On a side note, I support a family of 3 with a monthly rent of 3000 with electric and water not included.
3k a month on rent? whoa! around here that would *buy* a nice house with enough cash left over for a car.
That's one thing we don't have. In actuality it doen't seem worth it. I spend MAYBE 300 a year on dental and health.
you can afford 3k in rent but not health insurance? for my wife and i health insurance costs about 650 a month for the full deal. best you can get. we never had a claim until this year when i injured my back and slipped a disk. thus far the insurance company has paid out nearly 10k in costs and there has not been a surgery yet. a friend recently had an emergency gall bladder surgery. because he didn't have insurance he didn't go to the doctor until it was nearly too late. it had become severely infected and required a 2 week stay in the hospital. the bill was 125,000 dollars. living without insurance is so risky that i can't even imagine it.
cjeanean wrote:
I don't know how people are expected to survive. My friend is a single mom who just got a job making $9.98/hr, and based on her income she can't get any state assistance for the $400/mo babysitting bill she would have to pay. They won't help her with anything!!! They expect her to pay for all her food, housing, transportation, etc.....on $1,500 a month!!! It's so ridiculous!!!
it is not the governments job to support us. nowhere in the constitution does it refer to us being a welfare state. i believe all charity should come from the private sector except in cases of severe disabilities. every church i know has a food pantry for people that are having trouble making ends meet. most also provide assistance with bills. the down side for most people with this is that they don't provide the cash directly and don't buy beer, smokes or tater chips.
henmamma2,
i like your photos from romania. i spend a good deal of time in south america, especially peru. i know of entire villages that don't have electricity or septic facilities. in lima there are thousands upon thousands of people that call a cardboard box home. even in the developed countries of europe people live much more modestly than we do. hearing people complain about the price of gas when i have been to villages where they don't even have cars has me not knowing whether to laugh or cry. the citizens of the united states need to look at our situation realistically. the poorest person in this country is still better off than 50% of the rest of the worlds population. just look at india, china, the african continent and south america. folks need to quit a lot of their whining.
folks,
history proves that good times come and good times go. people that live in denial during the good times and don't prepare for the bad usually don't get as bad as they deserve in this country. i know a person that just lost their house. they borrowed money on an ARM loan for a house bigger than they needed. they bought two new SUV's on credit, financed their furniture from rooms to go, used a best buy credit card for new home electronics and so forth. within a month of their ARM readjusting and his boss cutting him back one day a week at work the entire family was out on the street.
while i have sympathy for people like this it isn't much. the basic rules of finances are that you should have at least enough money in savings to live for six months without income. if you can't do this then you don't need to be buying new cars, televisions, going out to dinner on friday nights, or a new bicycle for the kids. i know way too amny people that are driving a new suburban but claim they can't afford health insurance. if they were driving a used ford taurus instead they could afford the insurance.
if a person is living so marginalized that the price of gas going up a buck or two a gallon forces complete lifestyle change then the price of gas is not really the problem. the real problem lies in living too close to the edge of your financial resources. i drive an 11 year old truck with 280,000 miles. i could buy a new truck but then how do i pay for the health insurance? my wife and i live in a small 2 bedroom house. we could qualify for a loan on a bigger, fancier house but how would we pay the electric bill if our mortgage increased? i could buy me a new boat but then how do i continue to contribute to my retirement account?
we have just come out of one of the longest periods of prosperity our country has ever seen. where are the fruits of everyone's labor? tied up in paying the balances on credit cards for purchases that they didn't really need. the average american has his priorities wrong. when i see someone that lives on government assistance smoking cigarettes or drinking beer i have to resist an urge to strangle them. when i look at the average american and see what they are really spending their money on and how they fail to save for a rainy day when things are good i really don't care if they can't afford gas when it goes up a little.
does the government have the obligation to pick up the slack when people fail to plan properly? no. in this country faith based organizations provide over one billion dollars in humanitarian aid every year. it is our responsibility as children of God to help our brothers, sisters and communities when the need arises. but it ain't our responsibility to prop up someones bad habits or lack of financial control.
people learning to budget and live withing their means is the key in all of this. if you can't afford gas for your truck, trade it for a geo metro. don't buy a house you cannot afford if your income adjusts down 25%. most importantly. if you are not contributing to a retirement account and an emergency savings account EVERY month during the good times, how are you expecting to survive financially during the bad?
michael
