Living Paycheck to Paycheck Gets Harder [View All]

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NEW YORK (AP) -- The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder.

Friday October 19, 1:50 pm ET
By Anne D'Innocenzio, AP Business Writer
AP IMPACT: America's Working Poor Stretching Paychecks to the Breaking Point

What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.

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It's bad enough already for 85-year-old Dominica Hoffman.

She gets $1,400 a month in pension and Social Security from her days in the garment industry. After paying $500 in rent on an apartment in Pennsauken, N.J., and shelling out money for food, gas and other expenses, she's broke by the end of the month. She's had to cut fruits and vegetables from her grocery order -- and that's even with financial help from her children.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071019/stretching_paychecks.html?.v=8

I would have posted this as a LBN item but this news is not really "new" IMO.

It is disgusting! To think that people must skip meals and/or not eat because they cannot make it on their crap paychecks! :mad: