Huckleberries Online

How does your income stack up?

Posted by Cindy

Dec. 28, 2009 3:03 p.m. • 6 comments

Where do you rank as a taxpayer? You may not feel rich earning $35,000 a year, but you’re in the top half of taxpayers. Make $70,000, and you earn more than 75 percent of fellow taxpayers.

….More than 40 million Americans are officially living in poverty. And you might be surprised at how little income it takes to not be considered poor by the federal government. For 2008, the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65 was an income of $11,201, or less than $1,000 a month. For a family of four, the threshold was $21,834. For a family of six, $28,769. Full story.

Six comments on this post so far. Add yours!

JeanieSpokane on December 28 at 3:35 p.m.
Before I lost my job, I KNEW I was doing well for a single mother. I had finally reached a point where I was saving money everywhere - in my savings, in my 401(k), in my money market. I had good health benefits - not great - but the firm paid my premium (really high if you add your spouse and children), four weeks vacation. Now I feel stuck in a bad place - I’m cutting luxuries (except cable - I need my mail and browsing the internet, and “chatting” on HBO), I have stopped all my deposits into various accounts - now having to withdraw from them instead. I have stopped going out for dinner. We eat all the left overs now instead of pushing them to the back of the fridge until they become mystery jars that need to be thrown away, jar and all. I appreciate very much what I *had* and urge those who do have it to appreciate it NOW. There are alternatives, and I am living one.
Cindy_H on December 28 at 3:45 p.m.
Good point Jeanie.
I think most of us with income to stack up should be thankful– no matter how large or small our stack may be.
Joker on December 28 at 3:52 p.m.
I wish they would track how much people spend. Somehow I bet people’s income earned is relative to how much is spent.

I believe the more you make, the more you spend.
marmitetoasty on December 28 at 5:01 p.m.
Joker, its like the more cupboards you have the more you fill them with junk :)

x
Cis on December 29 at 3:33 p.m.
holy cow… I don’t even make the poverty level… when I retired I got $17,000 (rounding off) and then way less with retirement… even with my husbands… temp jobs. we didn’t make the $28,000 level… last year.. it will be worse this year.

But some how.. we don’t feel poor, we are use to downsize so it is just another day… and if we lose one income, we just pull in and downsize another….
We don’t feel the pinch so much as we gave up eating out years ago, travel way less…. dial up for $10, antenna for tv,
and etc.
Cis on December 29 at 3:36 p.m.
oh, and the $17,000 was with a very small trust fund.. wages were $14,000

« Back to Huckleberries Online

You must be logged in to post comments.
Please create a profile or log in here.

About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.