Column: Capital Comments, by Shannon Savick

The week before the session began was a very interesting experience for me. For seven days, I lived off a minimum wage budget of $7.25 an hour (the federal minimum wage).

Thankfully, the final day of my minimum-wage challenge was just before the start of our legislative session. So upon completing the challenge I got to work on approving $20 million in heating assistance, repealing business and farm taxes and providing middle class tax relief through federal conformity. That made the weeklong experience even more rewarding, but it was still very challenging.

Aside from the cost of housing, food and transportation eat up the largest chunks of someone’s budget. Because the cost of housing is somewhat of a set cost that can’t be adjusted on a day-to-day basis, food and transportation were my main challenges to address.

First, let me talk a little bit about the food. Based on the average ratio people spend on housing, transportation, food and other times, a full-time minimum wage worker would have $5 a day (or $35 a week) to spend on food.

For me, this meant sacrificing several staples in my regular diet and sticking to several other items that I knew I could afford. Most days, I had a banana and a protein shake for breakfast. For lunch, I usually had something like canned chicken with some salad dressing or other sauce and some crackers. For dinner, I typically had rice and beans. Just those simple items took up my entire food budget of $5.

And I was only able to make that work by using items I already had in my cupboard (crackers, salad dressing, rice, etc). A younger person with a more physically demanding job and lifestyle absolutely could not live on this diet.

For transportation, I had a total of $70 to work with for the week. Right away that budget takes away any chance of paying any kind of car payment. And when you live in the world of used cars, like I have, you know repairs can truly pop up out of the blue.

For people in our area, it also becomes a question of simply paying for gas and insurance. Just filling up a 10-gallon tank every week would eat up the entire $70. And that assumes you have no extra trips, needed repairs, or oil changes. The snowstorm actually kept my costs low by snowing me in, but for an hourly worker that would also have meant losing those day’s wages.

These kinds of conditions really made the week difficult. I was constantly struggling to keep track of every penny I spent to make sure I wouldn’t go over my budget. For a family with a couple of children these challenges would be even tougher. The experience really helped me get a taste of what it’s like for our low-wage workers. It also helped me realize just how critical it is that we raise our minimum wage this session.

 

Shannon Savick, DFL-Wells, is the state representative for House District 27A.