The Nuclear Family seems impossible to achieve currently

I did a Tik Tok about this before, that capitalism has destroyed the “nuclear family”. I showed a bit of quick math to show it was almost impossible with 1 parent working. Lets do that a bit differently here.

Let’s do “Nuclear Family”, 2 parents both working at median salary, 2 kids, childcare costs, renting, with two cars.

2 Parents Working – Median Household Wage

For ease I’m just using the median household income minus 20% for taxes and divided by 12 because I’m working out the monthly. That comes to $4,500 per month.

Median annual US wage
US median household wage

Actually I might work it out a little different. Let’s do avg hourly for factory worker at fulltime, Walmart worker at 32 hours (4 days per week) – minus 20% for taxes. (Factory $2,542 and walmart $1,822 per month after taxes). Overall income after taxes is $4,364.

Average factory wage hourly Michigan
Average hourly wage walmart

Looking like daycare costs are $175 per week (per kid, in this case lets say just 1 is in daycare) and rent on a 3 bedroom place is easily $1,200.

Daycare costs
Rent prices Michigan

And healthcare costs. Using that the factory worker parent has to pay $6,000 of the premium which is $500 per month.

Healthcare costs

Let’s do the Math

$4,364 is the money we have to work with

Monthly Wages $4,364

Guaranteed costs:

Rent $1,200
Childcare $700
Utilities $500
Health Insurance $500
Car Payments $700
Car Insurance $200
Phones x2 $200

Overall Total: $4,000

With just the numbers from so far, you are only left with $364 and you haven’t even fed anyone yet.

So you would also need groceries $600
Gas money ???
Entertainment ???
Car Repairs ???
Insurance Deductibles ???

Video work out for this page

Original Post on the Nuclear Family