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Nickel and Dimed
By Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed is the story of a writer who goes undercover as an unskilled low wage worker to determine if she can live off minimum wage. The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, lived in three different locations across the country for a month each trying to survive off minimum wage. Ehrenreich points out from the start that she does not truly experience poverty because she has a job, house, and money to fall back on while the millions of people living in poverty do not. However her work of investigative journalism is for the most part accurate and realistic. This is achieved by the rules Ehrenreich set in place for herself at the beginning of her experiment. The most important rule was that she was not to rely on any skills from her education and previous work experience. Throughout her experience, she did not reveal she had earned a PhD and was an accomplished writer. Another rule was that she had to take the highest paying job offered to her and had to do her best to keep it. For housing, Ehrenreich was to stay in the cheapest accommodations offered with acceptable privacy and safety. Lastly Ehrenreich vowed never to be homeless, go hungry, or be put in a dangerous situation. Her account of what it is like to live in poverty is authentic and compelling.
Ehrenreich begins her journey in Key West, Florida. She chooses this location because she was living in Florida at the time, however it is far enough away from her community that she would not be recognized. Ehrenreich starts off working at a restaurant but soon finds she is unable to pay the $500 rent with just one job and decides to take on another at a hotel. Frustrated by the management at her new job, she quits and leaves Florida early. In the first chapter Ehrenreich already experiences the difficulties of living a minimum wage job. She
In Ehrenreich’s next stop, Maine, her circumstances are not much different. She takes two jobs...