➡ Living in California is expensive, with a financial app, Money Lion, suggesting that you need to earn about $79,000 a year to cover basic needs. However, the average wage in California is $33.50 per hour, which is less than what is needed according to the study. Many families are managing by working multiple jobs or living further from work to afford housing. The cheapest state to live in, according to Money Lion, is Mississippi, where you need to earn about $45,000 a year.
➡ Community colleges should have started offering four-year degrees a long time ago. About 24 states in the U.S. currently allow community colleges to provide four-year bachelor’s degrees, especially in high-demand fields like nursing, teaching, and applied technology. However, students often overlook these affordable options and end up taking out large student loans for private colleges. It’s important to stop making excuses and be better informed about the educational opportunities available.

Expensive it is to just function here in California. And it turns out it’s expensive! But let’s back into that. First of all, costs of living and incomes differ from state to state. So obviously living in one place doesn’t have the same cost as living in another place. So there’s a financial app called Money Lion that crunched the numbers and came up with a study that determined what the different costs are in different states and how much you need to be able to make to cover your nut. One takeaway from that study is that…

Now I don’t think he’s talking about getting it off. Nut like that? No. He said how much it costs to take care of your nut. Your nut is how much it costs to basically allow for you to be able to get everything taken care of, right? Emily’s in half the country, 25 states, need to earn about 30 bucks an hour or roughly $53,000 a year after taxes to make ends meet. Another takeaway is that some states, including the one you are soaking in right now, can be very very expensive. To get by in California, according to Money Lion, you need to be making about 46 bucks an hour or more than $79,000 a year to cover just the necessities such as housing, groceries, utilities, and health care.

In fact, two states and just two states alone, according to Money Lion, are more expensive than California. They would be Massachusetts, where you need to be pulling down about $90,000 a year if you want to make your ends meet, or Hawaii, where you have to pull down about $111,000 to make ends meet. But how does this jive with what we actually know about how much people really do make? Well, that’s another thing. A separate report from the job site ZipRecruiter says that the average hourly wage in California is $33.50, which is well below what that other study says you need to be making.

And so by that math, the necessities in California would bankrupt most families. But since that’s obviously not the case, what do we know is probably happening? What we know is a lot of families are getting by on not just one job, but two jobs or three jobs to make ends meet. Moreover, many families just have to live farther and farther away from their work just to be able to afford accommodations. And that’s a very challenging place to be. What can you do about it? Well, aside from the two, three or four jobs, you could move to the state that the Money Lion says is the cheapest.

And that would be Mississippi, where you only need to be making about $45,000 a year to make your nut. Maybe I need to go to Mississippi. Maybe Mississippi is the play. Listen, I ain’t going to cap with you. I really do like Mississippi. I really do like Mississippi. I think that one of the reasons, well, there’s multiple different reasons why California is messed up, right? Obviously, you know, you got bad leadership. Obviously, y’all also know that y’all got a whole lot of taxes and a whole lot of money that y’all giving away.

And then third is housing. Housing, housing, housing, housing, housing. And let me tell you this. Let me tell you this. California is the gig economy. California, Los Angeles, everybody is basically enabling whatever it is, Carter, they have to go out there and deliver food. He was making $60,000 a year in Mississippi. What’s the, what’s the, uh, what is it? Jackson, Jackson, Mississippi is supposed to be the black city, the urban core and Mississippi. Everybody is a gig worker hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling in Mississippi. Straight up. I ordered a DoorDash yesterday from a place called Breadless here in Detroit.

And it’s basically, you know, chicken breasts or whatever. And you know, they don’t, they don’t have no bread on it. So it’s basically wrapped in lettuce and all of that other stuff, right? So I ordered from Breadless. I do my DoorDash yesterday and the homie came in, he pulled up with the Gucci jacket on, he had the Challenger, wasn’t a Hellcat. I don’t know if it’s one of my favorite restaurants called Breadless. Shout out to Breadless, getting it popping. It’s definitely on my favorites list here in Detroit. And so, you know, he came in with the scat and saw Always Tip Extra and he was very appreciative and he was hustling.

Everybody is gig working in California. Everybody gig working here in Detroit. And actually the people that do the best as far as gig work, as far as delivering DoorDash and Grubhub, is the people that actually ride bikes. Yep. And the summertime, spring, summer, fall, they jump on a bike, they don’t have to spend no money on gas or maintenance or nothing. They jump on a bike and that’s how they deliver a DoorDash and Grubhub. And in Miami, it’s a bunch of migrants, a bunch of illegal migrants and migrants that don’t even speak English.

They do all of the DoorDash and the Grubhub. They don’t have cars. They all on mopads. And they’re able to do it on mopads, a lot of them, because it’s not no snow year-round. So all of them deliver on mopads. And if you go over to the design district, if you go over to Midtown, if you go over to Brickell, they’re all hanging around in the same groups and they’re all on mopads. And they’re waiting to get an order so that they go on DoorDash and that’s the way they make their money. They’re all on mopads.

But one thing that I think that California is doing well, if they pass it, is they are pushing for community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees, which I think would actually lower the cost of college education. On the 5th, increasing access to higher education, there is a push at the state capital to allow California community colleges to offer bachelor’s degree programs. CBS 13’s Freddie Halblive is getting answers on the parameters, though. It is the only proven tactic that we know of in the state of California that will uplift people out of poverty. Responding to student needs and expanding access.

That’s what lawmakers say two new state bills aim to do. They would allow students to earn a bachelor’s degree at a community college without having to transfer to a four-year university. Our communities have changed. Our workers’ needs have changed. But our higher education structure has not kept up to pace. The first bill, AB 2694, targets workforce shortages. If a region needs workers, but no local college offers a specific bachelor’s degree, a community college could expand a specific program, allowing students to complete their degree and enter the workforce. San Joaquin Delta College Superintendent Dr.

Lisa Aguilar-Lorensen says it could be a game changer, especially in specialized fields. One great example at Delta College is we have our electron microscopy program, which is one of the only community colleges in the United States to have such a program. It would be wonderful for us to have a bachelor’s degree program in that field. The second bill, AB 2301, aims to address the nursing shortage. It would allow up to 10 community colleges statewide to offer a bachelor’s of science in nursing. Our communities cannot afford to lose our students who are the future of our workforce because an outdated framework that limits where and how bachelor degrees can be offered.

There has been a debate over expanding bachelor’s degrees to community college. Under a law passed in 2021, community colleges, they can only develop up to 30 degrees each year that is as long as they don’t duplicate programs offered at UC or CSU. Listen, listen, the college education game is no different than lobbyists in any other industry. Pharmaceuticals, automakers, it’s the same thing. And regardless of the fact that they’re public is they’re trying to limit people’s ability to run up a bag by charging them more for education because colleges are nothing more than profit driven institutions just like any other capitalistic venture out there.

And so what they’re basically doing, what they’ve been basically doing is throttling the economy by preventing people from being able to go over to community colleges and getting bachelor’s degrees. And why would they do that? If y’all really wanted these legislators to lower the cost of education, then you would tell them that community colleges that charge significantly less per credit hour should be allowing you to get bachelor’s degrees and you wouldn’t have to take out so much in student loans. It’s a reason why they try to limit community colleges to only being able to give you a associate degrees and then you’ve got to transfer over to a major university after two years.

Because they are not really trying to lower the cost of education. Student loans are subsidized by the federal government. College campuses want you to take out as much as student loans and to take out as many in credit hours and to spend as much money as you can on housing and spend as much money as you can inside of the student union, spending money because it all comes from the federal government and then you got to pay it back and you’re going to pay more than triple once you do it because you was doing it out of ignorance or you was doing it because you didn’t realize that you was going to have to pay the piper later.

Community colleges should have been offering four-year degrees. Absolutely. Community colleges should have been offering four-year degrees a long time ago. And the fact that California, which I have to give them some credit, I got to give them some credit. If this is the way that they’re thinking, then there is still hope. There is still hope. I believe that community colleges should be offering four-year degrees all day long. And if you want to go over to a major university that’s esteemed, then you do so at your own risk, but you can’t start blaming the whole system for the cost of your education and you taking out a bunch of student loans.

One in Miami does what college in Miami, what community college in Miami offers a four-year degree because the nursing program for Oakland Community College here be booming when it comes to nursing degrees. Like it is so it is more competitive. It is 10 times more competitive to getting to the nursing program for Oakland Community College here in Michigan than it is to get into any other college program or major major degree program. They take that jump serious. They do not mess around. It is competitive as hell. Miami-Dade Community College. Let’s see. Let’s see.

Academic programs. Let’s see. In the United States, about 24 states currently authorize community colleges to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees. These programs are often called community college. Baccalaureate degrees are designed to provide affordable local access to high demand careers and fears like nursing, teacher education and applied technology. As of 2026, over 200 community colleges across the country offer at least one program totaling more than 700 distinct degree offerings nationwide. Then you got to go in the sheets. Florida nearly all 28 colleges offer a BS in nursing supervision and management and education.

Okay, so they do offer it but it’s only targeted to one particular degree. That’s pretty good in Florida. That’s dope. So why do people sit there and say that Miami-Dade College offer a BS in applied artificial intelligence and cyber security? Really? Wow. Yeah, it ain’t no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. I’m tired of people making excuses and saying oh my god, I got to take out a bunch of student loans so we just don’t do the research and we just not informed as we should be. So we just not as informed. So we out here giving money over to these private colleges because we want to party or you want to have it on you know have it as a part of your background and saying I went to here and you just not as informed as you should be.

Because I’m looking at it right here. Yeah, we got to stop making excuses. We got to stop running into victim Olympics when it comes to being educated. It’s so funny because when I was walking in here today I was thinking to myself about how I’m looking to go back to school for architecture because that’s where my real passion is in architecture. Is that one day I want to focus most of my energy on architecture because I just love it so much. [tr:trw].

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