Food Stamps

Food Stamp Coupons

Ever since we started our project to eat poor but not poorly, our friends have been worried about us. They want to know if we are facing desperate financial woes where it's either cut the food bill in half to make the mortgage payment or face losing the house. We have assured them that we're doing fine. The house is paid for, and we don't need to cut the food bill in half (although whose budget couldn't stand a healthy cut in expenses--who among us who turn down a $1,000 per month raise?). We're dedicated to seeing the project through the whole year, in no small part just to see if we can do it. Can we reign in our desires and our spending and be creative enough to make it all work? And can we improve our nutrition and health while doing it? At the end of the year, perhaps we will have discovered some ideas that we will carry with us. The lessons of frugality and health can only really be learned by doing.

SNAP Debit Car

Several friends have asked if we are on Food Stamps (no one seems to know the snappy new name of the program; to the over thirty crowd it will always be known as 'Food Stamps'). No, we aren't, but one in seven Americans are. Over 40 million of our fellow Americans are now part of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program--an all time high. The old Food Stamps program used brightly colored paper bills that looked more than a little like Monopoly money. The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 replaced the paper paper coupons (and the stigma of handing them over to pay for your food) with a sleek debit card called an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, thus allowing the rich and the poor alike to swipe through the checkout, no one being the wiser as to their financial status.

Anyone can apply for Food Stamps. To qualify, you must have a monthly net income below the poverty level (currently $1,838 for a family of four and $2,773 for a family of seven like ours) AND have less than $2,000 in assets. Your house doesn't count into this calculation, but just about everything (including your car) does. In order to be eligible, you pretty much have to have almost nothing. And over 40 million people have qualified and are in the program. Times are indeed tough.