Can you make a living on $10 per hour?
Is it possible to make a living, earning, $ 10 per hour? The short answer is; you would have to be a genius at handling money and at the same time be very lucky. Lets face it the people who are making, $10 are under per hour are usually not in the money handling super smart class. Who is? This class of workers are seldom among the lucky. That is, always healthy and their car never breaks down and the kids never need extra money for school.
We are going to assume that you get a full 40 hours per week and are able to work a full schedule every week. Your gross pay would be $ 400 per week and the take home might be around $ 340, per week. While there are many variables we are going to say that there is a mate and one child.
You would need to find an apartment or rental property for no more than $ 400 per month. In our area which is considered to be lower in cost that most areas the average cost for an apartment is $ 600 per month. Now hopefully you have been able to find a reliable car that you pay no more than $ 250 per month on because to add in maintenance, gas and insurance will surely bring your transportation costs to $ 400 or so per month.
We still have food to buy of course and if you are truly good at buying and preparing food and if you are disciplined enough not to eat out then you might be able to hold your food costs to $100 per week. If you are counting then you can see that we are at $ 300 per week in expenses. That leaves you $ 40 left over to pay for water, electricity and oh yes, clothes.
Please notice there is no money here at all for cigarettes, beer or lottery tickets. Wait we did not totally resolve the rent issue and we have presumed that you have found a ten year old car that is basically trouble free. We have included no money for cable TV nor for any kind of entertainment.
If you had to advise this blue collar worker how to proceed with their life; how would you advise?
We are going to assume that you get a full 40 hours per week and are able to work a full schedule every week. Your gross pay would be $ 400 per week and the take home might be around $ 340, per week. While there are many variables we are going to say that there is a mate and one child.
You would need to find an apartment or rental property for no more than $ 400 per month. In our area which is considered to be lower in cost that most areas the average cost for an apartment is $ 600 per month. Now hopefully you have been able to find a reliable car that you pay no more than $ 250 per month on because to add in maintenance, gas and insurance will surely bring your transportation costs to $ 400 or so per month.
We still have food to buy of course and if you are truly good at buying and preparing food and if you are disciplined enough not to eat out then you might be able to hold your food costs to $100 per week. If you are counting then you can see that we are at $ 300 per week in expenses. That leaves you $ 40 left over to pay for water, electricity and oh yes, clothes.
Please notice there is no money here at all for cigarettes, beer or lottery tickets. Wait we did not totally resolve the rent issue and we have presumed that you have found a ten year old car that is basically trouble free. We have included no money for cable TV nor for any kind of entertainment.
If you had to advise this blue collar worker how to proceed with their life; how would you advise?
Total Comments 4
Comments
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I hope you're just referring to minimum wage (if this is what I think you're talking about). Businesses are scrambling just to stay in business with so many new and confusing regulations that would make structuring and hiring more challenging.
The government is not helping us produce a better business climate with all these unneeded changes. It's making it worse, quite frankly.Posted 03-15-2014 at 11:14 AM by malfunction
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There has been talk about taking the minimum wage to $ 10.10 , so that got me to thinking ; could a person actually support a wife and one child on $ 10 per hour?
I don't have the answers but somehow feel that the system should be structured in such a way so that the bottom of the feeding chain should be able to survive if they are fugal.Posted 03-15-2014 at 07:01 PM by Fortoggie
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I am of the opinion that if entry level workers were paid at $ 10 per hour that it would soon put a lot more spending money into the economy. There would be a short period of time for adjustment but soon all boats would be lifted.Posted 04-30-2014 at 06:44 PM by Fortoggie
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It's a sad situation, no doubt.Posted 05-16-2014 at 04:06 PM by numdro348
