Woman shares the harsh reality of living on a teacher's salary that barely covers rent

It has become a well-known fact that teachers in the US are severely underpaid. This is very upsetting, considering just how crucial their role is in shaping future generations. Lexie Firment—who goes by @missfirment on TikTok—recently shared a video about how she was struggling to pay her bills. The post caption reads, "Hey rats, I am a teacher and I can barely afford rent and groceries. This is the sad truth of teaching in 2023. Impossible to do it all."

She begins the video by sharing that she was a teacher and could barely afford to pay rent with her current salary. Firment then provides a quick breakdown of her in-hand salary every two weeks. She begins to make deductions from her salary based on the bills she has to pay which include rent, payments for her car and insurance. Firment says, "Oh yeah, that's right. You do the math, I'm left with owing money at the end of the month." She shares how this was the final amount without including groceries.

As she talks to her viewers, it dawns on her that she is continually having to tap into her savings to keep paying her bills and not go into a lot of debt. Firment takes a deep breath when she realizes this. She shares, "I just had the realization in the car that I'm actually going to go into debt if I continue being a teacher." Firment talks about how she was experiencing a crisis in coming to terms with her financial situation. She elaborates on how she found it difficult to confront the problem seeing just how severe it was.

She says, "I don't know how I'm going to pay off my credit card this month." Despite her unideal situation, she concludes by hoping that her viewers can afford to pay their rent and other bills for the day without much difficulty. Other individuals on the platform could easily relate to what Firment was going through and chimed in with their thoughts in the comments section. @kay_jane7 said, "I wait for payday with a knot in my stomach and then cry on payday because I have $30 left."

Another user, @tylermatthewsnead, shared, "You legit almost made me cry when you said you were about to have a panic attack. Things will work themselves out and you are not alone. Trust me." @this_is_ryannn expressed, "Same. I have a Master's in teaching and make about $600 a week. I made more working at Amazon."

Another teacher, Kyle Cohen, who teaches fourth grade also shared two videos on TikTok, revealing exactly how much he made at his job. He does a very detailed breakdown from when he started work and made $31,000. This was a very poor amount considering just how much effort he was putting into teaching a class of 16 students with each of them having "special needs." He goes on to calculate the hourly pay that he was getting, highlighting the sad state of teachers in the country.