nickle and dime
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In her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich leaves her upper-middleclass life and becomes a temporary member of the low-wage working class to see exactly how these people get by on such low pay. She did this project because, one, her boss assigned her to it, two, she already had an interest in writing about poverty. Through this project she hoped to find the answer to her question of how these workers manage to live on low incomes. Also she was eager to examine any psychological effects and physical, financial, or emotional costs that these jobs may cause on the low-wage employee. Although she wanted to find the truest answers, she didn't actually want to experience poverty, which is why she brought along her ATM card for emergencies. Despite her unwillingness to transform completely into a poor worker, her experiences with developing a budget, discovering health problems, and forming relationships gave her audience a quick glance into the life of the low-wage worker.
One of Ehrenreich's main concerns before and during this experiment was money. Throughout all of the chapters she had to balance a budget. This budget included rent, food, gas, and miscellaneous objects such as clothing or home furnishings. She showed the importance of being able to handle money not only through her own experiences, but by describing her co-workers' difficulty with money also...