Making Ends Meet

[starshipcat]

There was a time when most families subsisted on the full-time work of one wage-earner. Other family members might also do paying work, but it generally was part-time -- the lady of the house selling Tupperware, sons mowing lawns or delivering newspapers, daughters babysitting -- and were for spending money rather than actually paying the bills

Comments

[whswhs]

We were faced with no housing at all being affordable when we lived in Riverside; that was a big factor in our moving out of California. Housing costs there are just insane. They've made a big point of raising minimum wage to $15 an hour, but you know, for $30,000 a year, if you spent half your income on rent, that would only come to $1250 a month, and you can't even get a one-bedroom for that in Riverside, which is not an expensive city by California standards.

[starshipcat]

Housing costs are a big reason people are moving out of California.

When my youngest brother's landlord decided to sell the house he and some former college buddies had been renting since they moved out to Silicon Valley, the guys discovered that their best bet was to pool their money to buy a four-unit apartment building and each have an apartment of their own. It works because they know each other well enough to be confident no one will spoil the deal by not paying their share of the mortgage, but trying to rent individual apartments would've been ruinous, even on the salaries of electrical engineers with a decade's experience.