Early- and mid-career Des Moines teachers stretch budgets to make rent, data shows

Since Julie Fitzgerald, a Scavo High School teacher, moved into a downtown Des Moines apartment earlier this year, she’s had to make changes to balance her budget with the increased rent.

She eliminated most personal shopping and canceled subscriptions like Spotify. She also started tracking her budget on a personal finance app called Mint.

But Fitzgerald, 31, said she spends more than 40% of her take-home pay on rent — and she’s not alone, according to a national analysis by USA TODAY. Entry-level and some mid-career teachers in Des Moines struggle to afford the median cost of rent, data shows.

According to experts' budgeting advice, Americans should aim to spend no more than 30% of their monthly income on housing.

In Des Moines, early-career educators would have to spend more than 43% of their income to make the median rent price in the city: $1,312. The burden is less extreme for most mid-career teachers, who would spend 31% percent of their incomes, on average, to pay for median Des Moines rent.

"One thing early-career educators are facing in Des Moines is a lack of affordable housing," said middle school teacher Joshua Brown, president of the Des Moines Education Association, a union representing the city's public school employees. "It can be hard on any kind of salary, especially if they're single and have no second income, which is true for a lot of our newer teachers." 

The median teacher salary in Des Moines was among the highest in the seven Iowa municipalities analyzed. Teachers making median rent in Iowa City and Ames, like in Des Moines, would spend more than 30% of their pay for median rent in each city.

Comparable median teacher salaries in Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and Davenport stretched further in those cities, which have lower median rent prices. Mid-career teachers in those cities would spend 22.4% to 29.5% of their pay for median rent, data shows.

For Fitzgerald, her move downtown — while expensive — was what she needed.

Diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and recently divorced, she wanted to live in a younger neighborhood with more activity. She thinks she's found that in one of the city's new apartment complexes.

More:Des Moines does not have enough housing for future job growth, study says

"I knew where I wanted to be after treatment, and I wanted to make a riskier choice," Fitzgerald said. "I knew that by paying a disproportionate amount of my income, I wouldn't be saving. But I did it because of the benefit it would give me."

A ninth-year teacher with a master's degree, she makes about $57,000 annually, before taxes, she said. 

Other factors, like the fact that she has no student loan debt, also affected her choice to shell out a higher portion of her paychecks to housing costs. 

Fitzgerald's approach — to closely monitor her monthly budget — is shared by many Des Moines public school teachers, Brown said. DMEA offers multiple personal finance workshops to its members each year, which are all well-attended, he said. 

Because Des Moines public school educators are unionized, they "can at least look ahead and see the potential increases in salary as they move along in their career," Brown said.

But experienced educators that advance through the 13-step salary schedule, "may go the next 20 years without significant wage increase," he explained. 

Lower wage workers face bigger obstacles. A person earning Iowa's minimum wage of $7.25 must work 97 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent in Des Moines, according to a 2019 study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

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Fitzgerald recently accepted a teaching position at a middle school in Atlanta. There, she said, she expects to continue to spend more than 30% of her income on rent.

Atlanta, like Des Moines, is part of the majority of the metropolitan areas studied by USA TODAY deemed not affordable for teachers earning a median wage.

"I wasn't as worried about it before, but one thing I did do is cut back on the amount I'm saving for retirement," she said. "I know that's not good. Being a teacher, I don't want to have to rely fully on a pension."

How USA TODAY analyzed this data

To perform the analysis, USA TODAY relied on data from two sources.

Salary figures came from employers who reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics Program, as released in May 2017.

Because elementary teachers are the most prevalent, the analysis focused on elementary pay in the 10th, median and 90th percentile in each metro. The survey includes public and private schools.

Other analyses of teacher salaries tend to use a single measure of pay: usually starting teacher salaries or median pay, both of which oversimplify the issue. USA TODAY’s spectrum-of-pay approach based on percentiles was designed to account for the fact that most teachers make more money as they gain years of experience. Similarly, examining pay in metro areas instead of states allowed reporters to differentiate between high- and low-cost areas, even within the same state.

To further account for real-life factors, USA TODAY applied the federal tax rate for single filers to each salary figure to estimate elementary teachers’ take-home pay in each metro.

Next, the analysis aimed to show whether teachers could afford to live on their take-home pay. Their pay was compared with the proprietary Zillow Rental Index from the real estate website. That measure starts with median rents in each metro and applies a three-month moving average while accounting for outlier figures.

The analysis focused on rent prices because mortgage payments can vary dramatically based on local taxes, interest rates and insurance rates. Rental prices were most inclusive of the additional costs that factor into housing.

The 291 metros analyzed were those for which data existed in both the federal salary and Zillow data sets.

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Shelby Fleig covers news and features for the Register. She can be reached at shelbyfleig@dmreg.com and 515-214-8933.