Share Your Story: Have you ever lived on minimum wage?

I was a single Mom with two boys in the mid 80's . Sole support of my family. We lived in a one bedroom apt. I worked at K-Mart for  about $ 6.50  an hour. We ate maccaroni and cheese a lot. Washed our clothes in the sink. I rode  a bike to work , as there was no bus service where I lived. We brought our groceries home on our bikes.  We had to put non- food items on layaway, until we could pay for them.Had some  medical, but no dental from my job. We lived this way for quite awhile. I've  lived with boyfriends and been married several times. I was able to go to school with a student loan, which took a long time to pay back.. Then, I could only find one job in that vocation that lasted about two years  it's very hard to get by as a simgle parent, or just plain single, when you have a limited education and income. I've had many ups and downs since then and I can tell you it's no fun being almost destitute. Now, I am unemployed with health problems and can't find a job or get health insurance..I have to go to a special clinic that goes by your income. If the government closes that down, I'll have no healthcare. If it wasn't for my fiance, and the good Lord above I'd be on the street  and destitute.

Back in the 90's, I was a single mother of a two-year-old boy. I was recently divorced and worked full time making $6.00/hr. Because of my employment, I made too much money to qualify for any government subsidies. I had to live in a slum because that was all I could afford and to keep food on the table, I had to get a second job as a waitress.I could not afford day care for my son, so I had to rely on relatives to look after my boy while I worked. I started work every day at 5 A.M. and most days I wouldn't finish working until 11 P.M. I had one day off per week to spend with my son.I lived in a neighborhood where a 14 year-old kid was shot and killed over drugs. I would find drug paraphernalia in the laundry room of my apartment building, and I was the only person in the complex with a job. Everyone else was living better than my son and I and they didn't work. That made me a bit bitter to say the least.My son had problems with his ears and the insurance I paid $26.00 a week for only paid 80% of the bills he accrued. I was always broke, but I was determined to make it. And, I did make it, but not on minimum wage. I eventually found a better paying job, but it still wasn't enough to pay for raising a child. At that point I was paying $164.00 a month for after school care. Even at $17,000 per year I was barely making it.When my son was age 7, I remarried and that was the end of my turmoil because my husband made a decent living as a contractor. Then the housing bubble burst and his work went away. Now we are living pay check to pay check, hoping for a better day.Now my husband works as a licensed water treatment plant operator, but his employer will only let him work 20 hours per week. The employer has not been effected by the economy, yet they claim my husband cannot work more than 20 hours because of the economy. Water is a constant need and the rates being charged for it don't change with the rest of the economy.I have been a stay-at-home mom for the last 15 years and now hat I can work outside the home there are no jobs to be had. No one seems to value women who stay at home to raise their kids. Believe me, it is more stressful to stay at home than it is to earn a pay check.Stay-at-home-moms have a household to run, children to look after and care for and school responsibilities to take care of. Then there are the doctor appointments and dental visits and homework.We don't get paid for any of it, yet we are busier than most people and we still pay taxes.Being a woman in the 21st century should be easier, not more difficult than it was in the 20th century, but it is more difficult.I worked for more than 20 years before becoming a stay-at-home-mom, but if I were to become disabled, I couldn't get SSDI because I haven't punched a time clock in the last 15 years. I paid into the system for more than 20 years, but that doesn't matter.We have lost a house and are down to sharing one old vehicle (1980). The vehicle thing is difficult since we live more than 100 miles away from everything that most people take for granted. For example, I have to drive 100 miles to go to Wal-Mart, or the hospital. I had to be the ambulance that took my youngest son to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. If I had driven like a normal person, my son would have died because I made an otherwise two hour drive in one hour. Mind you, that there are no straight roads between here and there.Women can do incredible things. Through all of the stress of knowing that my son needed emergency surgery and I was responsible for getting him to the hospital, I got him there in the nick of time. His appendix was ready to burst. I never imagined that I would need to drive 75 mph through winding canyons, but I did it. My son is alive today because I did it.My children are now 22 and 14 years of age.

When I started to work in 1970 the minimum wage was $1.50 per hour.  Doesn't sound like much does it, but gasoline sold for $.25 per gallon (yes, I said 25 cents per gallon) and a paperback book sold for $.50.  Now gasoline sells for $4.29 per gallon (last Sunday when I filled up) and paperback books run $7.99 (and sometimes more).  If we now had the same buying power that minimum wage had back in 1970, minimum wage would be $24.00 per hour to $25.75 per hour instead of $7.25 per hour.Can you possibly imagine supporting even one person on what you can make in a year on minimum wages much less a family?  If the employee was lucky enough to work somewhere that he or she was allowed to work 40 hours per week for 52 weeks a year they would only gross $15,080.00 (before taxes) per year.  Unfortunately most employees making minimum wage aren't even allowed to work that many hours and so gross even less.

I have, in my career, worked for minimum wage, as recently as 5 years ago when in California it was $8.00 an hour.   Frequently, minimum wage jobs are also part-time so that people need to work more than one job to make ends meet.One of the problems that seems to be overlooked when the question of equal pay for a woman arises is th effect that earning lower wages has on retirement income.  Whether a woman must work in jobs that pay minimum wage or earn 25% less than a man in the same job, her social security benefit and/or ability to save for retirement is much less than the man's.  This puts a women in a position of financial inequality all of her life, even if she is married when she retires.