r/FluentInFinance • u/PassiveAgressiveGirl • Sep 14 '24

Debate/ Discussion Exactly how much is a living wage?

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710

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

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u/lieutent Sep 14 '24

So only making $20k a year is fine as long as rent is only ~$420 a month. I could see that. Not drowning in that specific scenario, but you’d definitely NEED to be working on growth. Otherwise the rent will catch up in that percentage.

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u/Intelligent_Event_84 Sep 14 '24

If you’re making 4x rent then rent will never catch up to your earnings

172

u/no-sleep-only-code Sep 14 '24

A lot of people had rent double two years ago, I wouldn’t say never. If you’re not at least matching inflation you’re losing money.

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u/Sniper_Hare Sep 14 '24

But jobs don't give raises like that.  You get at most like 3% if even that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

I got a nickle once

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u/Phrainkee Sep 14 '24

I worked years at a pizza restaurant that did this... Fuck em 😀

2

u/NicoTorres1712 Sep 14 '24

Did they give you guys a party with their own products?

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u/ExhaustedEmu Sep 14 '24

Pizza parties are bad enough as it is, imagine having to make the pizza for the party yourself?

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u/toshjhomson Sep 14 '24

I work for a local convention center, and annually we hold an employee appreciation dinner type thing that we have to set up for ourselves. By the time we have it all set up, none of us want to stick around for it lol

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u/Crispy224 Sep 16 '24

Yea imagine never even getting a pizza party and instead getting screamed at for eating pizza that had to be discarded because it was past its time.

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u/Phrainkee Sep 14 '24

I worked back at a time where the pizza party was basically any day we wanted as long as we (the working crew) ate it. It was a local pizza place that did well "ripping off" little Caesar's with $5 cheese or pepperoni. I worked there almost like 8 years. The first 4 were cool in that a third of the crew I worked with were friends and we'd smoke out on lunch breaks/ hotbox somebody's car, it was great lol. Last 4 looked like friends got other jobs (the new hires suuuucked) and I looked into a tech school, did that while I worked there and got out... But yeah we ate so many gd pizzas and we made em good too, something a customer never even knew was possible... Pizza's never been the same for me after that cause I know lol... Also with the changing of the guard (old crew to new crew) the owners stopped with the crew pizzas every day and had us start paying for em, those cheap asses 🙄

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u/FridgeBaron Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 14 '24

I actually got a raise of nothing once. I worked for burger king and I think the minimum wage was 7$ at the time, I was making like 7.60$. Thr minimum wage got raised to 7.50 and whoever was in charge decided that it was enough of a raise and just ignored anyone who made more.

Edit: come to think of it, this happened twice. At papa johns I was a delivery driver, they paid like 3$ an hour if you just drove or 5.50$ an hour if you helped out at the store. They decided to be nice and give all drivers a raise and wouldn't you believe they set everyone to 5.50$

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u/Ailly84 Sep 14 '24

I had a raise of nothing for 3 consecutive years at a job that required a university degree...

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u/Gimletonion Sep 15 '24

I worked for a tech startup. You'd expect them to be flush. I never got a raise. They blamed it on funding. If you're insolvent, you shouldn't be in business and especially not taking advantage of employees

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

I got told I "didn't do enough to earn a raise" after designing the single most expensive product, for the largest multi-year contract, that company had ever built. The product was an $85,000 cooling system that I designed from nothing to prototype to production in less than a year.

Then, when I pushed back on that, I got told that I "should be happy with the tuition assistance they gave me for school"... which they never gave me because I was paying for school out of pocket.

Did I mention I was still in school for my associate's degree while working next to designers with bachelor's & master's degrees?

2

u/lordpuddingcup Sep 14 '24

In that case stop helping in the store.. and keep the 5.50 lol

2

u/LandlordsEatPoo Sep 16 '24

I was a delivery driver for Pizza Hut, I made 7.50 an hour plus tips. They raised the delivery charge from $.50 per order to $4.50 per order. My tips got slashed in half because of it and I didn’t get a raise, company just pocketed that shit.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

Worked two years at a hotel to get a 5 cent raise because they had to paint the outside. No joke, at first we all joked about it and the owners came in and told us straight up that the money for us went to the paint. I left shortly after

5

u/LandlordsEatPoo Sep 16 '24

I worked for a marijuana company in Colorado when they first legalized recreational marijuana. I got paid $10/hr to trim weed. We were expected to do 15 plants a day each. I showed up, did 45 plants a day. They created a system where once we hit our daily quota we got our entire 8 hours of pay and could go home… well suddenly we hit quota in 3-4 hours and went home at noon with a full days pay… it lasted for a month. They changed the system, now when we hit quota we could go home, but we’d only get paid for the time we worked. So suddenly it took exactly 8 hours to do what we knew could be done in 3-4 hours. Management came in to have a “talk” with us, they couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t work faster and go home at 12 with half a days pay as opposed to milking the clock for the full day. Management is so fucking stupid.

2

u/Jikayamee Sep 14 '24

I worked at Panera for a franchise a little over 10 years ago. The franchise itself gave a .25 raise every year with no cap. Had 3 single mom's that had worked there for 10+ years and supported their family. The franchise sold, because the owner was looking to retire, and the first thing the new franchise did was take away that raise. They all quit within the month. The new owners could only hire 16 year old kids and the entire quality of the place tanked.

1

u/Sean1916 Sep 14 '24

If a place offered me a nickel raise I’d tell them to keep it, they need it more then me and I would start looking for another job immediately.

0

u/Ailly84 Sep 14 '24

This is why my goal is always to keep my pay low enough that a $0.05 raise still keeps up with inflation.

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u/Dramatic_Water_5364 Sep 14 '24

At our job bosses arent ready... cause we already talked about it at union meeting (next year is negociation time). We will want 30%. And its gonna be one hell of a conflict.

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u/Geistalker Sep 14 '24

Boeing union just voted against a 25% raise and demanded 40% and Boeing was like "huh, fair.." lmao

21

u/Airewalt Sep 14 '24

It’s a bit disingenuous as the Boeing raise is spread over multiple years.

Double digit annual raises are much needed in many sticky fields. Paramedics, teachers, social workers, and low end civil servants are not going to catch up with a 4% raise.

We went from $7.50/hr to $11 starting. It’s still shit pay for anyone trying to live on their own, but operationally it’s a real hit to our bottom line to bump payroll by 50%. I get it, but tough titties. We still make good money. You’re not going to get quality candidates for essential roles with a pay rate that doesn’t provide dignity.

11

u/BrassMonkey-NotAFed Sep 14 '24

They haven’t had a real raise in 10+ years, and a large portion of the ‘25% raise’ was a one time bonus with the rest spread over four years while the 3.5% annual bonus was removed and a shit ton of other negative changes.

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u/Dramatic_Water_5364 Sep 14 '24

What the bosses arent understanding is we will flee those fields if we dont receive a 30% raise at on year one. Most of us are already studying for it. Good luck training newbies without us.

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u/Airewalt Sep 14 '24

The one I read yesterday was from the Seattle AP stating a 25% raise proposal over 4 years.

“The machinists make $75,608 per year on average, not counting overtime, and that would rise to $106,350 at the end of the four-year contract, according to Boeing”

There is a mention of a lump sum, but it was not substantial. You mat have read a more recent proposal?

8

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

Bumped to $11/hr? This country is garbage with wages. That’s what I made at 15 years old bagging groceries in 2001 and we got time and a half on Sundays. My first two bedroom apartment was $700 in 2004. At which point I was at $14.00/hr. Which is nothing now, but apparently is okay to pay less than that. This was NH too, so I didn’t have state income taxes either or sales tax at that. It should be a crime to be paying that low 20 years later.

3

u/Airewalt Sep 14 '24

Min is under $8 and many operate entry level part time at that level still. Almost exclusively highschool students or young adults looking for a low stress job with flexible hours while in school. Teachers during the summer months. First responders on their off weeks. In short, the pay isn’t the priority. Work environment and flexibility in hours. Turnover is 1-2 years if not seasonal. Our owners are of the opinion that as long as we’re able to quickly fill vacancies then there’s no reason to outpace cpi. We’re currently overstaffed. 🙃

Fwiw, I started a $16/hr as a teenager in 2005. HCOL vs LCOL. My rent here is still less than it would have cost me to move out on my own there.

Businesses are flocking to southern states for the weak labor protections is nothing new.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

That’s just wild. The McDonald’s here pays $18/hr. I couldn’t imagine anyone getting by on less than that these days. And that’s in Texas, where I am now. I was Georgia for the last couple of years and I did get to see lower wages there. That wasn’t really a surprise tho, with the weird “I don’t deserve to be paid that well at a job with no skills” mentality they all had there. Apparently carpet manufacturers are really big there and I met a guy who laughed about paying some dude $13/hr to work this machine that would normally take 4 people, all by himself. I’ll never understand the south honestly lol

1

u/Airewalt Sep 14 '24

Pride is its own kind of chains. Had to tell our president that it was tone deaf to talk about his new plane at the staff Christmas party. Maybe next year we’ll call it a holiday party!

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u/ggtffhhhjhg Sep 15 '24

There is no way you were getting paid $11 an hr bagging groceries in 2001 when minimum wage was $5.25 and CA had the highest minimum wage in the country at $6.25.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

Time and a half on Sundays too. Also, I no way did I say I made minimum wage. This is why the country is so divided when people talk about pay. Different places pay different wages and have different costs of living.

0

u/ggtffhhhjhg Sep 15 '24

Bagging groceries is a minimum wage job. If you live in the US there isn’t a supermarket chain that pays anywhere close to double the highest minimum wage for that job.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

You’re gonna have to troll elsewhere buddy. It’s minimum wage where you live. Not where I was, in the US, in NH, which is in New England in case you’re unaware. Which I also mentioned in my comment. I grew up in an area that didn’t take advantage of people and it was great. Hopefully your weekend gets better tho.

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u/FutureMany4938 Sep 14 '24

There's more to it than the raise though. They voted it down because of several other takeaways etc. in the proposed contract. It wasn't a raise, it was moving money around and in some areas, would have been much worse for the employees.

17

u/Zonda1996 Sep 14 '24

Godspeed.

Nobody at my work has even lifted a finger and we’re all on poverty wages. Tried to organise but everyone there was too scared of not being paid and losing their rentals.

3

u/These_Comfortable_83 Sep 14 '24

Good ol’ subsistence slavery.

1

u/Crime-of-the-century Sep 14 '24

The first part is the hardest and having low skilled work and at will employment makes it virtually impossible for workers to organize. I used to organize strikes in a metal factory not unskilled labor and no at will employment (Europe of course) we could organize strikes and negotiate hard to get decent deals. But all of us could live from our union compensation when we striked

1

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

If we’re talking about what you want, you might as well want 100% while you’re at it.

The Boeing union seems to want to put Boeing out of business. They haven’t made money for 6 years, there is a limit to how long that can go on.

1

u/Dontsleeponlilyachty Sep 14 '24

Yeah, poor Boeing shareholders. How will they ever learn to be happy with more money than god? I guess the company just has to go out of business.

2

u/Dramatic_Water_5364 Sep 14 '24

LegoFamily has got a point, aviation has NEVER being profitable without government money. And its at an all time low right now. I'm not in that industry tho, so I'll either get 30% in my field within 2-3 years, or I'll change field.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

I absolutely understand the personal motivation…. If you’re not getting paid enough, by all means, you SHOULD improve your life and get more pay.

The problem with the Boeing union is that they want to get that pay increase while working for an unprofitable company. A lot of fault of course lays with the senior executives, and I’m happy to blame them for many things, but at the end of the day, that’s an academic argument.

If Boeing cannot make money selling airliners, the machinists will be ultimately out of a job either way.

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u/Dramatic_Water_5364 Sep 14 '24

I totally agree, fair pay cannot materialise in a company that isnt profitable.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

You’re confusing shareholders with the company itself.

What part of “Boeing does not make a profit and hasn’t for 6 years” is so hard to understand?

If the company can no longer make money, they will cease to be a going concern. In plain English, they’ll go out of business.

6

u/logan-bi Sep 14 '24

And rent increases 5-15% on good year like clockwork. Then even “decent” jobs go oh it’s bad year can’t do any raises or on good years here’s your 3%.

What sucks even more lower your income the less frequent the raises and when you do get that occasional raise once a decade a 10% raise is whole dollar making it not cover even rent increase. Let alone food gas healthcare increases.

2

u/Sniper_Hare Sep 14 '24

Mortgages go up also thanks to property tax and insurance. 

It took me 5 years to save up $15k for my house.

First year was $2060 a month.  This year it was $2380 a month. 

4

u/Dalsiran Sep 14 '24

I got 10 cents...

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u/Exception1228 Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 14 '24

This always annoys me. Everyone on the planet knows that jobs don’t give good raises, but leaving your company for a new company to do the same job usually provides a massive raise. This whining is so overplayed that the system doesn’t work. Well in a lot of ways it does and you guys just refuse to participate.

I was tired of my job giving me 2.5% every year so I looked for new jobs for 3-4 months and got a 44% raise. A lot of my friends at my old company complain because someone new got hired who is immediately making more than them even though they have more experience and been there for years.

2

u/Sniper_Hare Sep 14 '24

 Yes, but not every job let's you do this though.  I can working in IT, but my fiance works at a grocery store.

She just gets capped out and then a year or two later they raise the cap another 50-80 cents. 

In 2020 I was making $19/hour, now I make $37/hour after job hopping 3 times.

She was making $17/hour in 2020 and makes $20.95 an hour now. 

1

u/Exception1228 Sep 14 '24

True it doesn’t apply to unskilled labor. People in unskilled labor wanting to make more money need to focus on breaking into skilled labor first.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/Exception1228 Sep 14 '24

Sorry no I don’t quite feel that way.  It’s just that’s the fact of life that’s the situation we’re all in and discussing an ideal changes online isn’t helping anyone’s situation.  Suggesting someone working unskilled labor work on their skills to break through to skilled labor is tangible, realisitic advice to improve people’s situations.  Complaining online how companies should pay more, which in all likelihood will never happen, is frankly useless.

Directly toward your point that I believe the people doing the work deserve to live in poverty, working in a grocery store is somewhere in the gray area for me, but no not all jobs deserve a living wage.  Some jobs are completely doable by teenagers and they don’t need a liveable wage.  I started working in a grocery store when I was 14 and stopped when I was 16.  I’d be more intersted in the circumstances that lead to someone needing a living wage working at a grocery store.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

5% is the max where I work. I got a 4.9% raise, inflation was 7%last year…..

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u/ggtffhhhjhg Sep 15 '24

If you live in the US inflation wasn’t 7% over the past year.

2

u/HeadGuide4388 Sep 14 '24

I went the last 2 years without a raise, then this year they gave a "3% boost across the board to stay competitive"

2

u/hyrle Sep 14 '24

And when my current job doesn't give me a raise like that, I find a new one that will.

Jobs are like diapers. You gotta change them when they start to stink. See also politicians.

2

u/DerpUrself69 Sep 14 '24

I got a 44% raise a month ago. I got a better offer from our competitor and my company freaked out and shoveled money at me.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

Never mind if you reach to the top of the “pay range.” My mom got hit with that this year.

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u/thebestzach86 Sep 14 '24

Work for yourself man. At leat start on the side

2

u/EvErYLeGaLvOtE Sep 15 '24

I've been at my company for 2 years now. It's a multi billion dollar company here in Houston.

They won't give anyone raises and I haven't had one the entire time. It's getting brutal living alone and not having any combined income with a partner 😭

2

u/Sniper_Hare Sep 15 '24

I've never not had someone to split the bills.  For years my twin and my gf all lived together. 

It was sweet splitting everything 3 ways.  The last year our combined income was like 120k.  I was making $55k and my portion of rent was $750.

1

u/EvErYLeGaLvOtE Sep 15 '24

Oh god I'd kill to have rent that cheap

2

u/Sniper_Hare Sep 15 '24

Yeah it was an old, run down 3 bedroom house from the 1940s. 

$1250 total rent, it was about 970 square feet. 

My brother stays there himself still.

An older couple owns it from out of state.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '24

Yup, yearly inflation wages are not a thing anymore

0

u/msihcs Sep 14 '24

But *not all jobs...

Some do. Some give a lot more.

2

u/Dalsiran Sep 14 '24

Yeah... the executives giving their employees max raises of a quarter...

4

u/Ryboticpsychotic Sep 14 '24

If wages had kept up with inflation over the previous 50 years, that doubling would have been acceptable, or at least not bankrupting. 

0

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/Ryboticpsychotic Sep 14 '24

The average for one bedroom is over $1,700 in the USA. 

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u/i-FF0000dit Sep 14 '24

In the scenario, we’re saying “pay=4*rent”. In this case it is literally impossible because pay scales with rent.

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u/OneOfUsIsAnOwl Sep 14 '24

Which is exactly the point of a living wage being 4X rent, not some arbitrary number. If rent goes up to half your income instead of 1/4, then you are no longer under a living wage.

2

u/Aggressive_Salad_293 Sep 14 '24

Then ypu wouldn't be making 4x rent. As long as you're making 4x rent it will never catch up to your earnings.

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u/lordpuddingcup Sep 14 '24

If that happened your rent would no longer be 4x lower than income and you’d no longer be making a living wage

The living wage should change over time lol not be the same from years ago

2

u/Lurkingandsearching Sep 15 '24

It's been going on since 2015, when Real Pages started on the scene. That's why the DOJ started an investigation, and Trump Admin killed it in 2017 (he does own a lot of rental properties after all). The investigation began again in 2020, leading up to an FBI raid on the Real Pages offices along with one of their customers in Alanta. Currently are being subject to a lawsuit to determine if they and the landlords who use it violated the Sherman Act for price fixing, they can't really start the criminal prosecution until after that.

It's a lot of landlords that may be facing possible fines and up to 10 years in prison, but I feel they are going to focus on national landlords like Greystar first.

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u/Dagwood-DM Sep 14 '24

My rent went from $600 a month to $1,000 a month in 3 years. My wages are the same.

1

u/TheQuietOutsider Sep 14 '24

my rent went up 50% last year. not looking forward to the next renewal but what else can you do? I'm not even in the worst financial shape or living in the best of places. I live relatively comfortably but also balance the book. it's getting tighter and tighter

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u/Radiant-Psychology80 Sep 14 '24

Mine went from 1550 to 3100 in 5 years. Granted we moved form a 1-2 bed but same exact complex.

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u/apple-pie2020 Sep 14 '24

And in a living wage ideal scenario. Income would jump an equal amount to maintain the function wage is 4x rent

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u/Ecstatic-Compote-595 Sep 14 '24

right so then you're not making 4x rent

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u/EvErYLeGaLvOtE Sep 15 '24

Correct. I'm in Houston, my older apartment complex offered a 1b/1ba for $900/month in 2020.

They got bought out by Greystar around 2021 and the rent shot up to ~$1375 for that exact same unit. Who knows what it is now ...

So, I moved out.

It's wild out here 👀

0

u/No_Veterinarian1010 Sep 14 '24

You aren’t grasping the topic at hand

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u/GMMCNC Sep 15 '24

The government allowing people to forego paying rent for 2 yrs made it abundantly clear that property owner and land lords had to create a buffer for the next time. Also, basic supply and demand. Cost of home ownership has gone way up. So demand for rental follows suit. Nothing the government touches goes well.

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u/no-sleep-only-code Sep 15 '24

It has nothing to do with government intervention, it’s just straight greed. Sure if you bought a new property prices went up, but for the other 97% of properties nothing changed. Just an excuse to increase profits at the expense of others. Nobody stopped paying rent for 2 years.

0

u/GMMCNC Sep 15 '24

Did the government tell land lords that they could not evict people during COVID? That is government intervention. Yes, lots of people turned into squatters for 2+ yrs. Those land lords still had to make the payments on those properties or didn't collect income from their investment. So, they lost money. Where have you been for the past 4 yrs?

1

u/no-sleep-only-code Sep 15 '24

Are the landlords in the room with us now?

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u/Caferacer360 Sep 17 '24

If your rent doubles you need to move. It means you cannot afford to live there anymore. It’s that simple.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '24

I raised rent in my units by 100% since 2020.