought no cough medicine, no clothes (socks, underwear), no shampoo, soap, or deodorant. Not even toothpaste. My children would not have been able to participate in any kind of organized sport such as baseball or soccer ($50-$260.00 per child), no entertainment (movies, dining out). No doctor visit co-pays, assuming I'm getting my insurance from my employer. If I were not in an employer sponsored insurance plan, health insurance would be completely out of the question. No birthday presents, no art supplies, no nothing. I am leaving out so many other things we all take for granted. I have not included cell phones or Internet access. The minimum wage is a joke. I see ads for jobs requiring AA or BA degrees and the starting pay is $10.00 an hour. Would that $10.00 be worth the time away from my kids? Not even close. Not if I want to raise decent human beings. (I am not saying it can't be done, I am saying I couldn't do it.) We have not even touched on childcare either. Who's watching my kids while I'm at work?

Gratefully, I am not in this situation, but I have been. If you have never been in this situation I am truly happy for you. I would not wish real poverty on anyone. I'm not talking about having to skip a vacation because money is tight, I'm talking about hoping your two and four year old sons don't finish all of their grilled cheese so you can have some dinner too. Judgements abound in this area and here is a post by John Scalzi that describes the situation so well it brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me of where I've been and how far I've come. I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. I still don't have a retirement account or own a home. But we can eat. We have clothes. I can buy my kids cleats for baseball without breaking into a cold sweat in the line at Big 5. We have health insurance. We go to the dentist, although I have a $4,000 procedure on the horizon and I'm not quite sure how that's going to work out at the moment. I owe nothing in credit card debt. Things are getting better everyday. Still, by many I would be considered poor, and I suppose I am. Like everything, it's a matter of perspective.

The other day I was bringing one of my son's friends back to his home. He directed me to his apartment building. One of the other kids in the car asked if his was the one upstairs with the holiday lights on the balcony. He replied that his was the crappy one underneath it. So here is this twelve year old boy, a sweet, talented, kind little boy who is already bearing the burden of knowing he's poor. As if just being twelve wasn't hard enough.