The topic in which I am writing about is how to manage a family of four household budgets on a two-person New Mexico minimum wage income of $7.50 per hour. My paper has many purposes as to why I have written it, which will be listed and further explained throughout its entirety. The first purpose is to demonstrate the ways individuals have to seek out in both creating and maintaining a family budget. Secondly, is to show the difficulties that arise in keeping family household budgets and the temporary or permanent ways families find and have no other option to when trying to obtain just the basic necessities of life. Thirdly, is the purpose of explaining my views and beliefs further on the current federal definition of poverty? Lastly, is to provide my opinions on what the federal definition of poverty, what minimum wage should be, and give my possible solutions to help decrease poverty. The importance of my paper is to educate individuals on the hardships families who are living at poverty level in the U.S. face and that when a family is living paycheck to paycheck they cannot possibly rise in social classes or get off the government programs for which they are dependent upon. There are many different expense categories families can incorporate within their personal household budgets, some of which are represented in the four person family household budget I have created in this learning activity 4 assignment and some that are not used here but families have or
People are still living on $2 a day here in the United States. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, how is it possible for people to live with this little amount of money? I know that I cannot. In $2.00 a Day, Jennifer Hernandez, a single mother with two kids, is a person who lives on $2 a day as she tries to survive and support herself and her kids in the collapsing economy. The minimum wage job for cleaning houses reinforces the cycle of poverty that Jennifer and her kids live in. This cycle of poverty reveals that there needs to be major changes to the economical infrastructure of the United States since the poor cannot get themselves out of poverty even though they actively look for work or have a job.
Minimum wage in the state of Texas starts off at $7.25 per hour for the working employee. People say that the amount of minimum wage is below the living wage; meaning $7.25 an hour isn’t enough money for the average person to meet the living necessities. The basic needs for us humans to survive are food, water, and shelter. Minimum wage won’t and can’t cover those needs.
Overall, this exercise showed me the very real struggle that those who live in poverty face when trying to simply provide the bare necessities such as housing and food. Even so, the need for reform in intense. The first step in overcoming the financial barriers of poverty is not merely raising minimum wage or providing more governmental assistance, but the main area that needs reformation is in the eyes of the American populace. By changing the viewpoint of Americans who are not in financial poverty, the rest of the reform will follow
Ira Knight, who is an author of article “Let’s Make the Minimum Wage a Living Wage”, expresses an opinion that increasing the minimum wage would help all struggling workers and at the same time improve U.S economy. On the other side, Janice Steele in her article “Keep the Minimum Wage Where It Is” argues that raising the minimum wage would have bad effects on workers, consumers and small businesses. Ira Knight’s article seems to be the stronger of the two positions because her arguments are based on several recent studies, and last but not least, she had a personal experience with the minimum wage job.
This bill is striving to assure that minimum wage workers are making enough money to be able to financially support themselves and their families. This bill calls for the federal minimum wage to be adjusted every four years so that the received annual income of these employees is at least 15% above the federal poverty edge for a four-person
One of my expenses is bowling every week at Bel-Air Bowl on Saturday mornings. It costs eleven dollars a week for the school year except during the school season. My family goes to the chiropractor occasionally, and buys vitamins there. Another big expense for me is church youth group functions. Summer camp alone costs around two or three hundred dollars, and we do events through the whole year. Car repairs and maintenance is a big expense, especially recently since the car accident. We also have random expenses at Christmas and birthdays, when we buy more gifts and spend more money than normal. Random expenses may not be large in dollar amounts, but they add up
Nationwide government officials often wonder how this country is going to overcome unemployment, and the common misconception is through the provision of low wage jobs. By providing people with some source of income, congress believes millions will no longer depend on government aid. In actuality, however, providing minimum wage work is not going to solve such a drastic problem now, in the future, or at all for that matter. Minimum wage ($5.15), while serving at the socially acceptable pay standard, does not even compare with the nationwide ?living wage? of $10.18 (Ramisch). It is becoming increasingly more difficult to survive on such tragic wages, yet there is often little debate because it is money, and every little bit matters when it comes to paying bills.
Overall, this paper is about how poverty is very prominent in our society, and we need to learn more about it. We need to increase aid to low- income families because they cannot support
The first topic that should be talked about is the fact that raising the minimum wage would help the people and the economy. First of all it would help lots of people get out of the poverty line. This topic will be discussed more later in the essay but their are alot of people that are in poverty and need the help. It would make people also less stressed out because if you are a minimum wage worker you can 't do anything fun because you don 't have the money but if they raise it then you might be able to have some fun or just have some extra cash in a time of need. Just to give you a percent of how many people live in bad conditions because of this it is about
In Barbara Ehrenreich’s documentary novel, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), she claimed that it is almost impossible to live off of minimum wage in the united states. She supports her claim by writing a documentary novel explaining the details of the life of the American struggles caused by the minimum wage. Through her book, she supports that minimum wage salary is insufficient means of survival and leads to a difficult life. After encountering many people who falsely accuse welfare receivers of being lazy and not work hard enough, she wrote a book to challenge and change the public’s negative opinion towards them and also about the day when the minimum wage workforce will stand up for themselves and demand to have a higher wage. Ehrenreich’s purpose for writing this novel was to bring attention to wage workforce by showing the general American public the life of their fellow citizens who are struggling to survive.
In the United States alone, the amount of people in poverty is 14.5%. That equates to 45.3 million people in 2013. In a country like America, one of the world’s superpowers, it’s embarrassing to admit. But the main issue is to fix issues like these with the minimum wage and welfare. The minimum wage applies to workers who got a job whether because they were in school or because they had not gone to college and had no other option. Most of the country lives off as minimum wage workers as only 1% of the world’s population has a college degree. Minimum wage needs to be adjusted to modern inflation. But the minimum wage allegedly does not affect poverty at all says a large demographic and does not need to be adjusted. The minimum wage makes up a lot of the country and should be adjusted or modified to today’s standard of living.
However, this system of measuring poverty is flawed because if a family makes a dollar more above the set limit, they do not qualify for financial help from the government (NCCP, 2008).The poverty threshold is an inadequate measure of whether people are considered poor or not. Current poverty measures are flawed because it assumes how much a family spends and does not accurately include family resources such as Earned Income Tax Credit (NCCP, 2008). The way that the government measures poverty is based on outdated information that was set in the 60s. Because it has not been sufficient to keep up with the standard of living, those who are living in “high cost cities like New York and those who live in rural areas of the country” (NCCP, 2008) are barely getting by.
Personal Budget Exercise – Excel Creating a spreadsheet track personal business expenses is an excellent use of Microsoft Excel. For this exercise, you will create a spreadsheet to enter a personal budget and track actual expenses for the year. You may choose to use real data or create a fictitious budget using a monthly income amount of $2,500. Here are suggested budget categories if you are not using a real budget. At a minimum, you must have 9 budget categories: Housing (mortgage or rent) Utilities Car payment Insurance Student Loans Food Misc. Entertainment Gas Savings
Today we live in a society that tells us what and when we can do it, with the complex of living in the United States which is supposed to be the land of the free. The cost of living now these days have put those who only make minimum wage in poverty stricken situations, which now they have no choice but to depend on the government to live. We either have to lower the cost of living so that people can live a somewhat sustainable life, or raise the minimum wage so that we can afford the cost of living that is provided to us.
Family Budget Assignment Household #1 • You are single (no alimony/child support), and work outside the home. • You have 2 children, a boy 7 and a girl 3. • You are all generally healthy with your share of colds and flu.