<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t afford to move closer to work, yet my commute is so expensive.&amp;quot;  Tanya Sorah, 30, St. Clair Shores, MI Married &amp;quot;I drive 45 minutes each way to and from work, and with the gas price at $3.10 per gallon on a good day, it costs me about $70 just in gas to commute. I love my job as a trainer at a mortgage lending company, but I can&amp;#039;t move closer to work because taxes are higher in that area. And it&amp;#039;s hard to find a great position closer to where I live. It would be really hard to trade my quality of life for a job that just pays the bills. Between groceries, gas, credit cards, and house payments, my husband and I live paycheck to paycheck and have zero savings.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We moved cross-country to afford the life we want, and then a health crisis hit.&amp;quot;  Sarah Thompson*, 31, Nashville Married mother of twins, age 2 &amp;quot;My husband and I have always been careful with our money, saving from an early age and avoiding credit cards. When I decided to stay home to take care of our twins, we found ourselves living paycheck to paycheck, and craved our former quality of life. We left all our friends and family in Los Angeles and relocated to Nashville, where my husband makes the same salary and we can afford a house twice the size of our old one \u2014 at one fourth the cost. The public schools are great so we don&amp;#039;t have to budget for private school, plus taxes are so much less here. We were on our way to saving again when our twins were diagnosed with autism. Because neither our health insurance nor government services provides the treatments our kids need, we now shell out over $800 per week toward their care. Soon our savings will be dry. Life is too darn expensive, even for those of us who don&amp;#039;t live outside our means.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I want to move, but I have no savings.&amp;quot;  April Tilley, 39, Winston-Salem, NC Married mother of two, ages 10 and 7 &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d really like to move to a new neighborhood so that my children can continue school with the same kids \u2014 where we live currently bumps us out of the district. But I owe so much on my home equity line and my house needs many repairs, and I have no savings to dip into. It&amp;#039;s mostly the little things that make all my money disappear \u2014 my family takes one annual vacation, and I&amp;#039;m a magazine-aholic, but other than that, my entire salary as a voice systems administrator at a hospital seems to go to the huge stack of bills and unexpected necessities each month. I haven&amp;#039;t a clue about where I can cut corners in order to start saving.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Since my husband was laid off, we&amp;#039;ve had to really watch our pennies.&amp;quot;  Connie Blanchard, 46, Lake Charles, LA Married mother of three, ages 21 and 16 (twins)  &amp;quot;Up until a couple of years ago, my husband and I spent money freely and didn&amp;#039;t keep track of our finances. It wasn&amp;#039;t a problem because of our well-paying jobs: I&amp;#039;m a branch manager of a bank, and he was a wireless company employee. But when my husband was laid off due to a corporate buyout, that all changed. We mapped out our spending habits and expenses on a spreadsheet and realized we had to cut back. I now carry almost no spending money in my purse, and we&amp;#039;re able to save for extra expenses such as eye care and home repairs. We eat most meals in, made from the cheapest food at the supermarket \u2014 which is too bad because it&amp;#039;s often the unhealthy stuff that&amp;#039;s cheapest. It&amp;#039;s amazing how much more careful we have to be now that we&amp;#039;re living on a smaller income.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I had to give up my job because day care cost too much.&amp;quot;  Patricia Samuels-Cameron, 36, Richmond, VA Married mother of two, ages 8 and 4 &amp;quot;Before we had children, my husband and I lived comfortably on our two-salary income; I worked as a pharmacy contract coordinator, and he is a journeyman electrician. But when our kids came along, day-care expenses ate up more than half my salary \u2014 up to $300 per week! And my annual raises were less than 1 percent, nowhere near the skyrocketing prices of gas, energy, and groceries. So last year, I quit my job to become a stay-at-home mom. While I love spending so much time with my kids, I miss the challenges and relationships at work. The loss of income has forced us to live paycheck to paycheck, never eat out, and rely on aid from my mom for our annual vacation. This past Christmas was the worst in years \u2014 I couldn&amp;#039;t splurge on gifts for my family.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s an attack on American wallets, and it&amp;#039;s coming from all areas of our life.  A Lack of Work-Family Policy &amp;quot;Our country talks a lot about family values, but we do very little in terms of policies that help families manage the competing demands of job and family,&amp;quot; says Debra Ness, president of National Partnership for Women &amp;amp;amp; Families. &amp;quot;Three quarters of families have two working parents, and yet our government offers minimal support in the way of child-care costs. We are one of the few developed nations without guaranteed paid maternity leave, and half of our private-sector workforce offers zero paid sick days. Both our government and our corporations must instate policies that enable workers to manage the realities of their lives.&amp;quot;  Skyrocketing Health-Care Costs  Health-care spending per person increased 90 percent between 1995 and 2007, from $3,783 to $7,498 (California HealthCare Foundation), compared to a mere 11.2 percent increase in average income \u2014 $50,530 to $56,194 \u2014 from 1994 to 2005 (U.S. Census Bureau). &amp;quot;Companies have been switching to plans with higher co-pays and deductibles, thereby increasing people&amp;#039;s out-of-pocket spending and often preventing them from seeking out the primary and preventive care they need,&amp;quot; says Ness. &amp;quot;This leads to expensive acute care down the line.&amp;quot;  Higher Education Is More and More Unattainable Four-year public college tuition and fees have increased 35 percent in the past five years (The College Board). &amp;quot;Our government offers some college-related tax breaks,&amp;quot; says Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of National Women&amp;#039;s Law Center. &amp;quot;But more direct help could take form in increasing student loan aid, which has been flat in recent years.&amp;quot;  Higher Prices for Basics  &amp;quot;The price of homes has gone up so much recently that, even with fairly low mortgage rates, it&amp;#039;s been difficult for people to make down payments,&amp;quot; says Campbell. Average monthly costs for homeowners with mortgages increased 15.7 percent from 1990 to 2000. And few of us live near our jobs: Seventy-seven percent of us drive to work, and average daily commutes are increasing \u2014 25.1 minutes in 2005, compared to 22.4 minutes in 1990 (U.S. Census Bureau). That makes the impact of higher gas prices \u2014 $3 per gallon, up from $2.20 in 2002 (gasbuddy.com) \u2014 hit even harder.  Cost-of-Living Rise Is Outpacing Wage Increase The average weekly cost of groceries for a family of four is up to $244, compared to $166 in 1994 (USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion). One factor might be the increasing price of gas, when food is delivered in trucks. This 47 percent increase in food costs contrasts with an 11.2 percent increase in average income in the same time period. In fact, the first increase in 10 years to the hourly minimum wage took effect in July 2007, after Congress voted to raise it, from $5.15 to $5.85 (U.S. Department of Labor).  Financial Insecurity  Sixty-one percent of Americans are without adequate emergency savings \u2014 at least three months of living expenses in liquid savings (bankrate.com). And debt has ballooned in the last decade, from nearly $1.3 trillion in outstanding consumer credit in 1997 to $2.4 trillion today (Federal Reserve). &amp;quot;We need to get back to the sense of social compact in order to make progress in providing relief to American families,&amp;quot; says Campbell. *Names have been changed for anonymity "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/money-career/a2013/living-in-america/>