My name is Samantha and I am currently a full-time college student working a part time job on minimum wage. I make $8.44 an hour and have bills to pay like everyone else my age. For a while now I have been paying attention to where my money goes so I can attempt to start saving it. While doing this I have also put together how many hours of work each item was worth and it was insane. Here are a few scenarios that opened my eyes.

Today I went to Kohls and spent $60 on a t-shirt, bikini top(no bottoms), and a tank top. Making $8.44 that is about 7 hours of work gone in seconds. However, these items were technically not necessary to live. Here is a better example, let's say I work until 7 pm and my family ate at 5:30 pm. The meal they prepared I can't eat since it has beef in it and so I need to go out and buy something if I want to eat before 9 pm. A trip to Qdoba to get three tacos with nothing on the side, meaning no drink or sides, totals about $9.00. I can't even buy a meal with one hour of pay. How is this a living wage?

Today I went to the food store with my dad and we spent about $100 for meat, storage bags, tissues, cereal, granola bars, and cat food. If we were to go and get enough food to last a little more than a week we would pay $300 as a family of four. In a scenario of a single parent working a minimum wage job in New Jersey, to afford $300 worth of food for a family of four he/she would need to work at least 35 hours a week, just for food. However, there are other expenses. What about the lights, gas, cable, cell phone, medical insurance, gas for the car to get to work, the car insurance, school supplies, garbage, rent/mortgage, etc.?

Bottom line, $8.44 is not enough to be considered a “livable wage” so we need to stop pretending it is.