You can accuse McDonald's of lots of things, but never say it doesn't respond to changing cultural tides: the salad menu, for example, and those Bo Concept-style chairs in some of the ritzier locations. Also, the marginalization of Ronald McDonald, who everyone realised at some point was just creepy.

Now, in partnership with Visa, the fast food chain has tacitly responded to criticism that you can't get by on a McJob, with some handy budgeting advice for its staff. As the website deathandtaxes and others have pointed out, there are several glaring omissions in the sample budget, including frivolous extras such as heat, food and gas. Perhaps the McDonald's $1 menu comes into play at this point, although with a suggested budget of $20 a month for health insurance, that isn't a long-term solution.

The budget also premises its figures on a combined monthly income from two jobs, which, assuming they're both minimum wage, adds up to almost two full-time positions.

True, McDonald's comes in for lots of flak that might just as easily be directed at other fast food outlets. (The menu at KFC, for example, has always given me the heebie-jeebies much more than the McDonald's menu has.) And none of it acknowledges the small but sincere pleasure of eating a Quarter Pounder With Cheese.

And there is nothing risible about urging people to save. As the brochure states, "consider that saving $3 a day would give you an extra $1,095 at the end of a year". It counsels staff to keep a spending journal and suggests small tweaks to their daily routine such as "try not to use an ATM outside of your bank's system to avoid extra service charges". All good, sensible advice.

The problem, of course, is one of stick-in-the-throat obnoxiousness. The aim of the exercise is to identify where, in a household budget, you can afford to trim the fat – not something any of us would look to McDonald's for leadership on. Being told to "spend less money than you make" by the very people who pay you as little as $7.70 an hour isn't altogether a winning move. It sounds a bit like being told where to get better security by a burglar.

"Every day and every dollar makes a difference" runs the slogan at the beginning of the pamphlet. With the best will in the world, it's hard to imagine how McDonald's employees will make this advice work for them with anything like the success that, when it comes to setting staff wages, it is working out for their employer.