Living on food stamps

[HeatherC]

That's a good point Marionette that one might not shop sales or coupon as much if it were not your own money. I actually don't coupon at all. I pretty much buy what is on sale as far as meats and veggies and just base our meals around that. I may stock up a little if it is a really good deal, but even then I find the sales are pretty cyclical and will come around again.

I would like to think that people would actually shop more carefully on food stamps to get the most they could. But I think a lot of people...whether richer or poorer don't think or plan much beyond the immediate future. And that is what probably gets a lot of people deeper into money troubles.

 

[eliza61]

$668 a month for five people? That is like $167 a week. More than I spend on our family of five with three teens and we eat very well. Is that number really the case? What am I missing?

don't know how you eat but no way could my family of four with 3 teens make it on 668 a month. generally I'm up around 750-800 a month. I will admit I dont do beans or soup.

2nd don't know where you live so don't know your food shopping options. In camden there is no grocery store, so you shop whats in the bodegas. One of the reasons why I loathe living in the suburbs is I have to drive every freakin place to shop. so now if you don't have a car it could be an issue of acces. the nearest shoprite to me (and I live in a standard upper middle class development) is still over 3 miles away. Walmart is a 25 minute car ride.

So exactly how are they to shop more "carefully"? I laughed at the "sushi" post. How would the folks in Camden get fish unless it's frozen fish sticks to make "sushi"?

 

[pocomom]

Are you vegetarian? Just noticed there is not much meat in your menu, which would add to the budget

There is no meat yes we are vegetarians... but we also eat organics (when possible) people often expect that would significantly reduce our bill, and I don't doubt it lowers it some, but if you purchase meat when it is at loss leader prices it would actually be cheaper than a lot of our normal veggies per pound- and tofu NEVER is on sale here- over 3.00 for a lb package. I used to use 4 packages to make our sesame tofu- now I used 21/2 and made a cheap stir fry. Not to mention the morningstar farms foods like "chik nuggets" my kids normally love- $4.29 a package. Not on the menu this month! Relying more on dried beans and other cheap proteins will lower anyones bill, but being a vegetarian without doing that can actually raise your bill!

 

[Marionnette]

don't know how you eat but no way could my family of four with 3 teens make it on 668 a month. generally I'm up around 750-800 a month. I will admit I dont do beans or soup.

2nd don't know where you live so don't know your food shopping options. In camden there is no grocery store, so you shop whats in the bodegas. One of the reasons why I loathe living in the suburbs is I have to drive every freakin place to shop. so now if you don't have a car it could be an issue of acces. the nearest shoprite to me (and I live in a standard upper middle class development) is still over 3 miles away. Walmart is a 25 minute car ride.

So exactly how are they to shop more "carefully"? I laughed at the "sushi" post. How would the folks in Camden get fish unless it's frozen fish sticks to make "sushi"?

And that's part of my point about why the allowances are so high.

I have a son who is attending Penn State at the State College campus. He lives off-campus and has a car but the snow this winter has made it pretty tough for him to get out to a regular grocery store. (He really should have thought buying a Camaro more thoroughly.) He had to shop in the local grocery store in town for a couple of weeks and then carry those bags back to his apartment. The price of his groceries doubled during that period!

Now, I'm not comparing the inconvenience that he suffered for two weeks to the everyday problems of urban life, but it does illustrate how access to affordable groceries can have an effect on your budget. Not only did he pay more for his groceries, he also had to shop more often because he could only carry a limited amount back to his place.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

I love getting my meats from BJ's the quality is good and buying in bulk is way cheaper than the grocery store!

Went to the store last night got enough stuff for 10 meals and spent $84 and used $21 in coupons!!!

Crockpot chicken will last 2 sometimes 3 meals
Crockpot Beef stroganoff will last 2 meals

Hotdogs at BJS were 30 for $3.00 so I will make hot dogs one night. Hotdogs cut up and put into baked beans. Pour that into a loaf pan and mix up some corn bread to place on top of the hot/bean mix it will last 2 meals.

Pork chops were BOGO so there are two meals

We will have breakfast for dinner- scrambled eggs, toast, ham

I bought a big package of ham that I will use for the above breakfast/dinner night. Then I will have ham and mac and cheese one night.

I can't wait for the growing season to get here. I am craving fresh tomatoes and cucumber.

 

[pocomom]

To the OP:

I think this was a great lesson for your kids. Glad you stuck with it. Once summer is here, will you be starting the Victory Garden? Is this something you'll do every year? My kids want to start a veggie garden, but the rabbits & other animals in the area will just eat it up. Maybe we'll try it anyway this summer & put a tall fence around it and see what happens.

You'll have to share your vegetarian recipes!!

We actually started our garden in our garage already. We have grow lights. We had a garage garden all winter last year and had squash, peas, carrots, lettuce and tomatoes right from the garage! We used old seeds this year and everything is sprouting fine. Glad to know because I used to throw the old ones out. We have a garden every year and we do lose a bunch to the wildlife so I overplant as much as possible, which also keeps the weeds down. We partially burried the fence which helped with the little critters and I'm trying to plant things with old gallon jug container shields around them this year. We're also going to try to put in a higher fence- but when the deer are motivated they will just jump it, I'm sure. I have some luck with waiting a little longer to plant - when there is more in bloom my veggie plants don't look so appealing.

 

[eliza61]

I love getting my meats from BJ's the quality is good and buying in bulk is way cheaper than the grocery store!

Went to the store last night got enough stuff for 10 meals and spent $84 and used $21 in coupons!!!

Crockpot chicken will last 2 sometimes 3 meals
Crockpot Beef stroganoff will last 2 meals

Hotdogs at BJS were 30 for $3.00 so I will make hot dogs one night. Hotdogs cut up and put into baked beans. Pour that into a loaf pan and mix up some corn bread to place on top of the hot/bean mix it will last 2 meals.

Pork chops were BOGO so there are two meals

We will have breakfast for dinner- scrambled eggs, toast, ham

I bought a big package of ham that I will use for the above breakfast/dinner night. Then I will have ham and mac and cheese one night.

I can't wait for the growing season to get here. I am craving fresh tomatoes and cucumber.

LOL. shelly I'm going to pick on you a little if you don't mind.

First, let me say my experience is from my food pantry run out of a baptist church in the middle of Camden (which is the poorest city in the northeast).

LOL. BJ's? seriously? the nearest food warehouse to Camden nj is probably 20 miles away with no public transportation.

Of course it's easy for you to buy in bulk. "growing season". I'm assuming you have dirt to plant some thing?

see imo the problem with these little "play" scenerios is they rarely mimic the entire scenerio.
Take away your ability to get to the warehouse, take away your nice backyard where you have the ability to plant, take away your crock pot and it's a different scenerio.

a while back pbs had this reality show where they would transplant families into different situations and after a month they would rate them on how well they survived.
One season they transplanted 6 families back to the westward expension. made them pioneers. end of season pretty much almost every family would not have survived. all of them had this "little house on the prarie" view and no idea of the actual hardships.

 

[HeatherC]

Eliza..I guess I am lucky with sales or something. We eat really well too and I average around $150 a week. We are also not big on beans...but I do like a crockpot of aoup on a snowy day.

I usually make a "typical" dinner of meat, potatoes and vegetables. This week, for example, we are having London Broil, Center cut Pork Roast, Spaghetti with Roasted Vegetables, roast chicken, Beef Stew, and chili tonight since we are getting a foot of snow.

I am lucky that one grocery store has really good produce and prices (Market Basket) so I buy a large bag of oranges for $3.29, strawberries 2 for $5, potatoes 10lbs for $3, etc..

DH takes leftovers and Kids and I bring lunches. Usually buy 2lbs of turkey and they take a sandwich or leftovers with fruit, chips and a couple cookies.

I buy most snacks at BJ's since that is one thing I find cheaper in bulk for us.

I also buy two gallons of ice cream..when it is gone, it is gone. Also make a box cake or brownies if we want dessert one night.

I find that I spend less if I do a "full" dinner instead of soup or sandiwches or breakfast for dinner. Otherwise, everyone is back in the kitchen looking for food in an hour.

 

[pocomom]

Eliza..I guess I am lucky with sales or something. We eat really well too and I average around $150 a week. We are also not big on beans...but I do like a crockpot of aoup on a snowy day.

I usually make a "typical" dinner of meat, potatoes and vegetables. This week, for example, we are having London Broil, Center cut Pork Roast, Spaghetti with Roasted Vegetables, roast chicken, Beef Stew, and chili tonight since we are getting a foot of snow.

I am lucky that one grocery store has really good produce and prices (Market Basket) so I buy a large bag of oranges for $3.29, strawberries 2 for $5, potatoes 10lbs for $3, etc..

DH takes leftovers and Kids and I bring lunches. Usually buy 2lbs of turkey and they take a sandwich or leftovers with fruit, chips and a couple cookies.

I buy most snacks at BJ's since that is one thing I find cheaper in bulk for us.

I also buy two gallons of ice cream..when it is gone, it is gone. Also make a box cake or brownies if we want dessert one night.

I find that I spend less if I do a "full" dinner instead of soup or sandiwches or breakfast for dinner. Otherwise, everyone is back in the kitchen looking for food in an hour.

The other thing to consider is if your bill is just "food" or is it counting your "others" I was comparing with my friend our weekly bill - and mine orginally was a bit higher which I was surprised about because they are not particularly careful about grocery spending- then we realized she was counting only her food and I was counting diapers and everything else we buy.

 

[pocomom]

I am also a HSing mom. This would be a great life lesson for my 4th grader.

Ok, just looked up my state and they would give a family of four $668 a month. This is way more than I usually spend. Not much of a challenge!

average benefit would be $4 a person a day- which we used as a starting point. For you that would be $112 a week.

 

[Marionnette]

The other thing to consider is if your bill is just "food" or is it counting your "others" I was comparing with my friend our weekly bill - and mine orginally was a bit higher which I was surprised about because they are not particularly careful about grocery spending- then we realized she was counting only her food and I was counting diapers and everything else we buy.

Non-food items such as toilet paper and diapers are not covered by SNAP in PA. Surprisingly, seeds and plants for growing food are covered. So, those high SNAP allowances are not even considering the cost of many things people often pick up at the grocery store.

 

[eliza61]

Eliza..I guess I am lucky with sales or something. We eat really well too and I average around $150 a week. We are also not big on beans...but I do like a crockpot of aoup on a snowy day.

I also buy two gallons of ice cream..when it is gone, it is gone. Also make a box cake or brownies if we want dessert one night.

I find that I spend less if I do a "full" dinner instead of soup or sandiwches or breakfast for dinner. Otherwise, everyone is back in the kitchen looking for food in an hour.

No actually you're not lucky. You are the bench mark we should be aspiring too for all families.
My mantra is not so much to teach people how to eat on food stamps, that's sort of like putting a band-aid on a broken arm.

I just like to point out that we make these observations from the safety of our fairly middle class lives. the fact is that if Op and others are stay at home moms, right there they have a leg up on the average food stamp recepient.

One other issue is that many folks really don't know how to shop. My dh was one of them. He basically walk into a supermarket, no list except what I told him we need and go to town. single working mom that is burnt out on sunday might not even remotely think about getting cutting coupons. Heck Heather, it wasn't until I was in my 30's where I even got the sunday paper to get coupons

I grew up in NYC. manhattan. We were lucky back in the day that we had butchers, produce markets etc etc. mainly we also had a gazillion restaurants in walking distance the sold "meals". so we picked up alot. What would I know about "coupons".

so i guess I always say, before we just simply say "it should be so easy" to eat like I eat, consider the entire circumstance of your life that supports your ability to do so. I'm guessing there is a ton of stuff that you think is ordinary (crock pot) that many poor people do not.

 

[chobie]

How do people get coupons? From the newspapers and online, right? So a poor person on food stamps can access these things, how? If your living hand-to-mouth you can't plan ahead. You can't spend the gas money (if you even have a car) to drive all over town for the best deals.

Anyone here read this book?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312626681/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

 

[NotUrsula]

I agree with that, but for a different reason - technology. Rather than paying cash for lunches, our schools use a barcoded student ID. So whether the kid is paying full price for lunch or getting it for free is entirely invisible on the point-of-sale end; the only difference is if/how much the parents have to deposit into the student's dining account for those meals.

Nah; it was all about the effort that the school wanted to put into it. It was quite a simple matter to mask the identity of the free-lunch kids, and IME, most schools did so.

I went on free lunch after my Dad died, in 1973. None of my peers ever knew what I did or did not pay for my lunch at school, because all they ever saw was the same kind of lunch card that they carried themselves. (I still have all my high-school lunch cards in a scrapbook, btw.)

I went to a high-crime school in a very poor county; kids never carried lunch money and the cafeteria did not deal in cash, because there was no secure place to keep it. The only safe was in the office. The way that it was done was that parents mailed lunch checks or money orders to school monthly (or less often, if they could afford to), and the amount was put on account for you. Every kid in homeroom whose parents sent money OR who was on free lunch got a monthly lunch card that was used in the cafeteria as a "show-pass" -- we had no a la carte choices, everyone was served exactly the same thing, so you either got lunch or you didn't. The only way to know for sure whose lunch was paid for by the Feds was to look at the ledger kept in the office, because that was the only place where the info was written down.

These days my kids COULD pay cash for their lunches in some cases, but I'd rather not hassle with that. I send a check in August to pay the entire year up-front, and they get a card. The kids who get free lunch get a card that looks just like it. It's spiffier than the paper one I carried 40 years ago, and the account records are kept in a database instead of a paper ledger, but the concept is exactly the same.

 

[momof3ds]

We cut the newspaper but get coupon circulars in the mail.

And, even if you can't drive all over. You can look at a circular for whatever store you are in and adjust for the sales you find.

Me, I always check the meat and poultry sections for stuff that is marked down because its about to expire. I bought like 6 packs of chicken thighs at BJs last week for .50 a pound.

I do the same thing at regular grocery stores too.

How do people get coupons? From the newspapers and online, right? So a poor person on food stamps can access these things, how? If your living hand-to-mouth you can't plan ahead. You can't spend the gas money (if you even have a car) to drive all over town for the best deals.

Anyone here read this book?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312626681/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

 

[chobie]

We cut the newspaper but get coupon circulars in the mail.

And, even if you can't drive all over. You can look at a circular for whatever store you are in and adjust for the sales you find.

Me, I always check the meat and poultry sections for stuff that is marked down because its about to expire. I bought like 6 packs of chicken thighs at BJs last week for .50 a pound.

I do the same thing at regular grocery stores too.

Ok, but the amount of coupon and planning that many of the people on this board engage on is not realistic for the truly poor.

I don't get coupons in the mail where I live for everyday items, just restaurant coupons, which wouldn't help me if I were on food stamps.

Yes, they can check the circulars of the individual store and buy sales, and people with limited money for food probably do that even if its not "their" money.

And many poor people have only overpriced quicki-marts in the neighborhood.

My point is, it's not that easy for everyone to be ultra thrifty shopping.

And BJ's, really?

 

[momof3ds]

Yes really BJs.

But, yes when I was a kid we did not have a good grocery store in our immediate neighborhood and yes we were on foodstamps. No, my mother was not a good shopper but we did walk to the better grocery store in the better neighborhood. That walk was easily 45 minutes to an hour each way. we did it all year summer, winter, whatever.

I have seen people get rides from family members or friends to shop at better stores, or utilize public transportation. So, yes, I know that many places only have limited stores in their immediate areas (been there, done that). There are ways around that as well.

 

[HelenePA]

I have no "clubs" (bj's costco) with in 2 hours of me. The closest is in Wilkes-barre. I am not on food stamps but I would be screwed on food stamps with out a car. Even the closest neighborhood store is a mile away.

 

[FergieTCat]

I have seen people get rides from family members or friends to shop at better stores, or utilize public transportation. So, yes, I know that many places only have limited stores in their immediate areas (been there, done that). There are ways around that as well.

I'm not on food stamps, but I do use public transporation to get to a better supermarket than the one in my neighborhood.

It might be a New York City thing, but the grocery store in my neighborhood is small and overpriced. I think they try to take advantage of the elderly. So, I have a little rolling shopping tote and take the bus to the bigger Stop-and-Shop supermarket. It's an effort, but the prices are cheaper, and I can usually save 20-30% on my bill with coupons and the store's club card.

So, yes, it's not unusual in some areas.

 

[nhmommy]

We actually started our garden in our garage already. We have grow lights. We had a garage garden all winter last year and had squash, peas, carrots, lettuce and tomatoes right from the garage! We used old seeds this year and everything is sprouting fine. Glad to know because I used to throw the old ones out. We have a garden every year and we do lose a bunch to the wildlife so I overplant as much as possible, which also keeps the weeds down. We partially burried the fence which helped with the little critters and I'm trying to plant things with old gallon jug container shields around them this year. We're also going to try to put in a higher fence- but when the deer are motivated they will just jump it, I'm sure. I have some luck with waiting a little longer to plant - when there is more in bloom my veggie plants don't look so appealing.

Hair picked up from your local barber scattered around the garden sometimes helps keep the critters away.




In my area it is very common for food stamp recipients to do no budgeting at all I have often heard first hand talk of buying good steak and lobsters because food stamps came in. I live in a lower middle class area with whole towns where no one would be called truly poor by NYC standards. I personally am a big fan of Food angels and services like it because they do all the budgeting for the family.