Living Paycheck To Paycheck Getting Harder

Americans Are Finding It More Difficult To Stretch Their Dollars

(AP)  The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder.

What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.

Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.

While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.

From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.

"It's pretty pronounced," said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman at Family Dollar. "It seems like to us, customers are running out of food products, paper towels sooner in the month."

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said the imbalance in spending before and after payday in July was the biggest it has ever seen, though the drop-off wasn't as steep in August.

And 7-Eleven says its grocery sales have jumped 12-13 percent over the past year, compared with only slight increases for non-necessities like gloves and toys. Shoppers can't afford to load up at the supermarket and are going to the most convenient places to buy emergency food items like milk and eggs.

"It even costs more to get the basics like soap and laundry detergent," said Michelle Grassia, who lives with her husband and three teenage children in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Her husband's check from his job at a grocery store used to last four days. "Now, it lasts only two," she said.

To make up the difference, Grassia buys one gallon of milk a week instead of three. She sometimes skips breakfast and lunch to make sure there's enough food for her children. She cooks with a hot plate because gas is too expensive. And she depends more than ever on the bags of free vegetables and powdered milk from a local food pantry.

Grassia's story is neither new nor unique. With the fastest-rising food and energy prices since the 1980s, low-income consumers are stretching their budgets by eating cheap foods like peanut butter and pasta.

Industry analysts and some economists fear the strain will get worse as people are hit with higher home heating bills this winter and mortgage rates go up.

It's bad enough already for 85-year-old Dominica Hoffman.

She gets $1,400 a month in pension and Social Security from her days in the garment industry. After paying $500 in rent on an apartment in Pennsauken, N.J., and shelling out money for food, gas and other expenses, she's broke by the end of the month. She's had to cut fruits and vegetables from her grocery order - and that's even with financial help from her children.

"Everything is up," she said.

Many consumers, particularly those making less than $30,000 a year, are cutting spending on nutritious food like milk and vegetables, and analysts fear they're further skimping on basic medical care and other critical services.

Coupon-clipping just isn't enough.

"The reality of hunger is right here," said the Rev. Melony Samuels, director of The BedStuy Campaign against Hunger, a church-affiliated food pantry in Brooklyn.

The pantry scrambled to feed 5,000 new families over the past 12 months, up almost 70 percent from 3,000 the year before.

"I am shocked to see such numbers," Samuels said, "and I am really concerned that this is just the beginning of what we are going to see."

In the past three months, Samuels has seen more clients in higher-paying jobs - the $35,000 range - line up for food.

The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which covers 23 counties in New York State, cited a 30 percent rise in visitors in the first nine months of this year, compared with 2006.

[grammawhamma]

eggy: No...I must disagree with you. These are jobs that were available before to non Spanish speaking people. The reason that speaking fluent Spanish is a requirement now is because these are jobs that deal with the public. Since there are so many Mexicans in our public that can not or will not speak English they need people fluent in Spanish to communicate with them.

[michellem99-2009]

THIS A ENGLISH SPEAKING NATION..THEY BETTER LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH..YER KNOW US OF A.

[eggy1620]

GrammaWhamma, the job that you do not qualify for because you do not speak Spanish would not exist without the Spanish speaking population. So you cannot really say it is a job that has been taken away from you by immigration, since without immigration, you would not even know that you do not qualify for it.

[american_fir]

Our legislators are hell bent on running America! They want to give to every third world illegal immigrant what Americans have worked hard for and saved!

We are being sold the lies that illegal immigration is great for America! We are feed lies every day that they only improve America.

Before we had the flood of illegal immigrants, our schools were superior, our hospitals and medical was the best, but now because we insist that we must educate and reward their bad behavior, schools hospitals and the standard of living is being made a third world standard.

We are being made slaves!

[michellem99-2009]

What is wrong is the young have not learnt the lessons us older folks learnt growing up. I wear chothes that may not be name brand but my person is covered. I don''t have the newset computer they now have but it meets my needs. I don''t keep up with the Jones'' as the saying goes. I don''t own a car. My wheels are public bus..I carry food home on foot. So Gramma yer car get ye here and there. That is all it matters. When I tap my white cane as I walk I laugh at the fools in their fancy unpaid cars and they can''t get any where and I made it home and they still in traffic. Thanksgivens is coming up and my room mate say he wants a sinple meal. I will micorwave a dinner and give thanks. We live from month to to month.

[brianbwb-2009]

Many of you are blaming the wrong people for your troubles, the elite decided globalization was the way to higher profits, now even those with jobs either take pay cuts, or lose out to slave labor countries like China and Indonesia, to name a couple.

Your social security fund was stolen, and given to the war profiteers, as was the public education budget, 200 billion dollars is being stolen to fund an illegal war, the prices of the nation''s infrastructure materials has been colluded ever upwards, while it decided that we don''t need to repair our roads, schools, bridges, waterways, etc, which is enough to absorb all the unemployed Americans, and still need foreign workers.

Don''t look at the Mexicans, the Armenians, the whoever, you only help the elite continue to make suckers out of you, using "divide and conquer". Look instead at Washington DC., and your state capitals, there is where the root of the problem lies, and if they won''t listen to reason, then maybe a little unreason could be called for.

[gkc99]

"The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder. "


Except for the billionaires who own and operate George W. Bushit.

[grammawhamma]

drivelphobe: I was looking at help wanted ads the other day and I was amazed at how many jobs require "must be able to speak fluent Spanish" as a job requirement. When they say illegal immigrants aren''t taking jobs away from us...well indirectly now they are. I''m too old now to learn fluent Spanish...so I can''t even apply for these jobs.

[gaye5]

Living Paycheck To Paycheck Getting Harder???
It must be coming up to an election in America..
What can''t people afford their microwaves, large screen TVs, two cars, buying cloths, carpet, computers, going out for coffee, or a meal, McDonald''s, beer, smokes, soft drinks, holidays, sopping, etc.. Yes there is always people who really struggle, but when people have to cut down old cloths and make them up for their children, turn old sheets into something else, go to bed without pajamas, never go out for coffee let alone a meal, never have a beer or smoke, (not that I would want it anyway) not afford to go out at all and have to go without meals etc, like I have done here in Australia many years ago under our left wing government then people know that they are finding it hard to live..and i have no doubt that there are people in America who are like this, but it is only when you experience this are you finding it hard to live..

[tylenol6]

This is why you must be sooooooo careful who you vote
for. Don''t expect anything different from crook HITLERY and the other top 5 candidates. Guaranteed they will STAY THE COURSE as Bush....Do you really want that???? Do your research on these IDIOT candidates. VOTE FOR RON PAUL..... he is the democrats and republicans WORST NIGHTMARE but is the only one I see can represent the American people and bring back
the Constitution.