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If there’s one thing Millennials love to bitch about, it’s how much money we don’t have. As it turns out, our complaints over splitting the brunch check equally may actually be legitimate. The National Low Income Housing Coalition just released the data of how many hours you would have to chug away at your minimum-wage job per week to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment priced at the 2015 Fair Market Rent number of $806. Get ready, because these numbers are rough.
Hawaii: 125
Maryland: 101
DC: 100
New Jersey: 100
New York: 98
Virginia: 97
California: 92
Delaware: 89
New Hampshire: 89
Massachusetts: 87
Connecticut: 84
Alaska: 79
Pennsylvania: 78
Florida: 77
Colorado: 75
Illinois: 75
Texas: 73
Washington: 73
Georgia: 72
Maine: 71
Nevada: 71
Vermont: 70
Louisiana: 69
Utah: 69
Minnesota: 68
Arizona: 67
Rhode Island: 67
Wisconsin: 67
North Carolina: 66
South Carolina: 66
Tennessee: 65
New Mexico: 64
Wyoming: 64
Indiana: 62
Kansas: 62
North Dakota: 62
Alabama: 61
Mississippi: 61
Idaho: 59
Missouri: 59
Oklahoma: 59
Iowa: 58
Michigan: 58
Oregon: 58
Kentucky: 57
Arkansas: 54
Montana: 54
Nebraska: 54
Ohio: 54
West Virginia: 53
South Dakota: 49
Basically, if you want to keep making the Starbucks drink of the month for all of the basic bitches in your hometown, I hope you’re living in the middle of nowhere, because otherwise you’re SOL. DC, NY, and Hawaii are no surprises, but flipping burgers 100 hours a week to afford to live in New Jersey? No thanks, I think I’ll pass. Looks like it’s time to start fluffing up that resume, because the alternative of hunting down a roommate from Craigslist to be able to afford to wait tables just isn’t going to fly anymore. At least we have a few more years before the market is likely to crash again?
Image via Shutterstock
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Steph W.
Steph W. is a new Master's degree graduate with an intern's salary and six-figure taste. She realizes her expectations far exceed reality, so she spends her days pinning away Loubs she pretends are in her physical closet instead of her virtual one. Her hobbies include attempting to trapping her boyfriend into marriage before he finds out how insane she is and pretending that Black Box wine tastes as good as the kind she could afford when she was gainfully employed. Send her tips for getting out of student debt at recruitchairtsm@gmail.com
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Oh for the love of Christ. I can go anywhere else on the internet to read about people bitching over minimum wage. I don’t come here for this.
Agreed. This is PGP, not IDroppedOutOfHighSchoolP
$806. Ha
Where the hell can you find a one bedroom apartment for $806/month?
$806 in NY?! I’ll chop a few fingers off if I could pay that much for a one bedroom in the city.
Maybe if you make minimum wage it’s a sign you should still live with mom and dad. Don’t have a mom and dad that love you? Yeah, I got nothing for you, that sucks.
Are you sure there are per week numbers? This reads like you’d need 100 hours a month at minimum wage to afford monthly rent.
So about 60% of your work goes to rent if you’re living minimum wage. Still tough to afford other bills with 40%, but not as bad as 100 hours a week.
To your point, if we assume a $7 minimum wage (rough estimate but a good baseline) then it’d take roughly 115 hours to earn $806, coming out to about 29hrs/week. So maybe closer to 75% to rent, but like you said, not nearly 100 per week. What would be better is local minimum wage vs local average rent – I’d kill for $806 rent!
I could be wrong, but the numbers could be going by HUD standards where an individual/family should be paying 30% of their income towards housing? So, $7 minimum wage at 100 hours per work would come out to $2,800 monthly. That would be around 29% of income going towards housing. These numbers are saying how many minimum wage hours you would need to work without being cost burdened. Kind of a misleading article here, but still important if you’re into this sort of thing. And they said I’d never do math after graduating….they were mostly right.
People making minimum wage get subsidized housing from you and me. What difference does it make.
Quick analysis: Two people; Arlington, VA; $1,200 rent for 1br, minimum wage $7.25/hr
TL,DR: Is it possible? Yes. Is it sustainable? Not likely. Definitely not enough to raise a family.
Recommendation: At least one person needs to have a skilled labor job if the other is to work minimum wage. Hanging on to the bottom rung of the career ladder doesn’t make for easy living, nor should it, it’s not meant to.
Let’s say that two people, presumably a couple, wants to live in Arlington, VA in a 1br apt around 650 sqft. Zillow produces 3 results between $800-1,000 and 32 results between $1,000-1,250 (I assume there are more not listed on Zillow). Let’s pick a $1,200 apartment. At minimum wage ($7.25/hr), an individual earns $1,267 before taxes based on a 176 hour work month. For two people, working 40 hours a week, at a 28% tax rate (for example), equals $1,837.44. Now, obviously, if you are going to live off minimum wage, you’ll need to work harder than 40hr/wk and many of us salaried post grads do that anyway, so let’s say both people work 60hr/wk, bringing our total to $2,756.16. To avoid healthcare tax penalties, let’s choose a $150 joint plan from healthcare.gov, so after doing the pre-tax math, let’s call it $2,648. Minus rent = $1,448, minus cell plan ($120) = $1,328, minus basic cable/internet (~$100) = 1228, minus gas ($100) = $1128, minus utilities (~$120) = $1,008, minus $10/day/person for food ($608) = $400, minus car payment (~$180) = $220, minus car insurance (~$70) = $150. I’m sure there are some expenses I’m not calculating in here. Public transit won’t really save you any money either around here.
World needs ditch diggers too.
Here is all you need to do to be able to pay your rent and survive while living on minimum wage.
1. Move out of NYC or DC, idiot.
2. If you can’t afford to support a family on what you make, you should probably opt to not fuck one into existence until you make more money.