November 23, 2012
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Food Stamps…
Newark Mayor Cory Booker is going to try living on a food stamps budget for a week- which is a total of $4.44 a day… could you do that? What do you think you’d have to sacrifice?
When our kid was three months old, I applied for food stamps. We were so far below poverty level that the woman doing the intake asked how we were surviving and gave us emergency food stamps. By the time the month was over, we had new (low-paying) jobs and didn’t apply for any more food stamps. We felt that we could make it alone (although we kept WIC- even if it was inconvenient). We had so much food that month we were on food stamps- more than we’d had the whole year and half that we’d been married. I stocked up on the essentials- rice, flour, sugar, jello, canned vegetables and fruit- and had enough left over to freeze cheaper cuts of meat. WIC gave us milk, eggs, cereal, and cheese for the month so we felt like we had plenty. We stretched everything. One week we got seven meals out of one little chicken. Seven! I never did that again and by the time we ate the last of it, there was very little chicken left.
You don’t eat healthily on that little though. Fresh fruits and vegetables are too pricey and a rare treat. Salads take too much of your available money and don’t stretch or last. Starch is cheap and a staple (as well as filling). Spices are expensive and if you can find cheap knock-off brands, you buy them knowing the flavor won’t be intense. Peanut butter is worth the money, but bread is a staple you can’t always afford and making it from scratch requires yeast (another expensive little extra). You learn to buy everything on sale, or a poor quality (like cheap bags of beans that you have to pick over carefully).
Mayor Booker will have a hard time eating on $4.44 a day because he won’t be able to stock up on things like ketscup, mayo, and mustard and will have to pretend that his kitchen is bare. I’m sure he’ll resort to eating ramen (24 packs of ramen= $2.00). If you add some canned veggies and tiny silvers of chicken, it is tasty (high in sodium) and filling. And I’m sure the Mayor won’t have time to cook from scratch so he better splurge on peanutbutter and bread (and maybe some jelly- but that’s optional!)
I’m glad I don’t have to live so frugally any more and that we can afford fresh vegetables and fruits. But there is a huge part of our population that could use some help this holiday season so if you have a little extra, donate to your favorite food pantry. It may make a difference to some family on the edge!
Comments (17)
I understand stretching the household money so we can eat a balanced diet. I’m thankful that my husband is such a good cook and makes enough to share and store. (pats heart and points to you)
@Jaynebug - we are still very careful with our food budget, but it’s more of a choice and not a necessity any more. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget the times we had very little left and the anxiety it caused. I like the idea of living simply and wonder when I forgot that it was a good choice. (I suspect when we were both working high stress jobs!).
majority of us Filipinos live with this kind of wage… not only for food but to include housing, clothes, and other basic necessities…
I once read an article about how much people spend on food a month. I was floored that it suggested $750 per month was typical! My family of 4 spends around $350 a month and I think that is rather extravagant!
I have used food stamps and I have managed a very tight budget. I don’t begrudge anyone their choices.
Passing on any extra is the right thing to do.
I do not miss being poor. I recall those months when my kids survived on WIC. It’s very very difficult to eat well with a limited income unless you are lucky enough to grow your own.
Not too bad of an explaination of living on food stamps. I have noticed that around the first of the month some of the folks have to hire a taxi to take all their food home.
The poorer folks need to have a shopping cart to carry their food home and yes I did help them to sneak a shopping cart past the magnetic wheel lock.(Los Angeles has that sort of device to prevent the loss of shopping carts). A couple of times I did walk and push their carts home and returned the shopping carts. Some of the smarter poor have a cart from other stores without the wheel lock.
Food expense is not the only problem the poor have to deal with. Having a home or shelter is also not cheap in large cities. Plus there is ultilities which is also not cheap.
@PPhilip - not to mention the problem of even finding a reasonable grocery store in some urban neighborhoods so you have to take a bus 2+ hours to the store and good luck getting frozen items back intact! The local corner stores tend to inflate prices and stock up on easy to cook but not nutrious items.
@tracy - I appreciated the WIC program a lot but there were a lot of times when I had to chose to miss a class so I could attend mandatory WIC meetings where they taught us things like how to read a recipe or make snack bars out of Kixs. But we needed the food more than I needed an A… just made me resentful that they felt it was ok to waste my time since I learned to cook before I was 10.
@to_be_creative - I agree. Being poor means not having options and that is a difficult thing. I am shopping monthly now and it shocks me how much I spend and how often I still have to go to the store for things like bread, milk, fruit, and veggies.
@tribong_upos - that is a very good reminder! There are a lot of people in the world who survive on very little. We need to remember they are a part of our family and help them whenever possible.
@jerjonji - I don’t blame you. I didn’t have to do anything but hope my neighbors didn’t steal my stuff when the WIC people left it outside my door.
@tracy - they left it for you? I got voucher slips for stuff that the grocery store never had and there were no subsitutes- so if they didn’t have the 24 oz of Kix, I couldn’t buy cereal. It was a real pain, but it got us through my son’s infancy!
I hear so many people complain about all the people on food stamps, and I have just never understood that complaint. I know a family of six who gets a fairly considerable amount, but at least they eat. They can’t afford shoes for their kids and are constantly trying to figure out how to get gas in their car, but they eat and survive. I wouldn’t choose that life and I dn’t know many who would. So why all the complaining about it, I wonder?
@Shahrazad1973 - I don’t understand it either. Children that have healthy food stay healthier and are smarter and in the end costs us less money. Besides, who wants a kid to go hungry when there’s a federal program to help? I remember having to chose to work Thursday OR Friday because there was only enough gas for one day and there was NO extra to buy more gas until payday- not because we were extravagant, but because we didn’t make enough to pay all the bills or we’d had an emergency that wiped out our little extra we had managed to save! Am grateful we are past that time of our lives, but many are still stuck there!
that’s 8 tacos at Jack in the Box . . . l could do that but my GIS would suffer and I’m sure the 50# I’ve lost would return quickly
or 4 chicken sandwiches at the McD’s
You could live, but not healthy
@TommyCrowwithWhiteFeathers - that’s my point too!
Very interested to see the results of this experiment. I don’t know if I could do it myself.
Thanks for the add and for the kind words on my blog. Always good to see a long-time Xangan still going strong.