Transcription
People are posting their actual paychecks online. They're going on platforms like Tik Tok and they're sharing what they make and they're basically calling out the fact that how is it, you know, that we're supposed to live in this society, in this system, with the rising cost of living here in America with these wages.
"How much you guys think I make at McDonald's? Two weeks. I'm a manager. Don't let my shirt fool you. We don't make me and my husband were both managers at McDonald's and for two weeks I only bring home where's it at? $1,100. That's two weeks. So in as manager in a full month of working I bring in what 22 2400. People are always like why are you guys so broke? Just our rent alone is 1,500. Our car payment is 500. My car insurance, because I was an irresponsible addict for so long, it that's like 400 a month. Our we live in Phoenix, Arizona, my uh electric bill is like 200 a month. You guys just add up like our regular bills. We only have like a three $400 median after that. And we still have to grocery shop, gas, have money to live. We don't like, you know what I mean? Like it's crazy. My husband makes a little bit more money than I do. Tiny bit. Not much."
"I got a serious question. How the is it that I work out in sites like this blue collar work, right? We building [ __ ] like this. Valve cans, pipe, back blows, you know, concrete, other [ __ ] Blue collar work. You know what I'm saying? How the is it that I work in this? And I'm a heavy equipment operator, so that is what I operate. You know that is another one. But yet I'm still struggling to live in America. I'm building [ __ ] like this. You know, right now I'm in CM, Florida, but I'm building [ __ ] like this, [ __ ] like this, dealing with [ __ ] like this, digging down on meters and and and raising the boxes to curb level and everything. How is it that I'm doing heavy labor jobs? You know, cuz that's what they say. This is what the old generation says. You got to work hard. You got to get you a good job. This is what they say. Work hard, get you a good job or pick up a good trade. How is it that I working something like this and got six years of experience in this make a significant good amount of money when it comes to gross pay, but yet I'm still struggling and I'm living below my means. I don't have Netflix. I don't have any of that [ __ ] right? Just enough to pay the rent. Just enough to pay my insurance on my car. barely can get food. Uh food stamp says I don't I make way too much. You know what I'm saying? How is it that I live in America working heavy labor blue collar jobs like this six years six years of experience and yet I can't live in America?"
"This is what I'm struggling with in America right now in my 20s. Why is everything so expensive? Why am I making more money waitressing than I would make using my college degree? I barely have a life. I have two days off and I work Wednesday to Sunday doubling just to pay my bills. At 22 years old, all of my bills are in my name. I have no help. How are y'all affording housing? In Myrtle Beach, a one-bedroom apartment is $1,500. How are y'all getting insurance, going to the doctor, getting medicine? And then some of us are trying to be Tik Tok influencers. Who knows where that's going to get me? Me and my boyfriend are saving, but we barely see each other during the week. and it feels like we're working our off for nothing. Do we need to move somewhere for a better job opportunity that we don't know about? Do any of y'all really know what you want to do with your life right now? It is so scary being in America right now."
"Hi you guys. So, it's currently I think like 8:45 8:41. I just got home from a shift and I got my first residency paycheck. Um, so I figured I'd come on camera and open it with you guys. So, here goes nothing, I guess. Let's see. They got all these whatchamacallit here. Okay. [laughter] Okay. So, gross earnings is $2,227.68. Net pay is $1,774.26. Not horrible. This is for Is this for 40 hours? I don't know how much this is for. Okay, so it has my hourly rate. My hourly rate is $39.78. I don't know how many hours this is for though in total. So maybe I'll have to do some math or read the email that they sent."
"If you kids can't live comfortably on $20 an hour, you have to be overspending. We got to break this down very quickly to give people perspective into the Gen Z's lives. If you make $20 an hour, that is $40,000 a year. After taxes, that is $2,750. The average one-bedroom apartment and utility is going to run you $2,000. You cannot do that making $20 an hour. So, you're going to have to rent with a roommate for about $1,200. And that's being conservative. $500 a month for groceries, which is less than $150 a week. $300 for a student loan payment, which is below average. $300 for a car payment, which is below average. $150 for car insurance, $150 for gas, $100 for personal care, $50 for a cell phone is 27.50. That is paycheck to paycheck, leaving you with nothing. Nothing for savings, investments, the big one, health insurance, because I'm assuming they're under 26 years old, and zero funds. Now, if they were to make $30 an hour, that's $60,000 a year. That's $3,900 after taxes. Maybe they decide to get their own place for $2,000 and everything else stays the same. They're left with $350 a month, which is essentially still paycheck to paycheck. This is the cost of living in America."
"I am a flight attendant."
"How much were you making as a flight attendant when you started versus now?"
"When I left my old airline, I was at about $70,000. This time around, as a new hire, I am making about $27,000 before uh taxes."
"What's the reason for that?"
"Well, that's crazy."
"New hire pay is one price and then each year it goes up until you max out at like 12 or 13 years depending on which airline you work for. uh the company that I'm with hasn't really given a pay raise for a very long time. So, we've been in uh contract negotiations for that. How do you feel about, you know, going from 70 down to 20 depending on the airline that you work for? Really determines how much you can work. When I was with another airline, I could work a lot more and make a lot more. With my current airline, I'm hindered by a lot of legalities and stuff. So it it kind of hinders me from working as much as I would like to."
"I've heard that flight attendants don't get paid until the door closes. Is that right?"
"We don't get paid until the door closes and the break releases. Um so when we are boarding, we are not being paid. When we sign in to work, we are not being paid. When we are sitting in the airports between our flights, we are not being paid. It's not all about the money. Of course, we don't do it for the money if it would help a lot. Yeah. A lot of people do it for the love of people, the love of traveling, and yeah."
"Okay, so I just got off work and I did the calculation today um from my job. Let me just cover up my uniform a little bit more. Uh of how much money I made per hour. Today I made $15 an hour. [snorts] I have been with this company for eight years. I've been flying as a flight attendant for six years and I made $15. Now, mind you, if I lived in the middle of the United States, okay, sure, $15 an hour, fine. I live in Seattle. All of our bases are on the West Coast. $15 an hour. I could go work as a receptionist and work whatever schedule I wanted as a receptionist at a hotel or something and get paid like 23 24 entry level."
"All right, y'all. This is a brother here that used to work at Walmart. He said, 'I left Walmart after 3 months. My checks never had made it past 1,500 by week.' That's terrible. That's terrible. I'm sorry the brother had to go through that. That's similar. That reminds me when I first moved down to Charlotte, I had got on with Walmart. I mean Walmart. I had got on with Carvana. Carvana was paying me $1,800 every two weeks. I went to my I went to my boss and told him, 'I'm about to leave. This ain't no money.'"
"I just got paid. So, let's open up my paycheck and see how much it is. This is my second paycheck for my new library job. This one should be a full paycheck for a full 2 weeks. The last one was not. So, I'm curious to see how much this is. It was supposed to be direct deposit, but there was something like messed up with it. The paper check again. Going old school. I think my guess is going to be around maybe like $540, $520. Last check was pretty close to a full check, but it just I think it was missing one or two days. It is $549.48. So, I was almost correct. $549. That means every two weeks I will make $550. So, I will make $1,100 a month. That is pretty good for part-time. It's only 17. Well, it's 18 hours a week, but I have two like 30 minute breaks that I'm unpaid for. So, I only work 17 hours a week. So, that's 34 hours for $550. That's not bad. My hourly wage is $17.57. For anybody that's curious, the minimum wage in Connecticut, I think, just went up to $16 possibly or 1650. So, I don't make quite much more than minimum wage. So, even though I'm making less money per paycheck at this job than I was my retail job, I'm making more per hour. And also, the work is nowhere near as like stressful or busy. Like, this job is so chill that I am absolutely fine only making $1,100 a month at this job. That is amazing for like the work that I'm actually doing. It still shocks me and I'm still trying to get used to the change of pace. So, this is what a normal paycheck is going to be. Hopefully, from now on there'll be direct deposit and I will be back to budget this with you and see how much we can put towards my student loans."
"How is everyone affording life? Real question, how are you guys doing it? Because my daycare costs the same as our mortgage, which is just wild to me. And I had a crash out earlier today just about how like really expensive everything really truly is. And I just don't know how you guys are doing it. So I have a corporate six figure job. I should be able to afford life. We're not doing anything wrong. Just life is expensive and I'm the bread winner in in my household. There's this like constant stress like hanging over my head all the time of you got to make more to provide for your family, especially in this day and age. And it's wild because at the same time I'm stuck in these corporate handcuffs and I am going through burnout. I don't want to continue doing this. I have like the mental load you hanging over my head. I'm trying to be a good mom, let alone like a good wife, daughter, sister, friend, which I'm failing at all of those things. I feel like not to be in y'all's business or anything, but how much money do y'all make an hour? How much money do y'all make? I just seen this video. this girl, she was like, 'In this type of economy, there's no way I'm showing up to nobody's job to make less than $15 an hour on a lower scale.' That's like on a terrible scale. And one thing about life, yes, people have to be more grateful. We have to do a better job at being thankful for what we already have. But let me tell you something. Do you know how brutal that is? Nobody wants to show up to a job and work like 40 hours. And half the time if you're making that type of money, you have to work well over 40 hours for it to even make sense because if not, the whole check is going to taxes. And it's crazy because when you don't raise minimum wage, but you have jobs that'll pay you four or $5 over the minimum wage, when the minimum wage is already like sinking, when you think of a ocean, like the minimum wage is already underwater. You're dead at that point. But to pay somebody like four or five dollars right over the minimum wage just so that they can be able to say they don't make minimum wage is crazy work in this type of economy. Everybody can't make six figures a year. Everybody can't make over 100, two, three, four, 500,000 making that type of money with these types of jobs. But what I do know is to not be able to make the bare minimum. You ain't seeing no extra money out your check. And matter of fact, the only way that you can even see some of your check is if you don't pay no bills. you would have to live off of somebody else."
"What if I were to tell you the United States is a second rate country that is laring as a first world country. This is a list of the hours needed to escape poverty living on minimum wage. Yes, there's people that make more minimum wage. Yes, not everybody makes this, but just look at this and like compare it to what kind of life we live here. Japan, you need 11 hours. United Kingdom 23. France 26. Like going up to the higher tier, you're looking at 44 in Canada. So you might have to work a little bit of overtime every single week, but United States, you need 90 hours, 90 hours of minimum wage work just to escape poverty. Mind you, the poverty line is not that high. I think the poverty line is like $30,000 a year, which I don't even see how the poverty line is like that low because really, I think if you're making anything less than 40 or 50 anywhere in United States, you can't really afford a one-bedroom apartment. And in some places like where I live in the Bay Area, you're talking about uh probably needing like $50 $60 an hour just to afford a you know a two-bedroom place, a one-bedroom place like comfortably. You cannot tell me that this is the land of the free, that this is the American dream. Like because whose dream is it to work two and a half jobs a week?"
"Quick question to any Americans um you know between the ages of 35 to 45 um especially if you have kids but even if you don't um how are we affording things how are you affording anything and uh houses and cars that's not really what I'm talking but yeah that I mean more like um how are you how are you affording gas and groceries and healthcare and utilities and all the other uh 900 subscriptions that are required to live these days. How are you doing that? I'm assuming you you all also are not um you're not taking any vacations and you've you've like us have just cut out you've cut out the coffee and the Target uh shopping and the activities for the kids as much as you can. you've taken away, you've gotten rid of pretty much anything fun, like you're not having any more fun. Um, assuming you're also doing that, how are you living? If you have any um tips or tricks, just go ahead and drop them in the comments."
"You know what? They keep saying that we're in the age of disclosure, and I think that they're right. But I think we also need to start disclosing something else, like on a on a personal level. Like I think more people, especially Americans, need to start disclosing how much they are struggling financially. Like I made a video yesterday talking about how this is my first job that I've been able to land since November of last year. I'm not full-time. That job is not full-time. It is $19 an hour. It is 32 hours a week. my lease renewal. I I've got my third not notification about my lease renewal. I cannot afford to renew this lease. And I also can't afford to move because if you move, what do you got to do? Deposit, admin fee, application fee, paying for the moving truck, taking time off of work, all this extra stuff that you have to pay for. I cannot afford to do either one. And a lot of people are in this position right now. A lot of people cannot find a job. And it's not because there's a there's like a just a natural scarcity when it comes to jobs. It is a manufactured scarcity. They're not hiring anyone. They're cutting 90% of their workforce and getting the remaining 10% to do the work of the other 90%. While not increasing their pay, the cost of everything is going up, but everybody keeps reporting record profits. Nobody can nobody can afford to pay their workers a livable wage, but everybody has record profits. But you know who does get paid? The shareholders who do absolutely nothing for the company. This is this is the state of the economy right now. Like this is a reality. This is real and this is where we all are. It's a lot more people that are just too embarrassed to say you should never be embarrassed about what this system has done to you because I'm not. These paychecks, it just shows the reality of what people are truly making in these different positions throughout the country. Sometimes you think people make more than they do and in actuality they don't. And no matter what, if you're blue collar, white collar, I mean, most people that are working full-time can barely get ahead now. You can't just save up for vacations and for uh, you know, savings and to be able to buy assets and to make big plans with the future because most people really are living paycheck to paycheck. And when you're operating in that cycle, it leaves very little room to be able to do anything else. That's not encouraging. No wonder we're seeing such a rise in, you know, the gig economy, which there's, you know, talk about that not doing so well either. But people need to do all these side hustles and just trying to get ahead. Just trying to get ahead. Let me know your thoughts down below. Share any insights that maybe you gained from the uh the different videos that were shown here. Were you surprised by any of these paychecks? Let me know your thoughts. Thank you for watching and I hope to catch you in the next one. Take care."