How much money does it cost a family of 4 to "get by" in Ohio?

NBC's Erin Real reports that it costs $104,000 for a family of 4 in Ohio as costs cotinue to stay high

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Let's jump on the phone Legacyretirement Groupdot Com phone line. Aaronreal, NBC
News Radio. Good morning, Aaron. We've talked a lot about the cost
of things in our segments here inthe last several months, and you've got
to break down on what it costsjust to get by for a family of
four. These are the costs ofbasics, right, just like food and

(00:21):
housing, stuff like that. Yeah, a family of four, it's probably
more if you have a child who'sseven foot nine. I have had up
what's that food bill like right well, in Ohio for an average family without
a seven foot nine child, itis one hundred four thousand dollars a year.
We're talking housing, childcare, transportation, taxes, investments, all the

(00:44):
stuff, all this stuff, eventravel. This is according to smart Asset.
They did this study and then theyuse the living wage calculator that MIT
has created and they figured it outthe most expensive, just to give you
some context, Massachusetts at one hundredand fifty thousand, the least expensive Mississippi
at eighty eight thousand. It's againa family of four. But I think
the most interesting takeaway from this one, Mike, is that the basic median

(01:11):
income the estimated median income for afamily of four is seventy eight thousand dollars
across the US. If the cheapestplace in the entire nation is Mississippi at
eighty eight and the average salary isseventy eight, those numbers don't add up.
And we wonder why there is trillionsupon trillions upon trillions of outstanding debt.
Literally we have over three trillion dollars. Yeah, those numbers are a

(01:33):
little upside down when you're talking thecost of the basics is, you know,
around one hundred thousand, and peopleare only making eighty. That's a
deficit. That's not the right directionyou want to go in. No,
and it's not sustainable. And Ithink that that's the bigger thing here.
And I'm not for redistribution of wealth. I don't think anyone is. Really.
It's kind of like is the antithesisof like what the American psyche is.

(01:57):
And you shouldn't demonize the rich,but let's be clear. We saw
the top one percent eat more andmore and more and more of the pie
every year for the past fifty years. The boss always has made more,
and should they have more responsibility?Their job is harder than most people,
but they shouldn't take everything. Andwhat you end up finding those circumstances is
like, you don't want to havea country where you demonize the rich,

(02:22):
but when only the rich can operatewithin the country, you're no longer a
high functioning society. Yeah, I'mall. I think we're on the same
page there. I don't I don'twant to lower the ceiling. I want
to lower the floor or raise thefloor. Rather, I think that's the
way to go is let's get everybodythat's the lower let's boost them up,
and then if you're able to bein that one percent, good for you.

(02:42):
You've worked hard to get there.But we don't want to hurt those
folks either, right exactly. AndI think that that therein lies the rub
you know you used to You cansee it in like any suburban neighborhood in
the US. You look, youdrive by it, and you look at
homes that were built in the nineteenfifties or sixties and the size, and
then you look at homes that werebuilt in the last ten years, you're
like, hell, it's like threetimes the footprint. I think that the
idea is that we like all ofour expectations got so much higher, and

(03:07):
I think going back to like,you need your basics covered, and when
you have your basics covered, therest is ornamental. And the ornaments are
nice, but they're not going tomake life better. What will make life
better is having your health and havingyou know a support system, and having
all of these other things that makean enriched life. But if you're operating

(03:29):
in a country that isn't valuing that, that's a problem.