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John Makely / msnbc.com
Ann Valencia looks on as movers unload a truck full of her belongings and load them into a storage unit she rented. Valencia has had to downsize and move in with a friend
This week, Life Inc. hit the road to profile people around the country who are living on around $50,000 a year, the nation’s median household income.
Wow, did you have a lot to say about it.
The first week of the series garnered tens of thousands of comments, hundreds of e-mails and numerous mentions on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
More than 76,000 of you responded to our poll on whether you could live on around $50,000 a year.
Since that is the midpoint of household incomes in this country, it wasn’t surprising that you were about equally split on whether it would work or not.
“Was making more than twice that a few years ago. Amazing how you can live on less after you lose a good job. We're making out OK,” one reader wrote.
But others said they couldn’t imagine making all their bills on that salary.
“I don't even think $100k is enough for a family of 4 to have health care, food, gas, college tuition. ... no way,” another reader wrote.
Many readers told us that they get by but occasionally struggle with expenses like gas, rent and health care costs. The rising cost of food, a major expense for one family we profiled this week, is squeezing many people's budgets.
"I grocery shop once a week and every time I go I see another regular part of my bill go up; eggs, meat, butter, milk," one reader wrote.
Our story about a military family with a long-term financial plan prompted a lot of discussion about how feasible it is to plan ahead financially. About half of you said that these days, you are just trying to get by day to day.
“I used to be such a planner, until every plan I made was thwarted by the Great Recession. It is hard to plan with no stability or hope!” one reader lamented.
Clearly, one’s ability to live on around $50,000 a year depends a lot on where you live and who you are supporting. This week, we wrote about a family of six in Utah who are getting by just fine, while a widow in pricier New York found that the nation’s median income isn’t enough to afford housing expenses.
Still, many said it’s not as simple as moving to a cheaper area to cut costs.
“Sure location is important. However, a cheaper cost of living also means lower wages. So, it is not usually an even trade-off,” one reader wrote.
Thanks to everyone who read this week’s stories, wrote to us, took our votes and shared our stories on social media.
Stay tuned next week as we wrap up our series next week with a few more profiles and a video piece on people living on $50,000 a year, in their own words.
Leave a Comment:
50k is not enough for a family. Anywhere, if you are doing it right, Owning a home, saving for kids college, contributing to a 401k, eating healthy (which is much more expensive than eating junk food) its simply not enough to provide for a family.
Source: (Making 52k) already saving for a child I dont have yet
While I agree that 50k is not enough for a family, I don't agree that eating healthy costs more than eating junk. Eating junk usually involves processed and packaged foods which are expensive. We eat almost exclusively organic foods, much of them coming Whole Foods in NYC no less, not known as a cheap store or cheap city. But I bet we eat cheaper than most. It's all about planning and preparation. I hardly ever buy anything if it's not both on sale and I have a coupon. I hunt down coupons for everything, catch the sales, and then buy a case at a time (which adds on a 10% case discount on top of the coupon and sale). We also cook from scratch and can and dehydrate foods when they are cheap and in season. We end up paying less for wholesome organic than people pay for non-organic.
I agree with most of this, but fresh fruit, meat, and veggies are just plain expensive, i could eat at mcdonalds cheaper for dinner every night for sure! My gf and I have just started seriously budgeting our groceries though and I am looking forward to eating healthier and for less! Whole Foods is awesome. We have them in ATL as well.
Have read many posts about people who are using public assistance and how well they are eating. I am hear to tell you, becareful. My family and I used to be the givers, the ones donating to food banks, working at the soup kitchens. We used to be able to provide meals to others simply because they couldn't afford it and we could. Unfortunately the loss of my spouses job and my job making $30K a year, we scarcely survive. When we finally broke down to get food assistance., I cried throughout the whole process, and for you who think that it is easy - it isn't. For 5 people I am grateful for the amount that is given to us, but for people who judge - I am the one who goes to the grocery store in the middle of the night - or uses a self check out lane because we don't want to be judged by you or any others. We don't buy convenience foods, soda, candy or garbage food - though I have to say we didn't when we could afford it either. Simply don't just, you never know when you will find yourself in situation - I am horrified to find out what people think of me.
The people who have scorn directed to them arent you, it's the woman in front of me at the grocery store with 5 kids who has OBVIOUSLY never had a job, who is a product of generational welfare, who with her kids are why i get taxed at 34% in the first place. People will act high and mighty about this, but any logical person can tell the difference between people who have fallen on hard times (like yourself) and people who enjoy milking the system.
you shouldn't be ashamed you deserve it and don't see it as a luxury, however I see many times a day a mom with her nails done and her kids looking like crap and then she used her food stamps! SERIOUSLY! Hold your head high because I bet you won't be using it for a long time
First of all, I feel for you and your consideration of how others think..... I personally dont care about others oinions.....Only my creators opinion is important.... cause He knows my heart and the OTHERS dont matter!!!
It is time to end all food aid to other countries the food can be used here in the US to drive down the price of food.
Let me tell you it isn't easy we went thru a plant closing with my husband we use coupons follow the saving blogs to get the best price on things. We some how manage to make my daughters tution payment each month but we sacrife a lot to do it. But we want her have a manageable debt when she graduates it's tough on just $53,000 a year but we make it.
Kind of depends on how many kids you have, and what your educational plans are for their future. Lot of variables there. $50,000 might be fine in one instance, but not another. My kids are all grown and on their own, and I'm retired. I never ever came close to making $50,000 a year and I sure wish I was now.
I support a family of 4 on $50,000. I'm college educated, have steady employment, healthcare benefits, homeowner, no credit card debt, and one son in college. We have always lived in a very modest home. I stretch money by getting clothing from yard sales, by eating deer meat instead of beef, and by rarely eating out at restaurants. We don't have cable TV or anything like that, but we do take a beach vacation every year that my mom helps pay for. We are all fortunately very healthy and happy, but many say our lifestyles are a bit different from others.
We 'make it' on my Wife's Salary of $70k a year here in Monmouth County NJ. After I lost my $90k a year salary job almost 2 years ago now. And WHY are we making it on so much less (and I say making it...many many cuts have had to be made...no travel, etc.)? ONE REASON.....we were in the midst of adopting right before I got laid off....$6k into a $30k process. We of course put that on hold immediately the day I was laid off. Disappointing to say the least. But its the ONLY way we can survive for now. And it may now NEVER happen, as we are getting up in age. And by the time this mess resolves itself, if it ever does, we maybe older than the age limit. NOW, can anyone see why if I ever ran into one of those blood sucking scum who axed me and half the company in one day to keep their good times rolling....can you see WHY I would just love to punch them right in the jaw?
Unemployed for a Year Plus,
I have said this in many of my posts. The past four years (recession due to financial collapse and the resulting un-precendented layoffs in the country), has taken out around 8.5 million Americans from jobs, and since then we have been able to put only about 1 million back on the job. Immigration (I am talking about both legal and illegal immigration) has wrecked havoc in Americans lives.
What are our corporations doing? These companies (in both financial, construction, retail, manufacturing, etc.) are still importing cheap foreign labor through H1B and L1 visa displacing the Americans and on top of it, we import 100,000 green card folks and their folks through annual lottery process. We should stop both the H1B visa and the Green card lotterry program and then only these companies will train and employ Americans at the wages they deserve.
We live in NYC, so understand the cost of living in your area well. If your wife made 70k per year (and still does) and you made 90k per year and you have no children as of yet, what happened to all that money you were earning before you were laid off? Barring a catastrophic illness or similar expense event in your family that you haven't mentioned, with a joint $160k income per year and no children, you should have hundreds of thousands in your savings account. The 30k for the adoption should have been ready and waiting. It sounds like a classic case of living at or above your means. Poor financial management cannot be blamed on the economy. And if you truly wish to be a parent, becoming a foster parent who adopts will cost you nothing.
I am a retired Vet and truck driver and a recovering addict Now 24 yrs. Clean/Sober. I Live on less than $50,000 a yr. on a VA pension, retired due to a heart attack. I constantly struggle somehow managing to survive. I now Live to pursue a goal to Help Others, Those In Need, victims of Homelessness, Disaster, Substance Abuse, Lower Income and Poverty. All from where I once was. I Live to achieve a goal to be able to Help Others. I Need help to Hopefully produce My song, "GET IT TOGETHER AMERICA" so that I can achieve that goal. Check out My website at facebook.com/theamjamproject and listen to the song at youtube.com/amjam1, America is talking about CHANGE an that is what Am Jam is about, producing solutions to make CHANGE Happen. Join Me in My quest, so WE can make it Happen. GET IT TOGETHER AMERICA is a song about US working TOGETHER to produce solutions to Help Those In Need. Hope to hear from YOU ALL at the website or twitter @theamjamproject,
God Bless, Jimmy Red, Am Jam
well i know its tough for everyone, but seriously i live on $10,908.00 per year, and i am single but seriously try it, its damn tough but i do it
Sure, one of my tenants likes to tell me how it just aint that bad whenever we have talks about finances ( i personally subsudize his rent because he's coming off unemployment) but if you want to own a home, have insurance, and save for retirement then this sum is ludicrous. Also, i made more than that a year when i was waiting tables part time in college. Maybe consider a new career?
I live on about $2,500,000 per year...life's getting harder and harder. I feel your pain.
You made me laugh out loud...
Doesn't make sense to subsidize ethanol production from our corn which is used in about every food product or for feed for chickens, cows, and pork. As long as we let the government do this food prices will continue to soar and just wait until there is a bad crop year for corn, that cheeseburger will be ten bucks not to mention a steak.
Too much money being made for this to ever change unles we all raise cain with every elected officials. Pathetic how we are causing people to struggle here while giving so much to other countries that for the most part either hate us or think we are idiots.
The next election is shaping up to be even a greater circus than the last with basically no reasonably sane candidate which has a clue about reality to vote for on either side.
We make considerably more than $52k, over double that, and things are tight for us, I drive an '01 Nissan Maxima with 185,000 miles on it. Daycare is a big portion of that ($20k a year for 2 small children, that is in-home, if we were to go to the "corporate" daycares it would be $600 per week), and housing in my city is not cheap (median price $230k, which we are well below). This will pay off for both my wife and I as we are both young professionals still moving up in our careers, and just ditching the daycare bill will be a huge boost for us, but for people who make less, it's hard for me to understand how they make it work. My assistants @ work are both in this $52k household income range, one of them has a small child and even with her family helping (grandma is daycare) I still hear her on the phone with bill collectors and neither of them ever talk about doing really anything (no vacations, no going out on a weekend, no splurging of any kind).
I don't know her situation, but I know she owns a home and that was a huge deal to her and her husband.....I'm sure just getting her daughter fed and clothed is tough, let alone saving for colledge, paying for a good preschool, eating healthy, ect.... Those things must be a luxury they can't afford. It wasn't always like that at the median wage in this country. Used to be able to own a home, own a newer car and your children had the option to go to college and leave without a mountain of debt....that just isnt' the America we live in anymore.
I totally empathize with this, and things will get much better when my gf and i tie the knot and move in, she makes about 40k so given my second employment we will have about 110k in combined income but i still have no clue how i could afford a wife who stays at home and a child. So now that it seems a lot of have the same problem...what is the solution?
I earned $90k in a great job before the national economic spiral which resulted in loss of business causing several layoffs at my company which included me. I would give anything to work in a job paying $50k! Unfortunately, I am finding it harder and harder to find work (going on 11 months now) because employers look at my experience and think I will leave if I get a better job. All I want is a J-O-B! I do some part-time consulting when I can get the work and the rest is living off of unemployment earnings which don't amount to much of anything (but it does help). The rest is coming out of my savings which I worked so hard to build and it is depleting rapidly. The media always makes it seem the unemployed are unskilled, uneducated people who don't want to work (especially when you listen to the Republican spin). Well, several of my friends and I are all in the same boat - we are all educated, highly skilled, experienced professionals who simply want to work. We just need employers to give us a chance and not discriminate against us.
I am a single mother of a 13 yr. old boy and I make considerably less than 50K a year. I am truly grateful for the job that I have but it is difficult to survive in this economy. I just keep on praying and God always makes a way. I don't understand how someone who made $90k a year and their spouse $70 with no children did not have a better financial plan. Seems like poor planning. I make a fraction of that and I still find a way to save for my son's future. Just don't understand.
Although there is definitely a minimal amount of money necessary for living, that amount can vary greatly on a person's location/situation. Say a person lives in rural Oklahoma, has a minimum wage job, but no kids. They will probably do just fine. But counter that with someone in NYC with 2 kids making over $50,000 and they could be struggling paycheck to paycheck. Also, some people have never had a dime of help from any family members, but others have been given college educations and cars as young adults and never had to pay for that kind of thing to get started in life. I was blessed, my college education was paid for primarily from scholarships and supplemented by my parents. My parents gave me a car when I graduated. Were they rich? No way, but they were thrifty and very good savers. So I was able to start my adulthood with a clean financial slate. And they taught me how to save, so I knew not to spend more money than I made.
I was married at a young age, and I told my husband before the wedding that if he wanted to marry me, he had to know that we would not get into credit card debt or live above our means. He agreed and now we have been living modestly for 10 years and have 3 small children to raise. We are making it on slightly more than $50,000 between our two incomes but only because my parents provide free daycare for us. And we had no debt thanks to my parents generosity and my college scholarships. My husband did not go to college, but he makes more money than me...go figure! :)
I have friends that are still paying off college loans, and it is really dragging them down. They also got into trouble in their 20's because nobody taught them how to budget or save money. Most of these friends make significantly more money than my husband and I, yet they are living paycheck to paycheck. It is really hard to judge someone's situation unless you have lived their life. $50,000 can be a lot or a little to someone....just depends....
Understand that I turn 50 next January. Could I live on 50k and still save for retirement? Well there is 22,500 that has to go into the 401k, $6k that has to go into the IRA, $3k that has to go into the HSA, $2k that has to go for parking for work. that gets my take home (before taxes) down to $16,500. So no, after that you have to include $15,000 for mortgage and I am down to $1,500 before gas, clothes, utility bills, not to mention food and car payments. Not sure how people with families do it.
I would LOVE to make $50K a year. That would be like living in the lap of luxury! In my entire life, I've never made more than $41K, but I have always been able to make ends meet. It has not been easy and I have sacrificed many things in order to keep a roof over my head, food in the pantry and clothes on my back. I've never subscribed to cable TV (too expensive), my car is a 2003 Civic with 56K miles, and my home is a small, modest condo. Birthdays and holiday gifts have become non-existent due to my ever increasing living expenses and the shrinking paychecks. My parents paid my college tuition when I was 18, but I've paid back every loan that I've taken out. Nothing was given to me. I have worked very hard for everything I have. As I recently lost my job, my greatest concern now is if I'll be able to find work that will even sustain my very modest lifestyle!
My husband makes about 50K per year and we do pretty well. That is partially due to our location (Kansas) but also due to our budgeting. The only debt we have is our home and we are working toward paying it off. We own three vehicles, and though they are all older (ten years), they aren't junk either. We live on acreage, we are saving for retirement, we own a few toys (an older four wheeler and pair of older jet skiis). We don't have cable, or Iphones-- we have one cell phone between the two of us. We have three kids. Though I do have to watch our money carefully, I don't feel like we are barely scraping by. We buy a lot of second hand, but we buy new, too, when it's smarter. So I know for a fact, that in the midwest it is possible to have quite a decent living on 50K a year. I will say that my husband and I did both work after getting out of college and we paid off all our debts (sans mortgage) before having kids, since we knew I would then be quitting my job to stay home with them, so that did make it easier for us. Last year my husband was one of the many that was laid off. He was fortunate to find another job quickly. It makes about 7K a year less than his old job, but because we were already living below our means and because we increased some of our farming endeavors (very small scale), we didn't feel the cut very much. I just want to encourage people that it can be done.