{"id":139,"date":"2025-10-13T01:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/139\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T01:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T01:41:07","slug":"united-way-study-shows-families-of-four-need-116000-per-year-for-basic-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/139\/","title":{"rendered":"United Way study shows families of four need $116,000 per year for basic needs"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego families need to earn $116,000 annually just to meet basic needs, according to the Real Cost measure from San Diego County United Way<\/a> that highlights the growing financial strain on local households.<\/p>\n

The figure represents what a family of four requires to cover essential expenses in one of California’s most expensive regions, where nearly one-third of households struggle to make ends meet. <\/p>\n

Around 97% of people underneath the RCM, or Real Cost Measure line, have at least one working adult. The salary needed to meet the RCM is three minimum wage, full-time jobs.<\/p>\n

“The message is that people are struggling. That’s not okay,” said Nancy Sasaki, CEO of San Diego County United Way.<\/p>\n

The study breaks down the $116,000 annual requirement for a family of four into specific categories: $28,000 for housing, $19,000 for childcare and around $18,000 for taxes. The calculation also includes miscellaneous expenses, food, medical care and transportation costs.<\/p>\n

“Well it certainly is a scary number,” Sasaki said.<\/p>\n

The interactive study allows users to adjust variables based on household composition, revealing how costs fluctuate significantly with factors like childcare needs.<\/p>\n

“You can go online and play around with the data and you can see what it might be when there’s two teenagers … you can see just how much it fluctuates with the cost of childcare,” Sasaki said.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes they’re making trade-offs. Like, maybe I don’t put as much food on the table, or maybe I don’t eat as much so I can feed my children,” Sasaki said.<\/p>\n

Single-parent households face even greater challenges, with the study showing 70% of single mothers unable to make ends meet in San Diego County.<\/p>\n

“Having been a single mom myself, the struggle is real,” Sasaki said. “We need everybody to be thriving, not just a few [people].”<\/p>\n

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego families need to earn $116,000 annually just to meet basic needs, according to the Real Cost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[207,208,209,74,206,76,75,210],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-basic-needs","tag-cost-of-living","tag-groceries","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county-united-way","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-united-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}