People who spend most all at once go to the big box retailer. People who spend little by little each day go to the quikie mart in the gas station.
These Public and private organizations play a role ... noting the need for more of these resources.
... concerned about how little they have to spend.
People who spend at the big box might buy frozen lobster. People who spend at quikie mart buy chips and soda.
I stand in line at Walmart and watch. I pay cash at the gas station and watch.
A GA University now plans to do a similar study on Medicaid and health car, with a focus on rural health care.
A good study is always about knowing what you don't know and asking questions to discover what you don't know. Will this new study ask the right questions of we who provide the data?
(hope u like excerpt style.)
[ big box retailer ]
Yes, often an inefficient way to spend food dollars. While some items are a good buy, the big packages are often not the best value per ounce/serving size.
It seems to me that the study is looking at ability to budget and plan ahead. The very qualities it examines are very likely to be the same qualities that lead to dependence on these programs to begin with.
How may tax dollars were wasted on this?
I’ve never been on any type of welfare but I try to limit grocery shopping to once a month. Never understood those who make milk runs every other day. Such a waste of time and gas.
Another factor for consideration is drug addicts and alcoholics who sell use of their card for fifty cents on the dollar. Those are usually converted in the first day or two. I imagine that is throwing off the averages.
Perhaps their spendthrift traits have something to do with why they are on welfare. Cognitive science has found that the ability to delay gratification for a greater reward is a predictor of success. Even more so than IQ.
Nope, it’ll buy $30 worth of more bacon, pork chops, and soda.
Why every first workday of the month is ‘Mother’s Day’ around here.
We wait until the next weekend to go to the casinos, after they have dropped all the SNAP money, and collect on the machines. Plus, no crowds since they blew their wad.
I am not sure why this is a story. Give people money and they spend how and when they want. What else is new?
Start with the areas of the country that have the highest percentage of SNAP recipients and cut all those people off of their benefits.
The article doesn’t seem to contain any info about the % of SNAP actually used for food purchases and what kinds of goods the rest of the money is used for...
Illegal aliens like to spend fraudulently gotten bennies on booze and steaks and gambling etc
Same ol story. Watched person pay for steaks with SNAP card and drive away in a Land Rover
Makes me wonder who’s doing the right thing, me or them?
As an intake interviewer at a local non-profit food bank, I speak with countless folks that are receiving food stamps. In fact, a large majority (70-80%) are. And a bunch of the 20-30% that aren’t cannot receive food stamps due to some problem (felony for example) in their past.
Many of them are very open about how they cheat on their food stamps. Most of the cheating involves changing the food stamps into cash which they can use to buy cigarettes and alcohol.
One popular cheat is to buy the choicest, most expensive cuts of meat using their food stamps and then selling the meat to their neighbors for $.50 on the dollar and up. Profitable scam. Happens every day.
I could write a book :)
“39% spend 2/3 of monthly benefit in the first 4 days.”
Perhaps don’t put the whole monthly benefit on at one time.
Maybe put 25% on day 1 of the month, 20% on day 8 of the month, 20% on day 15 of the month and the last 25% on day 22 of the month.
It’s all computer added, so it wouldn’t be expensive to do.
My ALDI here in Florida has milk for $2.49/gallon.
Nothing like folks high on the mountain doing studies about the real little folk. Many SNAP and Food Stamp recipients (the legitimate ones) don’t have terrific, or any cars. The grocery stores aren’t in their neighborhoods. They take public transportation out to a nearby suburb to a grocery store on the bus route once a month to do grocery shopping.
solution, EBT/SNAP recipients need to file every month an itemized list of what they purchased.
1. Give it to the IRS to handle without having to have to hire anybody to get the ball rolling and plan in place.
2. When it’s time to hire, hire some of the more reliable EBT/SNAP recipients.
Except for the elderly poor, who get so little in food stamps as to be laughable, recipients with children are, at least in Illinois, well provided for. Years ago, when my husband was out of work for a few months, during Jimmy Carter’s financially ruinous administration, we were on food stamps for 3 months. We had 4 kids, one of whom was a nursing infant, and we received much more in food stamps, than our normal budget allowed.
As far as recipients spending most of their SNAP benefits right away, and excluding those who “trade” their benefits to others, my guess is that the benefits “burn a hole” in the pockets of some, and as a “treat”, spend indulgently, buying items that would not normally be included in their food budgets. Act in haste, repent at leisure.
I’ll bet the Medicaid study won’t tell them a single thing that most medical professionals can’t already tell them from having “seen it all” over time.
Something else I wonder when looking at this study. Did they do any comparison between the EBT recipients, in terms of how they spent their benefits, and people who don’t get the EBT cards but only get paid once a month? I think that comparison could be instructive.