Since Pete Peterson apparently thinks that it's a real fucking stretch to live on $250k/year, I would like to introduce him to the Great American Household Budget. It's one of those things us working slobs have to come up with whether we like it or not in order to make our lifestyle fit into our mother-fucking income.
I'm going to do mine with $50k a year. Let's see if poor Pete can master the fundamentals of both ADDITION and SUBTRACTION. Apparently subtraction is not taught in those snooty charter schools and Oral Roberts-type universities that the Pete Petersons of the world attend these days.
Over the orangee filligree fore moreee.
So, $50k a year. That works out to 26 paychecks of about $1923, or not quite $3900 a month (four weeks).
Your tax bite out of this paycheck varies but it will probably be about $300 depending on your withholding and so far. Your net pay is now down to around $1500 every two weeks. If you are paying the extortionist rates for insurance that most families of four are paying, you can expect to also give up anywhere between $200-$800 a month. Let's say $300 per check (this is what I pay right now). This means before you ever see it, your check has been reduced by about $600. So you take home $1,323.
Whether it's a mortgage or a rent payment, you have to pay for your house somehow, or at least most people do. That works out to anywhere between $400 (for a total crapola apartment or trailer) to $8-900 for a higher-interest house payment. Let's say $800 a month.
So far, let's look at the math. Remember that - sign is more than just a dash. It also means to subtract things, something I know the Pete Petersons of the world never do for themselves. Here is how it works, motherfucker:
WEEK 1 (house payment due)
$1923
- $300 (taxes)
- $300 (insurance and other deductions)
- $800 (house payment)
$523
For the next two weeks, this $523 will fill my gas tank and belly. For the benefit of the dumbfucks who can't manage on $250k a year, here is how the money usually flies out your window:
Gas is near $4 a gallon these days. A reasonable commute to work is 10/20 miles. Most cars, still operating at the fantastic level of fuel efficiency pioneered in the god-damn early 20th century by Henry Ford, manage about 25-30 miles per gallon.
This means it costs about $6 a day to drive to and from work. If we assume 15 miles to work in a 25mpg car. Over the next 14 days until I get my next check, if I do nothing but drive back and forth to work for the weekdays, I will then expend 6x14 or $84 on gas. That leaves me with around $450. Groceries for a family of four for two weeks can easily run $200-$300. So now we're down to $150. Maybe we can eke out one movie from that. Or a couple of cheap dinners out. At any rate, two weeks have passed, and the money's fucking gone.
FINAL WEEK 1 (house payment due)
$1923
- $300 (taxes)
- $300 (insurance and other deductions)
- $800 (house payment)
- $90 (gas)
- $300 (food and groceries)
= $150 discretionary spending
Now, I have the rest of the bills to pay. Week 2 starts with $1923. Again using personal experience with a modest house (around 1100 square feet, about the size of the house I grew up in in the 1970's except I have no basement) here's the breakdown of bills:
$1923
-$300 (taxes)
-$300 (insurance and other deductions)
-$150 Electricity (with air conditioning, absolutely not an option in southern Indiana)
-$70 Gas (stove, water heater)
-$50 Water & Sewer
-$150 phone (I give my kids cell phones for safety)
-$50 car insurance (Indiana is very cheap if all you want is the mandatory minimum)
-$90 (gas)
-$300 (food and groceries)
=$463 discretionary spending. This covers any car repairs, incidental medical bills, or other items one might need from time to time. Two or three visits to the movie theater could wipe this out, which explains why Redbox and Netflix are so popular.
Something of course you aren't seeing in here is the cost of medications. I have the great fortune to have established an FSA account for myself and my family this year which accounts for about $300/mo of my insurance costs. It has made the difference this year as our monthly bill for insulin alone is around $100, not to mention needles and test strips (test strips are an outrage, costing $1 a test which can run into the hundreds of dollars, and testing is the single most important part of being able to control your sugar since you can't calculate your carbs or your fucking insulin dosage without it -- 3-4 times a day testing adds up fast to $120 a month JUST IN TEST STRIPS).
So what I'd like to see is the Pete Fucking Petersons of this world figure the fuck out how to live with the numbers I just posted. Notice things that are not on here
CAR PAYMENT
SECOND MORTGAGE
VACATIONS
FLATSCREEN TELEVISIONS
COMPUTERS
FUCKING IPADS
Yea. All that shit that is supposedly the anchor of our consumer economy -- kind of out of reach for working slobs, Mr. Fucking Peterson. If you're still fucking confused about why people are mocking you and angry that you would have the unmitigated gall to whine about how tough it is to make it on $250k, give me a fucking call. I will help you figure it the fuck out, motherfucker.