my sister said that she is having trouble paying the bills and she makes 60,000 a year so shes middle class i was wondering about the lower class of like 20 or 30,000 a year how can they afford everything?(mortgage,tv,phone, internet,car bill,gas,insurance,clothes,food,electirc or gas heating air condtion,dental bills, etc.)?
By not having everything.
Debt, forgoing unnecessary things, shopping for used/free items, charity, public assistance, theft… depends on the person and the object, really.
That said, perhaps your sister is just living above her means if she can’t keep up on $60k a year (assuming she’s not dealing with surprise medical bills or a collapsed mortgage or something).
I’m poor. I’m living off a small grad student stipend and student loans, with some help from my parents. I don’t pay for TV, my cars are paid off (and old), my health insurance is covered by my school and my family members are on Medicaid, and we haven’t been to a dentist in years.
As for the rest, well, I pay for it out of my stipend and student loans.
Obama-dollars!
I have a friend who’s quite poor. She says it’s amazing what she can learn to do without.
Your sister isn’t living within her means. Just about anyone should be able to live comfortably with above median income. If she cut out every possible expense, she could survive on 20-30k. That means no smart phone, cable, putting off dental care, driving a junker, and moving to the same neighborhoods that other poor people live in.
If someone is struggling to pay their bills when they make $60,000 either they are not budgeting very wisely or they live somewhere with an extraordinary cost of living (like NYC or San Francisco). You can live comfortably on $60,000 in most parts of the USA. Your sister needs to look at what she’s spending extra money on that she doesn’t really need. You don’t need to spend $60,000 just to live.
$30,000 is certainly not rich, but it’s enough money to get by on if you are smart about how you spend your money (no iphone, buy clothes secondhand, drive that car until it falls apart, etc.)
what about shes a girl she has to get her hair done and nails isn’t that $100 a month do you guys still live in the 1920’s?
Living in small houses or apartments or in the ghetto
driving old, used cars or taking the bus
watching utilities carefully- keeping lights off, not turning on the heat or A/C unless it’s really necessary, stuff like that.
forgoing unnecessary things like cable TV, fancy phones, vacations, dinners out, expensive food, cigarettes, and so forth
forgoing necessary things like dental care, health insurance, etc.
I’m not particularly poor, but I live like I am. I just recently bought a new used car. My previous car was 15 years old and had 213K miles. (I paid for my new used car outright so I still don’t have a car payment). I own my home, but it’s an old farmhouse without central heat and air. I bought it at auction and financed it on a 15 year mortgage and it’s almost paid off. I shop thrift stores, used bookstores and salvage places. I think twice (or more) before buying anything that isn’t a necessity. Thinking twice means leaving the store, going home, thinking about if I need it, where I’d put it, etc. I don’t go on vacations. If I decide I want it, I’ll buy it, but I say no to myself a lot.
StG
Not necessarily. It depends on where you live and if you have kids or not but I couldn’t live on 60k a year if I had to (Boston area, single, two kids). My fixed expenses are higher than that and there isn’t anything I could realistically cut to get them much lower.
I don’t know how poor people do it but keep in mind that income doesn’t scale linearly. Someone who makes 60K doesn’t end up with 3x the amount of money of someone that makes 20K. Things become more expensive as you make more money. Poor people don’t generally pay income taxes for example while people making 60K do. The poor may get a few thousand dollar refund every year as an Earned Income Credit which is a form of welfare done through the tax system. You won’t qualify for much if any government assistance at 60k but you might at 20k. There is everything from fuel oil assistance in winter to free lunch programs for schoolkids. The poor person probably doesn’t need nice clothes for work while the 60k person may need nice clothes for their job, a car to get to that job in the suburbs, and other non-reimbursed expenses. Commuting costs may be hundreds of dollars a month alone for a professional whereas the poor person can just take any minimum wage job in their own neighborhood.
There are hidden ‘taxes’ on the poor as well such as check cashing fees for people without bank accounts and high interest loans but most of those can be worked around with some knowledge.
I’m a woman and I go to Great Clips (cheap haircut place) every 8 weeks. I’ve never had my nails done.
StG
One can easily spend over $100 a month on those things. One does not have to spend nearly that much on those things.
There are inexpensive places where one can get one’s hair cut. Unless your sister is a hand model, or works at a job where she is expected to have well-manicured hands, paying for a manicure is a luxury, and something which she can absolutely do for herself, rather than paying a manicurist.
This particular example illustrates what several others have already said: it sounds like your sister is living above her means.
also they give you free food stamps if your poor and you get financial aid no fair for colleges!
My wife and I live on half of her salary. We just paid off a house.
She’s not budgeting very well.
Our (modest) cars are paid off, we don’t have air conditioning, re-financed our mortgage to a very low rate (like $600/ month) during the bubble (it will be paid off next August), clothes mostly come from Goodwill, TV?internet/phone are bundled, our cell phones are very basic.
I’ll admit that my immediate assessment was blindly based on him not mentioning family, etc but, given that his defense of his sister’s expenses wasn’t “She has three kids and lives in San Francisco” but rather “She has to spend $100 a month on her hair and nails”, I’m going to continue to assume her hardship is largely self-inflicted.
I completely relate to your sister. I’m the exact same. I’ve been trying to gain control of my expense. I’ve been living way way way over my means and I make an excellent income. But because of my massive resistance to bugeting, I am on the verge of bancruptcy.
Slowly but surely I will gain control and I intellectually know I can live very well with my income, now if the rest of me could get in line, life would be perfect!
Financial aid does not automatically mean you get a free ride. It means you get some help, plus you (last I checked) had to demonstrate you’re smart enough to handle college. I still had to work and take out a loan to get through my state university, and that was a combination of being blue collar poor and near the top of my graduating class in high school, so I got grants and scholarships based on need and ability.
Plus you really, really have to be poor to qualify for “food stamps.”