Believe it or not I have just started watching Breaking Bad. I have a minor question which I dare not research in case I uncover spoilers.
Walter White is a school teacher PLUS he had a job at a car wash - the car wash job seemed painful but he swallowed it - so I conclude he is desperate for money. This is before he has cancer.
Have I missed an explanation as to why he is so poor, why he needed two jobs?
Obviously I don’t want spoilers and if the correct answer is “Keep watching, it will be explained” that’ll do fine. So far I am at the third episode and I am concerned I may have missed some important explanatory dialogue in the first episode.
The show starts with him as a typical middle income person struggling to get by on just a teacher’s salary. He’s working the car wash for extra money. There’s no missing plot point about him having any specific money issues beyond that.
Skylar doesn’t work. So they have three–soon four–mouths to feed on a school teacher’s salary. A quick internet search puts the median teacher income in Albuquerque at $51,000. Not exactly poverty level, but not exactly rolling in it either, especially considering a son with health problems.
One thing that always struck me about the White’s home is how awful it is inside compared to how nice it is in the backyard. The pool and manicured bushes are very nice, but the furniture and decorations inside are out of date. That indicates too that they may have once had money but over time have buckled down. Like mentioned above, a special needs kid and a baby on the way puts a lot of strain on a single salary. In real life I know a number of people that take second jobs as kids get into High School and money gets tight as they pay for extracurricular activities and a college fund.
Sure, there obviously was a time when Walter was better off financially than he is at the start of the series. We find out more in the first season. Hang on through a few more episodes and you’ll find out fairly early.
The finances/insurance issue is almost completely plot contrivance, and best ignored if you want to enjoy the show.
That the Whites could be working poor is not really a question; teachers don’t get paid all that much, she didn’t work; they had/had had extra medical and family costs, etc. - no problem.
But the idea that a tenured teacher in a big city would not have adequate to exceptional health insurance is just laughable. In nearly every district in the US, the personnel cost problems stem almost entirely from skyrocketing cost of the traditional “gold plated” insurance coverage that hardly anyone outside of government service can even get any more. The state/city/district is bound by ironclad union contract to provide that level of coverage, and they pay through every institutional orifice to meet the demand, even though almost no one paying any amount can get the coverage outside that system.
Walter White would have had completely adequate insurance. He had no need to scratch up money from any source to receive adequate or better care for his cancer. The ONLY justification for his shenanigans is that Skyyyyyyyyyleerrrrrrr insisted he go to a platinum-plated specialist outside their network, which is thin gruel hanging on one or two throwaway lines.
As realistically as the show managed to deal with many other absurd situations, this one is best left in the “let’s pretend” category.
Yeah, a science teacher with his years of experience would be making close to 100K. So even with a stay at home wife, they should not have been doing that badly. I kept waiting for some sort of revelation to develop where they had extensive past debts for some reason…
His out of pocket costs would have disappeared quickly as copay maxes are reached and he would have also had easy access to short term disability, etc. through the job.
In 2012 the top teachers in Albuquerque who were only teachers and not getting paid for extra duties made ~$77,000 a year. There were five of them made that much, all with 30 years+ experience. Walter wouldn’t be in that category. The average salary in the APS system was $43,000. Walter may have been in the third tier making $50,000+, but unlikely he was making that much more than that.
It would nave been interesting to see Walts ego short circuiting his advancement options early in his career. Something like demanding a better salary to reflect his obvious chemistry skills while still a noob and pissing off a senior administrator. Or refusing to admit to a mistake that led to unfortunate consequences.
I did a little research into the Breaking Bad timeline as well as some research into the actual Albuquerque public schools teaching salary. Here’s that list of salary schedules for APS. It’s not totally clear which schedule he would be on, but presumably one of the three “AT” schedules. A “step” is generally one year of teaching, although you can negotiate where you start in the schedule.
I can’t find information on exactly when Walter started teaching, but it was after Jr. was born, so at most 15 years. Assuming he has a doctorate (also not clear), at step 15 he would be making at most $54,900.
He may have been able to negotiate a higher entrance into the schedule, but those things are usually based on teaching experience, which he didn’t have any of. There is generally not a shortage of teacher applicants around, so the tendency is to hire cheaply.
ETA: That’s the 2014-2015 salary schedule. It would probably have been a few grand less in 2009.
Which is fine until you recall that he went into the business to only to provide for his family after he died, remember that he did not have any expectation or desire for treatment when he began with Jesse, having been informed that the tumour was inoperable. It was only after he told them that he was compelled to see a specialist who was willing to treat him.
In short, his initial motivation was not his treatment costs.
It’s been awhile since I saw the show, but I thought this was made pretty clear. He didn’t want to pay for chemo, he wanted enough money to pay his son’s way through college and keep his wife from having to work so she could stay home with the baby. He didn’t even intend to get treatment for his cancer when he started cooking meth. Meth was his life insurance, not his health insurance.