PAYING FOR THE ESSENTIALS
Real Women, Real Voices on Getting By The women we interviewed often struggle to get by because their incomes do not cover their basic expenses. Thus, they use different strategies to manage their daily expenses and worry about unanticipated major expenses like a car repair or a medical bill. Wanda was making $55,000 a year until she was laid off last year, and now she receives unemployment compensation. She already had significant medical debt from a battle with breast cancer. After the layoff, she was forced to use credit cards to pay for many basic expenses. Now her bills have gotten so high that she can no longer manage them, and she has entered into debt settlement agreements to try to avoid bankruptcy. Tonya makes $865 a month as a participant in the AmeriCorps VISTA program. Although the VISTA program also provides support for child care and health care (Medicaid), Tonya struggles to pay her rent and other basic expenses. “It is hard working from paycheck to paycheck,” she said, but she manages to do it by maintaining a very tight budget and going without things for her and her daughter. Jana, a single mother of two, was working full-time before her divorce, but now works part-time to take care of her children. “It didn’t make sense for me to work full-time because I would have had to put my youngest into child care full-time. The cost of that would have just deleted what I was making working full-time.” Shanti, 25, works part-time in the restaurant business and does not have benefits, so she pays out of pocket for any health care expenses. She makes an effort to get an annual checkup, but has not been to the dentist in a while and is not sure what she would do if she had a major medical expense.
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