A: Alex was much better at budgeting than Morgan was. Alex walked to work in order to save the $2.50 bus fare. While $2.50 doesn't seem like a lot of money, when you are living on minimum wage, every penny counts. When Morgan and Alex went out with their niece and nephew, Morgan spent money on food and drinks that were not necessary. He was a little more careless than Alex was when it came to money. However, overall they did a good job budgeting. They ate beans and rice, got clothing, furniture, and home supplies from the free store, and went to the free clinic when they didn't have to go to the hospital. Going from being a millionaire to living on minimum wage was a huge transition that Alex and Morgan were definitely not prepared for. They made choices and sacrifices in terms of money, and stayed fairly frugal, and still ended up more than $1,000 in debt. This just goes to show that even when you do everything correctly, when your living on/below minimum wage there is no winning. There is almost nothing you can do unless you spend no extra money on any kind of luxury. The bottom line is, living on minimum wage is really no way to spend your life, and yet millions of people do it every single day.
Q: Define who the "working poor" are.
A: The working poor are the people who spend time looking for a job, or actually working, but still have incomes that fall below a given poverty line. They have to spend at least 27 weeks per year in labor to be considered working poor. If Alex and Morgan's experiment had gone on for 27 weeks they would have been considered working poor, since their annual incomes come below the poverty line. Being part of the working poor is a hard life. You often times cannot support your family or pay for medical bills when you are sick. Alex and Morgan got a taste of what this was like, since both of them went to the hospital. Not being able to pay rent, bills and everyday necessities are a huge part of being in the "working poor". The most shocking part about the working poor is that so many people are against raising the minimum wage so that the working poor would not exist. Billion dollar companies are constantly campaign against raising the minimum wage because it would deduct some money from their pay checks. How much sense does this really make? The system continues to put the rich above the poor, which is shown by the 1% as well as the large amount of people making less than minimum wage. This is disappointing, as well as disheartening. This episode of 30 days really opened my eyes to the issue of the working poor.
I can tell you put research and thought into your post. You included a lot of aspects from the movie and made sense of what they were doing on a large scale. You put into perspective what their lives were like for that month and really tied together the message of the episode as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you put research and thought into your post. You included a lot of aspects from the movie and made sense of what they were doing on a large scale. You put into perspective what their lives were like for that month and really tied together the message of the episode as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI can see you put a lot of thought into this post Sarah. I like how for the working poor answer you gave the fact that you have to be in this category for 27 weeks to be considered a part of the working poor. In the first answer I liked your use of language such as frugal to enhance your answer.
ReplyDeleteNIKO KAPETAN
ReplyDeleteI can see you put a lot of thought into this post Sarah. I like how for the working poor answer you gave the fact that you have to be in this category for 27 weeks to be considered a part of the working poor. In the first answer I liked your use of language such as frugal to enhance your answer.