You were saying, cookiedough — I looked at the requirements for being able to get food stamps, figuring to save on the grocery bill and stash that money away — but we make too much money for that. Then one of my sons got the applications for the free lunch program at school — we don’t qualify — and I was mortified by that.
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There happens to be an area of a “gap” from the completely destitute — to the level of income where people are making enough to get by comfortably. In this “gap” (between those two ends) — if you fall into it, you’ll find that you can’t get by, while at the same time, there is absolutely *no help* available for you at all.
It — unfortunately — turns out that the only hope for people who are in that “gap” — is to fall further down, until they reach the “full help available” to those who are in the very low end, which means you must then end up having no resources, no income, no-nothing — and then — you’ll find the “help” opens up very widely for you...
That seems to be the way it works. You’re not going to find that you can “save money” (unfortunately) by getting a bit of assistance “here and there” while you try to “work your way back out of it”. It seems that the “government help” only opens up when you are completely destitute... (and not to help you keep from getting to that point...)
I know that from working with and helping some other relatives through some trying circumstances of their own... and seeing what was involved in that.
I will never forget going into a winn dixie to buy some peanut butter and oatmeal to feed the family. There was a 400 pound "lady" dressed in some kind of leopard skinned dress in front of me with a whole food cart filled with steak and pork chops and another cart fill with all her other stuff. She paid for it all with food stamps.
When I got outside I saw her loading her goodies into a new caddie. I was a young guy at the time and I just couldn't believe it.