Why McDonald's Employee Budget Has Everyone Up In Arms

[Stephan Bobb]

Why McDonald's Employee Budget Has Everyone Up In Arms

As the saying goes, everyone should have a budget.

No matter how much or how little you make, a budget will help you reach your financial goals, right?

Possibly with that idea in mind,McDonald's MCD +0.08% decided to teach its employees how to create one. But in doing so, the company may have inadvertently done something else: Shown that it’s nearly impossible to make a living off the minimum wage.

RELATED:Will The McDonald’s Employee Budget Help Get The Minimum Wage Raised?

Take a look at the sample budget, provided in a Web site that McDonald’s created in conjunction withVisa V +0.72%. Here are some of the main criticisms of it:

• It assumes the worker is working two jobs.
• It surmises that health insurance costs $20 a month.
• It doesn’t include child care, groceries, clothing or gas for the worker’s car.
• Also, another, possibly earlier, version of the budget (seen here) proposed that heating would cost $0 a month.

The health insurance line item may be the most absurd. As this video points out — is that $20 for Bandaids and nine aspirin a month? The average national health insurance premium for an individual is $215 per month. As far back as 2010, even McDonald’s own plan for its workers costs $14 a week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Also, that missing gas expense? In 2012, the average American family spent almost $250 a month on gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

To McDonald’s credit, other parts of the budget are more realistic.

While the rent is well below the national average of $1,062 per month, according to a recent report byReis, it is possible in many parts of the country to find housing for $600 a month. And the monthly phone bill can run $100. Plus, let’s applaud the fact that they encourage the employee to develop savings.

Despite its good intentions, when comes down to it, McDonald’s, by positing two jobs for this fictional worker, has tacitly admitted that its employees can’t live off the wages it pays.

McDonald’s told ThinkProgress, “The samples that are on this site are generic examples … intended to help provide a general outline of what an individual budget may look like.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like people are buying it.