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I guess I count as a “low wage worker” these days and your claims in the first paragraph simply aren’t true for myself or most of the other low wage workers I k
by pw 5y ago
I guess I count as a “low wage worker” these days and your claims in the first paragraph simply aren’t true for myself or most of the other low wage workers I know.
I deliver for DoorDash and make around $100 dollars a day from about five hours of work. My girlfriend (who’s disabled) rides along with me, so it’s sorta like I’m just getting paid to drive around and hang out. I drive a 2005 Honda Civic, so I spend less than $15/day on gas and the car is old enough the depreciation is minuscule. I buy my health insurance on the exchange. It’s excellent and with the premium subsidy I only pay $22/month. I have several chronic health conditions, so good health insurance (and particularly drug coverage) is really important to me. I’ve been able to get my insurance to cover all of the many medications I’m on (many of still under patent and not generic) and my copay is only $45/month. Visits to my primary care doctor are free and I’ve got a $500 deductible for everything else.
I can work as much or as little as I want on pretty much whatever schedule I choose. I tend to stick to about five hours a day because it doesn’t feel like a ton of work, but it’s enough to cover my expenses and then some. Rent is my only other major expense and I pay just $550 for my one bedroom apartment. I rarely cook at home, but even after spending way too much eating out, I regularly have $500-$1,000 leftover at the end of the month, so I’m certainly not living paycheck to paycheck. Since I save some of that extra money, I can take time off whenever I want (although I rarely do, since I enjoy getting out of the house and working). Sure, if I get sick and don’t work, I don’t make any money, but that’s why I keep a bit of money in savings.
It might be Uber or Lyft or Instacart instead of DoorDash, but I know several people in a similar position to me. And honestly it’s a pretty sweet life. I’ve got all my needs met and then some. I enjoy my work. And I’ve got lots of free time to purpose my intellectual interests like coding.
- oblio 5y agoWhat happens if your car gets totaled?
- samatman 5y agoKelly Blue Book for a 2005 Honda Civic in good condition is $2-3000. So two to six month's savings. Painful but not career-ending.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ojhughes 5y agoI imagine car insurance would provide a replacement vehicle if that happens
- loudandskittish 5y ago...as long as you don't tell them you were delivering food at the time...
- ojhughes 5y agoIt would be a huge risk not adding business use to your policy and paying the extra premium, especially in the US were people are so litigious
- pentae 5y agoReally interesting to hear some insight it from someone who is actually doing it for a change. Not having lived in the US for a while I wasn't aware that insurance was available for this rate with pre-existing conditions. Sounds a lot more reasonable than what i've heard - do you have more information about your insurance plan?
- extra88 5y agoTheirs does sound like a good plan (won't find that in every state) but they're also relatively poor and receiving a large subsidy to cover most of the monthly premium.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoThanks for providing some factual real-world insight to the topic of US healthcare where most information that bounces around Europeans is along the lines of "yeah, well Americans have higher salaries because healthcare costs are so extreme so everyone without a tech job is living paycheck to paycheck and can easily be bankrupted by illnesses".
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y agoYeah cause we're right about that
- namdnay 5y agoIf tomorrow someone burns a red light and smashes into you and you can’t drive anymore, are doordash going to keep paying you? Yes, these “jobs” are fine as long as everything goes to plan, but is it really that much to ask to not have to live under the sword of Damocles?
- devoutsalsa 5y agoThat was my situation. I had a sales job the was primarily commission based and I had health insurance. I had a bad bike accident and got sent to an out of network hospital. I went from a six figure income and no medical bills to almost no income and a six figure medical bill. I was devastated. Probably the hardest part was how depressed I was, even as my body was recovering, I simply wasn’t prepared to start hustling to get my sales income back up, pay for physical therapy, deal with the hospital & insurance company, etc.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y agoFor-profit healthcare should be criminalised. It's hard enough to recover physically from an injury, but adding the need to recover financially from it as well is cruel.
- dagw 5y agoThe problem is not for-profit healthcare, but how it is implemented in the US. Lots of countries have for-profit healthcare without the users of that healthcare every worrying about recovering financially.
- namdnay 5y agoAt the end of the day, it's always "for profit". Either it's the doctors getting paid by the state getting paid by citizens, or the hospital getting paid by the state getting paid by citizens, or the hospitals getting paid by the insurers getting paid by citizens, or very often a combination of the 3. The issue in the US is the setup, not the fundamental principal
- eyelovewe 5y agoLet me know how your gig economy retirement plan goes. May you never have an accident on job. May you never need healthcare. I don’t see much future in such gig economy jobs. Our grandparents often worked for the same company all their lives. Your gig economy is a one way trap with no exit or promotional path. You have the equivalent of a fancy summer college kid job, but it’s not a career path.
- ojhughes 5y agoImagine a world where people were provided free health care, a benefits system, good employee rights and state pensions! Oh wait, it already exists in most of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand
- throwkeep 5y agoDid you read the comment? They have healthcare and said there's $500-$1000 leftover each month, which is a healthy amount for retirement investment. More than enough to max out a Roth IRA. That's on top of social security too.
- hirako2000 5y agoAnd you appear to have no dependent, and living in an area where cost of livings are rather low according to your rent cost. I'm not implying we should all afford a living in San Francisco, but an anecdote that represents the average case would be more relevant. The prospect of having a family with a couple of kids to take care of is quite the norm (still)
- brohoolio 5y agoIs this a marketing post for these delivery services? Your website says you are a developer working for a startup.