Budgeting for Poverty

The federal government says a family of four making $18,810 a year is living in poverty. But how far does $18,810 go in America today? How do you budget? What do you leave out? You make the hard choices...

Budgeting For Poverty

I cringed a bit at that. That's like a one bedroom apartment in a bad part of town in some places.

but, in Boston for example, there are no public housing available in some areas.

But $ 795 in healthcare is really optimistic. In Mass, we have about as good healthcare you can get if you are under poverty limit, but they dont cover dental care. You will probably go over their limit just by a yearly visit to a dentist for a checkup (or you just ignore them altogether until a real emergency occurs, I guess).

Maybe $795 for healthcare is only for the parents. In WA there is BasicHealth, which is not fabulous. However, it's fees are income-based.

Public housing is very elusive. That family's be on a list for a long time.

The worst is that the family is $1400+ overbudget - even without clothes or birthday presents or school supplies or toilet paper....


Morgan Spurlock and his fiance did an episode of 30 days where they tried to live with minimum wage jobs. A trip to the hospital would take them 5 months to pay off. And they had no children.

but they are totally silent when it comes to dental and optical. covers them only when it is so bad that you need dental surgery. Talk about small savings creating big spendings.

and I'm barely making it (I'm not sure where I'm going to find the $80/month for Medicare)

I'm giving over half my income for housing...and that's a lo-income, subsidised apartment!

But, nobody wants to know about pain and suffering.

OTOH, I don't think I've ever spent $795 a year on health care, until recently. You don't go unless you're sick, and my kids were just never sick. Very fortunate. Also fortunate to live in a small town where the doctor just billed and you didn't worry about not being seen if you needed it either.

... that is, if applications are even being accepted.

Health insurance is often in the $100s/mo/family... hence, the high rate of uninsured Americans... doesn't fit in the budget. Dental care? You might consider yourself fortunate if you can afford a toothbrush.

In rural America, for comparisons sake. $7200 is about the least a family of four could expect to pay for something close to decent around here.

your budget... which is already $1,304 in the red?

The car expense was wild, I don't know where they came up with $400 a month on that one. A family on that income would qualify for some sort of state medical. Plus, I don't think this calculated in any other assistance, food stamps, WIC, energy assistance, child care assistance. If one manages to get everything in place, they can scrape by on that income; but all bets are off if there's one tiny emergency.

No way you can save enough to pay cash. So, you'd have a car payment. Even with a very cheap car, let's say $1000, you're probably paying an extreme interest rate.

Also, you have to pay for insurance. Not cheap.

And gas.

And repairs.

Add snow tires, etc. and the expense really adds up.


Plus, there may be two adults with only one car. So, now you have to pay extra for the insurance and a bus pass.

You find somebody who will take a couple hundred down and let you pay a couple hundred next month, we working poor take care of each other that way. You would not have a car payment because you can't get a loan on that kind of income. I have lived this most of my life so don't tell me. You have liability only, which is about $40 a month. Gas has gone up, true.

Repairs? Snow tires?

Now you're just living in fantasyland.

That's how it really is for the working poor.

I know how it really works. Sometimes people take care of each other and sometimes people in need are exploited. So that $300 car that you bought (with $200 due the next few months) might not work. Do you get your money back? Of course not. But you still need a car, so you're stuck with another payment.

Maybe this is good or bad, but in my area there are plenty of places that will lend ANYONE money with outrageous interest rates. Just like all of those predatory check cashing places.

I'm sorry if you think that I was preaching at you. I didn't mean to come off that way, but I bristle at the idea that people can survive on nothing and I just wanted to point out that things (especially cars) cost more than they seem.

I didn't say the asshole car lot up the road, who will sell a car to anybody, repossess it, and sell it again. You don't go there, and it's shitty for people who are in a position where that's their only choice. I agree with you on that point. Yeah, things can be different in different areas, you're right. I was just saying most people at the poverty level wouldn't put themselves in the position of having to spend $400 a month on car payments and full coverage insurance, at least not for very long.

When my car broke down again 4 years ago, I ditched it and started using the bus.

$66 per month (it just went up again) X 12 = $792 per year.

on edit - Most cities have crappy public transit - I'm lucky to live in PDX

your doctor bills. they love giving those high interest loans to people without credit history though! and the doctor is the emergency room in the public hospital- only if absolutely urgent. and the groceries cost twice as much and are staler than suburban groceries.... people get sucked into renting furniture or buying it with loans too, one paycheck away from them taking everything. that's what happens when you're not in a small friendly town.

First of all, leave the fucking city if you're that damned poor and being fucked over by every person you come in contact with.

It won't matter though because I don't care where you live, there's people who are out to fuck you over. I have one of those car dealers just blocks away from me. You don't deal with those people. Because I damned well guarantee you that there are other people willing to help, anywhere. You might have to *gasp*, go to a church, but they're there.

Having said that, whether you're doing all this idiotic high interest shit or not, poor in the city or poor in the country, you're still less than a paycheck away from disaster which is what I've said all along.

easy for you to say, leave the only home you know. yeah, so easy for folks to do, when they know there's more predudice- and no "friends" like yours waiting for them in small towns. you are accostomed to a quaint little way of life with a quaint little safety net of loans that is completely unimaginable to some people, so get off your high horse.
the truth is those idyllic little towns with poor folks that help each other out don't want a big influx of the urban poor, they'd not be inclined to help newcomers as much as "their own" so don't let your neighbors know you're inviting them to your neck of the woods, lest you lose your perks.

I've lived in a variety of places, from Spokane to Little Rock to Fresno, and small towns as well. Big towns, little towns, it has more to do with the culture in a particular area than the size of the town. Some places are just friendlier than others. Washington state for example, not so friendly in my experience. Not Seattle, not Castle Rock. When you do find a nice small town, my experience is that it's the suburban transplants who are the assholes to the poor, not the people who were born and raised there. They don't care, they've all known each other since birth, literally - money and class don't mean near as much in rural America as some people would like to think. It's why Thomas Frank doesn't totally get what's the matter with Kansas.

Regardless, I'll say it again, I never said it was easy, no matter where anybody lives. Anybody can be fucked over, anywhere. My point was that I thought the numbers used were off, housing was too low and auto expense too high. And that the medical was off, because most poor people just don't go to the doctor. That's how people really "budget" when they're poor. I added that I was very FORTUNATE that my kids weren't sickly and that my small town doctor would bill. Fortunate... you know, lucky, easier than most, better off.

Geesh.

Moving is serious business. Even with no possessions, it costs money to move. And how would you even know where to go?

I have headed cross country with a tarp and an ice chest and my kid. You can apply for food stamps anywhere, or at least you used to be able to. I know that's changed. There are also homeless shelters for families everywhere. I would just go until I ran out of money or found a place that fit, a place that made me smile, or a place where I found a job. Any job, cleaning hotel rooms, mopping floors, anything.

I'm amazed that you've been able to move so efficiently. That's something to really be proud of. I doubt my own abilities there and deeply admire your tenacity.

However, I don't think that forcing people to move from place to place really solves anything. And it's not that easy for most people.

Plus, the local Housing Authorities won't accept vouchers from out of the area. Therefore, people that aren't on the list have to wait additional YEARS to get to the top of the list -- and then MAYBE find a place that will accept the voucher.

It is much harder now because some states have even put in year long waiting periods and things like that. I only lived in low income housing once, but sometimes you can get a 30 day emergency housing voucher. And hope for the best from there. I've had some tough, tough moments though, it's a gamble. And if you didn't have job skills in one place, you aren't going to magically have them in another. What I am suggesting is that some places are more helpful to neighbors and strangers than others and that if somebody is in a godawful nowhere hole, taking next months check and just getting out might be the thing to do. Might. But no place is all roses and light, I need $7500 of dental work and a surgery on my ear, that stuff doesn't get done ANYWHERE without money up front. But I'd still choose moving around and trying to have a better life to settling for poverty. But then, you have to believe there's a better life to be had, and that's pretty tough to do if nobody you know has ever managed to make it.

My wisdom teeth are rebelling and I don't have the funds to have them out. I really feel for you. I literally feel for you. :)

I don't know how dentistry became so separate from other healthcare, but it's devastating to not have coverage. :(

I've only got one tooth that has to go, it's broken but not hurting. It's in front and I need a bridge for it. The rest is for root scraping and cutterage to stop gum disease, which I can't afford and don't think I would do anyway because I understand it usually doesn't work in the long run, according to alot of people I've talked to. Who knows, I don't know. *sigh*

Sorry for you, I know it sucks to have your teeth hurting and not being able to fix it. I can tell you, Motrin works better than any of the other pain stuff I've used, fwiw. Hope something works out for you soon, :hug: back.

$400 could be considered 'wild', if you're including things like insurance, maintenance & repairs, tires, etc. Of course, when you're living in poverty, these things don't fit in the budget.

I'm not familiar w/income eligibility for medical assistance for a family of four, so I couldn't comment on whether this family would qualify for any sort of medical assistance. If they were qualified, why is there such a high rate of uninsured Americans?

Food stamps & child care subsidies were taken into consideration, but no other assistance/subsidies were mentioned. WIC funding has been slashed, and only applies to pregnant women & young children. Energy assistance, if available, might be a once-a-year assistance program.

If one manages to get everything in place, one continually falls behind. One tiny emergency can bring on devastation.

I missed the food stamps & child care. The energy assistance does come once a year, but it's a sizeable amount when it comes and should reduce that $200 a month amount a little. In some cold states, it's illegal to shut off power between Oct & April, at least it was in Montana. So yeah, even if you get everything in place, it's still a juggling act and one tiny emergency can be disaster.

These folks were at the poverty line, which usually qualifies people for medical, or at least children. It's the between $19,000 and $40,000 who are uninsured. Too much for state medical, losing the other benefits as income goes up; not enough for $4-600 monthly insurance premiums. Because like I said, most people in that income don't even buy cars on payments, at least not where I live.

Miss the due date, and your power gets cut off whether it's 80 degrees or 18 degrees outside. Energy assistance (if available) might help w/one bill, but then you're on your own again... to freeze to death in some cases.

... in states where shutoff is prohibited. What happens when the payment agreement can't be met?

And yes, it does suck and it isn't easy. I'm not trying to pretend it is. I'm not saying it's fair or right or anything else. But for states that do not have laws protecting people in winter or the heat of summer, it's important for them to know that there are states who do. That's how you fight to make things better, by knowing that Reaganism didn't take hold everywhere and that there's still time to fight it.

Or we could just bitch and moan until they roll everything back to 1890.

In so many cases, making those payment arrangements means having to go without other necessities... and in some cases, there is just no way to do it... and people die from hypothermia because they just can't pay the bills.

Where Reaganism didn't take hold, bush & co are striving to do so. And, yes, we do have to fight it!

where I live for that much. In fact, some studios are going for twice that. The federal numbers mean little, as there are such wide regional and city-to-city differences. (I couldn't get to that website: does the $5,000 amount include utilities?)

The $5,000 ($5,274 is the actual figure) doesn't include ulilities... $2,350 is budgeted for utilities & services.

Try this link to get to the Budgeting for Poverty tour: http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour2.htm

Here's a PDF version: http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tourtext.pdf

And the Poverty USA homepage: http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/index.htm

the attention of those who could really DO something about it, though. Thanks for posting it...I'm nominating it.

... to open some people's eyes. Now that poverty can't be denied, what will be done about it? With bush & co in charge?

I am afraid that given *'s statements AFTER his speech (you know, the speech all full of feel-good compassionate conservative stuff?) about needing to CUT other programs in order to pay for the NO reconstruction, that the message has not sunk in.

No reason to be surprised, since most of his approach so far has been take-from-the-poor-(and middle class)-to-give-to-the-rich, it is a small leap, I suppose, to taking from the poor (those who will be affected by cuts in other programs) to give to the poor (those in NO who deserve the governments help). Sheesh.

... as long as he remains in office. God forbid he should rescind the tax cuts for the rich to help a homeless families & destroyed cities... nah, he'll cut frivolous spending... like food stamps, subsidized housing and such. :sarcasm:

The question is when will the good people of this country rise up & demand justice for the poor & disadvantaged?

years of "welfare-queen" memes and similar drivel into thinking that it is the fault of the poor themselves for their predicament.

Even those who should KNOW better (like those in social services) often believe it is "choices" that make a poor or otherwise disadvantaged person. And as for "Faith-based" charities, perhaps they see it as a failure to pray effectively. (How's that for sarcasm?) The system is in a mess, and it looks like it is fast going to get much worse.

Forgive my utter negativity today, I am burnt out on all of this. I keep waiting for something that will help me see it differently, but all there is is more of the same.

DISCLAIMER: my comments about those in social services and faith-based groups do not extend to ALL those in such groups, only those who think in this manner! If you are an enlightened person, who is aware of the myriad of ways that a hard-working person can get caught in the trap of poverty, you have no reason to be offended by these comments.

There have got to be enough good people to make a difference, if only they would let their voices be heard... demand that their voices be heard... we have to turn this country around... otherwise, we may as well just head for the damn gas chambers.

I feel as if I have been waiting for the "good" people for several decades now. OK, a bit of an exaggeration also. The problem is, people generally don't "rise up" (or even vote progressively, which would be all I would ask) unless they experience whatever problem as something that effects them personally. So, when you ask people to support programs for the poor, most don't see this as falling within their own self-interest. The people on the next rung up the ladder from poverty are more interested in maintaining that position; after all, they can't really AFFORD to support the poor, when doing so would put themselves in jeopardy (higher taxes take a bite out of the lower middle class paycheck). And further up the line, the feeling is probably similar.

I had hoped that the pictures of the dire poverty and utter dispair in NO would make a difference. But I am desperately afraid that all that fellow-feeling will go away at the next news cycle. My own little voice seems to make not a whit of difference.

I vote for turning this country around.

And please know that none of my negativity in this thread has in anyway been aimed at you. You seem to be someone who is truly concerned. It may be that a dark mood is causing me to lose hope for the moment.

Perhaps the sudden realization that there are people who can't afford cars to flee hurricanes or floods may make the people of our nation realize that many simply do not have the resources to stave off other sorts of disasters, more personal in nature, either. Maybe that realization will poke a hole in the Repub idea of "personal responsibility" being the solution to poverty. (And don't get me wrong here, there DOES need to be personal responsibility, it's just that personal responsiblity alone is not enough.)

We as a nation are committed to the idea of justice and fairness. Maybe we WILL act to make the needed changes. I surely hope so.

There are $400/month apartments, like over downtown stores, advertised here. I realize that the cost of housing is much more expensive in urban areas. My sister got a studio basement apartment in Chicago for $500/month a couple years ago, but has since moved to a $700/month one bedroom near the L. I don't know if you could go much cheaper than that there without it being subsidized.

$10,000 can get you crappy a 2 bd apt in the worst of neighborhoods. It would take $15,000 to even approach a borderline acceptable neighborhood.

I like how it points out how much things cost - "even with subsidies" - so that no one can claim that welfare takes care of these things.

much less a family! Didn't the dim son say recently that $20K a year was middle class. I'd really like to make that a-hole put his money where his mouth is & live on $20K for just 6 months. He'd be a whimpering little sissy boy in less than 3 weeks. He's such a fucking insensitive jerk.

Thanks for the great link.

Nominated.

.

Where would you live?

That minimum wage is $5.15 an hour in the "greatest nation on the planet" is such a scandal! It really does show what hypocritical nation we have become with all our empty talk of "family values." You know what family values mean? It means: My family is valuable, yours is not.

Damn! I hate this administration & the sheeple that continue to support it.

It's almost $8.00. And - Newsflash to Neocons - It hasn't devastated the state economy a bit.

Or maybe I'm remembering when it was $6.71 or something like that.

... @ http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm

I live in one of the lowest cost of housing places in the country.

You can get a decent two bedroom apartment here for $ 235 a month and a decent 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with a garage and fireplace for $ 65 k.

We're actually looking for a new home right now.

We're looking to move down a bit. Currently we have a very nice 5 bedroom, 3 1/2 bath home of 3,400 square feet which we bought 8 years ago for $ 113 k, and would like to sell for $ 175 .

My parents just sold their home in New York City, less than half the size of ours for over $ 600 k so I know the differences are huge.

ad with the oilfields booming, the lead stpory in the paper today was that the economy is creating too many jobs for the number of workers we have here. Unemployment is the lowest of any city in the state at below 4 %.

If anyone needs a job, head down here to the oilpatch.

The trouble in places like these is that it's hard to get any kind of non-Walmart job...

... of take home pay. (Take home pay... what a crock... it's gone before you ever take it home.)

:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

convinced that the poor simply "didn't budget properly" to draw up a realistic budget, based not on some fairytale notions of rent and expenses, but on the average rents and prices in their town, and remembering to take out tax/Social Security/Medicare withholding, using a minimum wage paycheck.

Many of these people thought they were real whizzes at being frugal. So I asked them to take a family of four, and come up with a way those people could live on a minimum wage paycheck.

Not a one of them (and I have asked this of a number of very smug, self-satisfied folks who were sure it would be a snap) has been able to do it to date.

There was no way they could stretch that money to cover medical insurance or unforseen medical expenses.

Forget dental care for the family. Forget any kind of regular preventative medical checkups like physicals or gynecological exams, Pap smears, baseline heart tests, pre-natal care - and gee, that money wouldn't really stretch to cover any kind of contraception like birth control pills!

Also, forget proper nutrition of any kind. The family would have to live on a diet of cheap carbohydrates.

Some of the people I challenged would try to say that public housing would come to the rescue, but when I had them check about waiting lists, they finally realized that there really aren't luxury apartments being "given away" to poor people. For the first time in their lives, they realized that people don't "choose" to live in ghettos and broken down trailers. None of them could budget in sufficient and decent housing for that hypothetical family of four, who, they had to admit, were not "welfare people", but working people.

Some of them were convinced that the hypothetical family could get on Medicaid, and in their deluded thinking "have ALL their medical needs paid for" - until I insisted that they find out the standard for being able to receive Medicaid - which in that county where I was living, meant that you had to be living at 1/1000 of the poverty line to even qualify. You could hear the jaws dropping all over the place.

Forget about any kind of outings that so many people take for granted. Forget about any meals eaten out.

And when I asked them to remember the winter months in that area, where heating was used, they couldn't begin to stretch the budget to pay for heat.

Even better, if you reduced the family to two (parent and child) or even an individual, they still had a hard time putting together a marginally acceptable budget for a barely decent standard of living.

It was a real eye opener for some folks. They no longer questioned why poor people, in desperation, often just give up, succumb to depression and start living in squalor and have addictions.

Hell, who wouldn't? Work a job, work a couple of jobs - and can't afford to have any kind of life that anyone would consider decent or even bearable - and be sneered at and considered "lazy" and "feckless" by more fortunate folks.

Best of all, I told them that at any time, this could happen to them. They could have their jobs outsourced or eliminated, and find themselves unable to get anything but a minimum wage job. Say goodbye to the mortgage and the car notes and the health insurance. Say hello to desperation, despair and doing without things that many people still take completely for granted.

<< Some of them were convinced that the hypothetical family could get on Medicaid, and in their deluded thinking "have ALL their medical needs paid for" - until I insisted that they find out the standard for being able to receive Medicaid - which in that county where I was living, meant that you had to be living at 1/1000 of the poverty line to even qualify. You could hear the jaws dropping all over the place. >>

Your statement here is very true. Many people seem to think that getting medical help via the State or Federal government is an easy handout. It is not. If you should die, they even do a check to see if you have ever received any type of assistance and they deduct it from your estate (if you have one that is!!!).

This is the reason there are 48,000,000+ people with no insurance in America. They have jobs and work and they aren't "poor" enough to qualify for Medicaid or State health coverage.

They are in a "Catch-22" situation. They don't qualify for Medicaid or State health care and the cost of a policy far exceeds anything they can afford to pay for, so they have no insurance.

Many seem to think that Medicaid and Medicare are the same thing. They are not the same thing on any level. You pay for Medicare every month and it is based on age or disability status, not income or financial status.

This is a very unfortunate and dangerous situation to be in, that of the "Catch-22" I describe above. It takes just one thing to go wrong and you will be in debt for life thanks to the "new" bankruptcy policy that will go into effect in October. This policy is targeted at making life time debtors of this class of individuals which almost makes being very poor advantageous as you then qualify for medical care. This is WRONG.

So the lower middle class, those just above the poverty line are really in the worst situation possible. Hopeless it seems to me.

You live in fear of something going wrong, you don't go to the doctor when you are sick, etc. etc. until you end up like many of those in New Orleans were - sick, had not seen a doctor for years because they couldn't afford it and don't qualify for any help because they aren't "poor" enough. This policy encourages extreme poverty IMO. This situation is not unique to New Orleans, it is the story you find all over America.

:kick:

realistically you can't budget.

What you do is work multiple jobs, if you can find them.

They have a microwave oven and call themselves poor?

</fat smug conservative>

If there is anything good to come out of this catastrophe (and I use the word "good" very loosely here), maybe it will be, finally, an awareness of the poverty issues in America today.

I've even spoke to other liberals who have been utterly shocked by this, saying things like "I never really thought about it".

:wtf:

I grew up very working class, on the cusp of full-out poverty. Several times in my adult life, I've been on the brink as well... even went bankrupt in 2002. And even at our poorest, I always knew that we had it better than many other people.