After A Single Mom On Government Assistance Is Offered A Promotion, She Does The Math & Realizes She Can't Afford To Make More Money
Making more money would also cost her more money.
400tmax, scyther5, Kameleon007, Picdream, David Trounce. JosephBrewster, Kameleon007, blackCAT | Canva A single mother of three named Angela recently took to TikTok to talk about a promotion she was offered — and why she would end up declining the offer even though it paid her more.
Her video shows just how difficult it is to live in the United States as the economy makes it more difficult for middle-class Americans to simply live and survive. Prices for everything increase while wages stagnate so that even a promotion isn’t enough.
After doing the math, the single mom explained that she can’t afford a promotion.
“So, I’m a little upset right now,” Angela said at the start of her video. “I was asked if I wanted to take a promotion… and I would love to do it. I want to do it, oh my God. Lord knows I want to do it, right?" Unfortunately, Angela explained that the "Math isn’t mathing,” finding that after all of her calculations based on the money that she’s currently making, she cannot afford to take the promotion because it would take her off government assistance.
The promotion offered a salary of $60,000 a year. A decent amount of money, but not enough to support a family of three. If she were to take it, after factoring in healthcare costs, rent costs, food costs, and daycare costs, she would be left with 28 dollars a month.
Thanks to her current salary of $35,000 a year, she can be on government assistance, which includes reduced fees for daycare and rent. At this salary, she also doesn’t have to pay for food or healthcare, and she ends up with around $245 a month.
Despite nearly doubling her current salary, she’s incapable of making the switch because otherwise, things would become increasingly difficult for her financially.
She believes that no one wants to be in the system, but it's hard to get out.
Hoping to vent about her predicament TikTok, she was instead bashed for her video and forced to turn the comments off. In a follow-up video, she explained herself even further after someone told her to stop relying on the government and to fend for herself. She replied by explaining that she had actually been laid off last year and had only been on assistance for six months.
However, it shouldn’t take an explanation from Angela to be okay with someone seeking government assistance. No one wants to be forced to take government assistance, but when normal jobs aren’t paying enough for people to simply live, they have to.
According to the Social Security Administration, approximately 70 million people received benefits from the programs they administered in 2021. According to the US Census in 2021, more than one out of every 10 Americans is living in poverty.
In the United States, we’ve seen a massive increase in the cost of living thanks to a variety of factors. One of these numbers used to determine the inflation rate in the US, the Consumer Price Index, nearly tripled from 2020 to 2021, rising from 1.4% to 7.0%.
Prices continue to increase, and at the rate they’re going, the need for government assistance will rise all the same, making people like Angela incapable of making more money because, in reality, more is less in her case.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.