A few years ago, McDonald’s and Visa teamed up to make a personal finance site and workbook for Mickey D’s workers. A nationwide campaign that seeks a living wage for fast-food workers dug up the site, bringing it to the attention of news outlets, and it drew wide mockery online. In the middle of the controversy, they quietly uploaded a new version of the workbook.

So what did they change? Did they adjust the health insurance premium to something slightly more realistic for a person who has two jobs and earns too much for Medicaid? Did they budget for groceries? Did they notice that gasoline costs an average of $3.68 per gallon right now and maybe there should be a budget line for that? Well, no…they slipped in a $50 line item for heat, and adjusted the budget’s spending money accordingly, from $800 to $750. A little less heat if you’re Hispanic, though.

We had a feeling that something like this might happen, so we saved a copy of the original workbook and included it with our first post earlier this week. You can see both workbooks here:

The original version ($0 heat)
The current version ($50 heat)

If you speak Spanish, though, you only need $30 worth of heat per month. Why this is the case, we have no idea, since it ruins the nice even $25/day spending number figure in the sample budget.

PREVIOUSLY:
We Have Some Problems With Visa’s Sample Budget For McDonald’s Employees
Real McDonald’s Workers Share Actual Budgets — And They’re Nothing Like That Corporate Sample

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