[quote=bearishgurl]I want to add that it doesn’t cost that much for a parent to take a $30K yr FT job, say 6-14 miles from home if they have “reasonable” child care expenses (<$800 mo). It's still worth it due to being in line for eventual raises/promotions. We will assume the worker doesn’t have a student loan to pay because they are only a HS grad or certificate holder (obtained “free” from ROP) and are a 24-yr old parent. Their spouse or parent pays the rent/mortgage and they drive an older paid-for vehicle but can ride the bus directly to work for $72 month if they have someone else to pick up kid(s) or a relative to keep kid(s) a little longer in the afternoon. No weekly gas fill-ups are necessary:
CAR mentioned clothing and lunch for workers being expensive and that may be so for attorneys but is NOT SO for 90% of worker bees. In actually, for women, the lined skirts we regularly drycleaned in yesteryear (weren’t allowed to wear pants to work) have now been replaced by black Dickies, (a little more expensive) Dockers and a cheap ($5-$10) top or shirt (no jacket). The expensive haircut has been replaced by a pony tail or bun. I’ve seen this new “uniform” even in high-rise law offices for at least the last 12 years and law offices tend to have better-dressed employees than other businesses and corporations. Even gubment workers don’t dress very well anymore … at least not the “clerk-helping-the-public” variety (which are 90% of gov worker-bees).
Got a new ~$30K job?? Here’s an economical place where you can buy 5 pairs of pants in dark colors on the cheap. They are clean, permanently pressed, and comfortable for San Diego:
Situated right in front of the TANF office and State EDD (Unemployment Dept), it’s the same place that school uniforms are sold.
Having taken my lunch 99.9% of my workdays for decades, I can attest to how cheap it is to make your lunch at home. I can assure you that there is a frig to keep it in in every workplace and likely a microwave as well. I made my lunches for between .25 and .80 day (that’s “cents”). Yes, there was protein in it, sometimes it was leftovers and I often put it together the night before. 80% of my co-workers took their lunch everyday as well. If you finish your lunch quickly and want to use the rest of your lunch hour for errands, you can do that if you drove to work.
I realize groceries are higher now but you get the drift. It’s MUCH CHEAPER to pack your own lunch than to buy lunch every day and always has been. I worked less than 2.5 miles from the Navy Commissary, which was on the way home. I could shop there once weekly, stand in a 20+ minute line to check out and still be home by 6:30 pm with groceries for the whole family for a week+! Also, you don’t buy $3 – $5 coffees at work or on the way to work. You bring your own travel mug from home with coffee in it and then chip in the monthly coffee fund on your floor to whoever brought in a coffeemaker if your employer does not provide it free (some do).
Except for daycare for kid(s), a worker-parent can take all of their earnings home and work themselves into raises and a better job. It doesn’t matter if they even went to college or not. It’s all relative because a young worker who didn’t spend anything for higher education and their parents’ couldn’t afford to help them can still work FT. It’s just not a $50K – $100K job … at least in their early years. (There’s no guarantee that a college grad will even land a $50K job, anyway.) The workers who opted for a FT job instead of college are gaining valuable work experience while most of their demographic is in college (full or part-time) and thus can’t work FT. BUT … they don’t have student loans and they have at least four more years FT work experience than their college-bound peers.
Who hires these young HS and ROP grads? Retail sales and mgmt, restaurants (incl mgmt), insurance companies, gubment offices, collection agencies, banks, auto dealerships, shipyards, auto service centers, non-profit agencies, construction companies, factories, medical offices, etc.
I see these kids going to work every day to support their own kid(s). The whole argument about it being “too expensive” for an unemployed parent to take a FT job (I’ve read it here and elsewhere on the internet) is wa-a-a-y overblown, imho. The public aid agencies and family court judges don’t see it that way. They feel that EVERY PARENT, regardless of gender, has a personal responsibility to financially support their kids. The “village” is in place to support these young parents’ lower daycare expenses as they start out working FT and their wages are insufficient to pay the full amount.
“Cost shifting” was brought up here that “somebody has to pay for it” in regards to public school and publicly funded daycare agencies, etc and therefore that’s another excuse for a parent not to seek FT employment. The reality is that publicly funded child daycare IS “free” to the people who need it most. Public school IS “free” to all residents. Even if you are a property owner who doesn’t pay more than $8-$9K year in property taxes, if you have more than one kid in public school simultaneously, ONE of your kids is attending for “free.” It’s “free” to you because your kids’ “tuition” is being redistributed to the many thousands of property owners paying property taxes who do not currently use the public schools. If a parent chooses to purchase all of their kids’ textbooks themselves and homeschool (or pay for private school), that is their choice. These parents are voluntarily running up their own household expenses all the while their kids are eligible by law for a “free” public K-12 education. In the case of YMCA and scouting daycare discounts and camperships, these agencies’ donors are paying for an income-qualified child to have the experience. Taxpayers don’t subsidize these programs.
I feel that the arguments about why a parent can’t work FT or work at all to support their kids are smokescreens. I suspect that those making this argument are in one of these 3 situations: a) they simply have enough household income to live on indefinitely and so their contribution to their family’s monthly income is not needed; b) they currently have enough household income to live on for the near, foreseeable future and if additional income should later be needed, they’ll cross that bridge when they get there; and/or c) they ARE making money every month, but it is passive income and doesn’t require them to leave home or placate an employer (i.e. investment mgmt).
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BG, I’ve calculated it out for friends using their actual income and expenses. Even for college educated women, many of them are only netting ~30 cents on the dollar of wages earned, or less. For a woman making lower wages, their incomes are often negative. For this, my friends were absent from home for 10-12 hours/day, their husbands and children felt neglected, the moms were totally stressed-out, dinners were almost always restaurant or take-out, the housework was piled up around them, and everyone was miserable. Not worth it.
Clearly, very intelligent, educated women are making different choices than you did. I highly doubt they are doing so because they don’t know any better. These are very well-thought-out, calculated decisions on the part of these families. If you came to different conclusions for your family, then it’s good that you made the decisions that worked best for you.
