The Other America: Three stories of struggle

“I work 36 hours a week at minimum wage in California at make a little over $500 biweekly while my friend collects unemployment weekly for more than I make! Sometimes it's a choice between my HIV medications, my student loan bill and my other bills.”

To help pay off some of his college loans, Barnum worked part-time and earned minimum wage at Knott’s Berry Farm, a popular amusement park in Southern California. Three years after graduating from Cal State-Fullerton with cum laude honors in history, Barnum is still at Knott's, working full-time as a cashier, earning $8.20 an hour. He said a friend of his who collects unemployment makes twice as much.

In 2010, Barnum hoped to become a teacher, but no job prospects panned out. And with $12,000 in student loans to pay off, on top of an additional $3,000 in debt, Barnum stayed at Knott's. He lives with parents, because he can't afford anything else, and tries to save whatever money he can: taking out $20 in cash for gas, so the gas station doesn't charge him for using a credit card; bringing lunch everyday to his job. “Sometimes, you actually spend more money getting to work than I make during work,” he said.

Barnum also has to pay $1,200 a year, the equivalent of three paychecks, for the insurance deductible on his HIV medication. For two months last year he said he did without, because he was trying to save money. “It’s scary because you don’t know whether you’ll be resistant during that time you’re off the medication,” said Barnum, referring to his HIV. “It’s pretty stressful. You’re lying awake at night thinking, ‘Oh my Lord, what am I going to do?’"

Still, Barnum is hopeful. In high school, he had elaborate dreams of being “a great actor on ‘General Hospital.’” Now? He’s trying not to give up. “You kind of get disheartened a bit, but you keep going,” Barnum said. “I never thought I would be someone who isn’t even making it paycheck to paycheck. You grow up and think, ‘Why are these people in such bad shape financially?’ Now, I know they’re doing the best they can. And sometimes, the best they can do isn’t good enough.”

"I live an hour away from my job, and I have never been able to afford living any closer. After rent and my bills -- not including food -- I have $100 for food. That lasts me two weeks. Any emergency completely drains my savings and leaves me with nothing. 

I feel cheated because I graduated from college, I've been working full-time for a decade, and I still can't afford to live like an 'adult.' I can't afford to get married or have kids, and neither can anyone else I know." 

Rebecca Vonada worked through college, but still couldn't manage the tuition, and trasnsferred after a year to an in-state school. After finishing her degree, she hoped to go to law school, but with her parents struggling, the loans, she says, just weren't viable. So instead, Vonada started working at a small family-owned company, doing IT.

She liked the work and was good at it. The pay was too bad either: $12-an-hour at the start, and between $16 and $18-an-hour now. But she still can't afford to live closer to her job, and with gas prices going up, she hasn't been able to save. 

"I feel like everytime I try to put money aside, but then I need it," she said. "I can put aside $100, but then I’ll have a tire blow. $500, and then I have a trip to the emergency room."

For Vonada, being an adult means being able to save. And she thought she'd be there by now. But no one she knows in her age group can afford to save either. One friend, she says, got married and had kids, but is just sliding further and further into debt. 

"I am a full time nursing student with two part time physically/emotionally demanding jobs both in health care. I have had two days off a month for the past couple of months and those are the days that I usually have an opportunity to do homework and catch up on housework. I still live below the poverty line. Almost everyone I work with, especially students, are forced to a similar work regimen just to keep surviving. The frequency of this lifestyle will overall lead to job security for me as a nurse, as long as I can make it through!" 

On top of her full-time course load, Alisse Diers works two jobs: as a nurses aid in the neurology and oncology department at a local hospital, and working with people with disabilities. The jobs are enormously demanding, she says. Diers is exhausted.

But Diers desperately didn't want to be drowned in debt. She saw that happen to her friends. 

Even though she's attending the community college, and working nonstop, Diers says she still lives below the poverty line. Yet she makes too much money, she says, to qualify for government assistance.

Diers says she's healthy. She has enough to eat. It's just that any emergency would bankrupt her, and she's haunted by the idea. "I have plenty of people that would be willing to help me out if I needed, but I don't want to do that, but everyone is strugging right now," she says. "It’s that anxiety, I don’t have any savings. My one credit card has usually about $100 left on it."