Applying My FPL Numbers To Real Life
I want to take a post Marcy Wheeler did yesterday and change it to reflect my revised FPL I did in the previous post. 301% of Poverty Level: $66,370 Federal Taxes (estimate from this page, includes FICA): $8,628 (13% of income) State Taxes (using MI rates on $30,000 of income): $1,305 (2% of income) Food […]
I want to take a post Marcy Wheeler did yesterday and change it to reflect my revised FPL I did in the previous post.
301% of Poverty Level: $66,370
Federal Taxes (estimate from this page, includes FICA): $8,628 (13% of income)
State Taxes (using MI rates on $30,000 of income): $1,305 (2% of income)
Food (using “low-cost USDA plan” for family of four): $7,712 (12% of income)
Home (assume a straight 30% of income): $19,275 (30% of income)
Child care (average cost for just one pre-school child in MI): $6,216
Health insurance premium: $5,243 (7.9% of income, max amount before opt-out w/o penalty allowed)
Transportation (assume 2 cars, 12,000 miles each, @IRS deductible cost of $.55/mile): $13,200*
Heat, electricity, water: $1,500
Phone, cable, internet: $1,200
Total: $64,276 (97% of income)
Remainder (for health care out-of-pocket, debt, clothing, etc.): $2,091
First off some of Marcy’s numbers seem a little high and some seem a little low (I would love to pay that little for utilities), but over all I would say they come out pretty good.
So let’s go by my new multiplier strictly based off of the CPI-U and change the current FPL for a family of 4 to reflect that.
Currently the FPL for a family of 4 is $22,050. In 1980 it was $8,414, so going like the previous post let’s multiply that by my new multiplier of 2.93. That gives us an adjusted FPL of $24,653.
Now let’s adjust the annual income in Marcy’s scenario above to use my new FPL. 301% of $24,653 would come out to $74,205
| Taxes | $9,646 |
| State Taxes | $1,484 |
| Food | $7,712 |
| Home | $22,261 |
| Child Care | $6,216 |
| Health Insurance Premium | $5,862 |
| Transportation | $13,200 |
| Heat, electricity, water | $1,500 |
| Phone, cable, internet | $1,200 |
| TOTAL: | $69,081 (93% of income) |
| Remainder | $5,124 |
So going by my new FPL you end up with about 2.5 times as much left over at the end of the year. It still isn’t great, but it is a lot better than before. Also if we went by Marcy’s $66,370 annual salary then that would put someone at 269% of the FPL, meaning they will now be eligible for subsidies.
Fixing the FPL will fix health care for the better. The only real question is what we should fix in the FPL. Fixing how it is calculated, as I have been doing, is a big plus but there is a lot more that can be done. I’ll tackle that in another post.
