A few words about the McBudget.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it. As fast-food workers around the country protest for higher wages, we learn that McDonald’s offers advice to help them live on the wages they make that, while not technically bupkis, do amount to a paycheck you can pretty much have the driver cash for you on the bus ride home. In December, for example, Bloomberg profiled a Chicago man who, after 20 years with the burger giant, earns $8.25 an hour — and doesn’t get 40 hours a week. This, as McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson pulled down, according to the Wall Street Journal, a compensation package worth $13.8 million last year.
Anyway, Mickey D’s isn’t blind to the difficulties of french fry makers and drive-through order takers getting by on not quite bupkis. It partnered with Visa on a website — http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/mcdonalds/budgetJournal/budgetJournal.php — that includes a sample budget showing how you can live reasonably well on next to nothing.
The impossibility of doing so has been attested to by everyone from writer Barbara Ehrenreich in her book “Nickel and Dimed” to noted obstetrician Cliff Huxtable, in that episode of “The Cosby Show” where he uses Monopoly money to teach young Theo the value of a good income. It has also been attested to by the people trying to do it. But all that notwithstanding, the McBudget insists it can be done.
It envisions monthly take-home pay of $2,060 from working two (!) jobs. Out of that, you pay $600 for rent, $150 for a car note, $100 for insurance (home and auto), $100 for cable and phone, $90 for the electric bill, $20 for health insurance, etc. You save $100 a month and have $750 to play with — if by “play,” you mean pay for clothing, child care and water. Also, gasoline, maintenance and repair for the 1997 junkmobile you’re able to buy for $150 a month. Oh, and food. Can’t forget food.