That Podcast in Hutch - Denice Gilliland
When your job just doesn't pay enough to meet your needs - and the unintended consequences of the "Cliff Effect."
If you’re at all like me, you enjoy learning things you didn’t know before. And you particularly enjoy learning about the experiences of others who might be completely different than you are.
You’re in luck - because in this episode you’re going to get a lot of that.
I was at a meeting a while back about our community’s efforts to ensure children are prepared for Kindergarten, and by extension, adult life. Toward the end, Denice Gilliland told everyone that she wanted to share with us her budget from a few years back.
She was a single mother - something she hadn’t expected to be, but life had a different plan. She was working, and making decent money by Hutchinson standards. As she walked through the budget, it didn’t take long to see that it wasn’t going to be enough. I’ll insert her budget and an excerpt of her presentation at the end of this post.
Denice shared a hard story with me - and her courage to do so is remarkable because she’s held highly visible positions with non-profit agencies in our community. She currently work at the United Way of Reno County, and previously with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. And because it’s very personal. She shares the realities of her life, and the decisions she was forced to make. She talks about the ways she managed to navigate a new world that too many people know all too well: The world of not quite enough.
Please listen and share this podcast with someone - or lots of someones - because this is an important message for people to hear. Throughout our community, and our state, there are people dealing with these very struggles. They are often unseen and unheard - suffering silently, perhaps ashamed or embarrassed, maybe uncertain or hopeless about how they’ll get by or if things will ever get any better.
Another important topic we touch on is what’s known as the Cliff Effect. Basically, this is where as a person in poverty just starts to make enough money to enter the middle class - we yank the rug out from under them. When they hit the cliff, they actually see their overall household income decline as their pay increases. At the edge of that cliff, families have to make difficult decisions about their wellbeing - and our current system pits current needs against future potential. Denice talks about hitting this cliff and the difficult choices she had to make, as well as the earning potential she lost over time.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve has developed a dashboard to help workforce centers across the U.S. address this reality. Here’s a good story about it. There’s a lot of good information about the Cliff Effect out there - and the ways in which it keeps people from moving out of poverty into middle income earners. Also, here’s the report presented by a group from MIT that studied the Cliff Effect in Hutchinson.
To listen to my visit with Denice, subscribe to That Podcast in Hutch at Salt City Sound or on your favorite podcast streaming service.
Follow on Apple
Follow on Spotify:
Follow on Google
Here’s an RSS link: https://saltcitysound.net/category/thatpodcastinhutch/feed/
Below is Denice’s budget, and excerpt from her presentation:
Below is the excerpt of my talk yesterday that I shared about my budget breakdown:
At $38,000 a year my monthly salary was $3,166.67. I like nice round numbers, so we are going to say $3,167
I paid 816 in taxes and Insurance premiums each month
This left me with $2,351 To provide for all of the needs of my little family
My largest expense by far was childcare at $1,100 per month. That was over 30% of my net income. According to Childcare Aware childcare expenses should not exceed 7% of a family’s income.
After paying this monthly expense I was left with $1,251 to pay for all the rest of the expense that a family of 4 would have
My house payment was $350 (by far much cheaper than trying to rent anyplace) and leaving me with $901.
My car payment was $350 this left me with $551
I had to have gas to get back and forth to work it usually came to about $100/month. I am now down to $451
I had to have full coverage insurance on my car because I still owed money on it. That was $100 so we now have $351
If I didn’t pay my water bill each month, they would turn it off resulting in additional fees so that was about $60.00. I am now down to $291
Babies need diapers that was at minimum 80.00/month I now am down to $211
My gas and electric varied depending on the season, but the average of both bills was usually about 250.00. I am now negative $39.00 and I haven’t even bought food.
If you notice I did not have a phone bill, because my employer paid for a company phone.
Let me tell you how I made ends meet during this time. The first trick I learned was that I didn’t have to pay my utility bill every month during the months of October-March. This is the only way my kids would have any sort of Christmas. So, every year when I would get my taxes back I would pay off my utilities, catch daycare up, and pre pay whatever I could to maybe see just a tiny bit of relief. But usually, it was just enough to pay the car tags/taxes if I was lucky.
I also learned exactly how far I could push my bills out, what I could pay late or how much I could pay to just keep the lights on. I spent hours clipping coupons for diapers, wipes, toiletries, and other basic items. The other thing is that we ate with my parents, several times a week at dinner time. There just wasn’t enough money for food some weeks.
What I didn’t account for was things like, doctor visits, medication, or any non-reoccurring expense. I currently have 7 negative items on my credit report. Each one of those are for medical treatments during this time, when my children had insurance, but it didn’t cover much. One child had a fever that spiked to 104 overnight resulting in an ER visit. Another broke an ankle during a sports practice we needed x-rays, specialists, and physical therapy. It is these unexpected life events that cause people who live in the cliff effect or poverty to just loose hope.
Between my three kids I have paid a total of over $70,000 in childcare expense. I could have found less expensive childcare in our community, but I can guarantee you that my children would not have received the same high level of care that they received with the licensed providers and centers that they attended. I also know that children who receive high quality childcare are more successful in school and I was determined to give them the absolute best start that I could given my circumstances.