The snapshot · an interactive story
Watch a month's pay run out.
No abstractions, no averages. Just one graduate worker, one paycheck, and the State of Vermont's own list of what it costs to live here — drained line by line, in their words. Every number is sourced. Scroll to begin.
Money left this month
of $2,865 pay
$2,865
Your full monthly pay, before a single bill.
One month on a UVM stipend.
A nine-month minimum stipend is $34,375. Spread across all twelve months — because rent doesn't pause for summer — that's about $2,865 a month. The State of Vermont says a single adult needs $2,803 a month for basic needs alone. Scroll, and watch the money go.
VT basic-needs budget: $968/mo
First, rent.
Housing is the biggest line — and in Burlington, $968 is optimistic. Even university “grad housing” can swallow an entire paycheck.
“I've experienced houselessness twice — the most recent time caused by UVM. I was houseless for roughly three weeks while studying for my oral comprehensive exam. My current apartment at Catamount Run costs more than my entire wage.”
VT basic-needs budget: $481/mo
Then food.
Four hundred eighty-one dollars a month for groceries — on a research campus that generates over a billion dollars a year for Vermont.
“I come from a country people often call “food insecure.” The most food insecurity I've ever felt is here in Burlington.”
VT basic-needs budget: $534/mo
Getting to the lab.
Cheaper rent is farther out, and transit is thin — so you drive. Gas, insurance, winter tires, and the pothole that ends the month.
“I had to replace my tires and bought the cheapest ones available because that was all I could afford. When one went flat within days, I had to buy new ones again — and because of that one expense, I couldn't afford groceries that month and had to ask my mom in India for help. If I made just a little more, a single pothole wouldn't cause a financial crisis.”
VT basic-needs budget: $223/mo
Health care — if nothing goes wrong.
That's the budgeted amount. One bad day at the gym, one MRI, one ER visit, and it isn't $223 anymore. Your balance just went red.
“Thirty seconds from the emergency room — injured, bleeding, alone — my first thought wasn't get to the ER. It was: what will this cost me?”
VT basic-needs budget: $4/mo
Dental: four dollars.
The State budgets four dollars a month for dental. SHIP covers none of it. The real number is the root canal you can't afford — so you don't go.
“I'm 22 and had to pull a healthy tooth because UVM provides no dental coverage.”
A decision
The dentist says you need a root canal.
The estimate is $1,200 after insurance. You have just over six hundred dollars left before savings. What do you do?
VT basic-needs budget: $133/mo
Savings: the line that's a fiction.
The budget sets aside $133 a month to build a future. By now there is nothing left to set aside.
“I saved aggressively what was left after covering basic needs — yet it's worth less than one month's emergency fund.”
Clothing, phone, personal care, insurance
And the budget still isn't finished.
Add clothing, a phone, personal care, renter's insurance — the rest of the State's bare-minimum list — and a single adult ends the month with sixty-three dollars. That's the entire cushion: one co-pay, one flat tire, one flight home, and it's gone.
“We are not asking for luxury. But we did not agree to be made poor.”
A decision
Your landlord raises rent $150 next month.
You already end the month with sixty-three dollars. A $150 increase means you're $87 underwater — every month, indefinitely.
The math doesn't stay on a spreadsheet.
Financial precarity doesn't clock out when the lab closes. It shows up in the ER, in the advisor's office, in the decisions people make — and the ones they can't afford to.
“Three out of five graduate students in my setting, including me, have experienced suicidal ideation — and faced substandard support from faculty and abysmal access to institutional resources. Does someone have to die before health standards improve? 'It’s supposed to be hard.'”
There is no budget line for grief.
No bereavement leave in the contract. No cushion in the bank. When something happens — when someone dies — the math becomes a moral question.
“I lost my grandfather. I chose not to go to the funeral. Because of the cost.”
The turn
This isn't a budgeting problem. It's a pay problem.
The same office that sets the basic-needs budget sets the fix: a 2026 living wage of $40,435 for a nine-month appointment — a 15% raise from today's minimum. Not generous. Just livable.
The snapshot
This is one month. We collected more than 130.
Every figure here is sourced to the union compensation report and the VT Joint Fiscal Office. Every quote is a real graduate worker. See the data, read the testimonies, or add your own.
Money left this month
of $2,865 pay
$2,865
Your full monthly pay, before a single bill.
Where the numbers come from
Monthly pay is the published 2026-27 nine-month minimum stipend ($34,375) spread across twelve months. Every expense line is the VT Joint Fiscal Office basic-needs budget for a single adult in shared housing ($2,803/month total), prepared under 2 V.S.A. § 526. The $40,435 living wage and 15% gap are from the union compensation report.