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Yes, and with the 2 bucks she saved by not buying herself and her husband a can of coffee she could have bought her family...what? A tomato? A bunch of carrots? A loaf of cheap white bread? A can of soup?

C'mon, give them a break. They want a cup of coffee in the morning. Her children are not starving.

I'm always shocked at how hard-hearted many of my fellow freepers can be. I'm not talking about you Maddog, but freepers in general. Isn't it best to give people the benefit of the doubt, unless they are very clearly being deceptive?

With the two bucks she could have saved by not buying a can of coffee she could have: 1) bought ten pounds of potatoes (if her husband picked them for the family at a pick your own place, it would be more like 25 pounds; or 2) a large bag of rice; 3) a large box of macaroni or other pasta. I'm not saying its an extraordinary amount of money, its not, but when tough times descend (and they hit us all sometime in life) you make accommodations with what you have, as nasty as they may be. And that includes strict budgeting of resources and expenditures; taking temporary advantage of government programs for health, housing and food subsidies, if needs be (that's what they're originally meant for, not for the generations who live off them); and moving to New York until you can get back on your feet. Its far better than the alternative.

"Yes, and with the 2 bucks she saved by not buying herself and her husband a can of coffee she could have bought her family...what? A tomato? A bunch of carrots? A loaf of cheap white bread? A can of soup?"

Well where I live you could have purchased 2 bags of carrots or 4 cans of soup or 4 loaves of bread or 2 lbs. of tomatoes and I could get even more if I looked for sales.

Priorities matter and they matter even more when Money is tight! We feed a family of three (plus another adult for lunch each work day) on 150.00 a month!

The family in the article is said to have had a six figure income. if I understand this correctly that means over 100,000. a year! It would take us nearly 5 years for our (me and Mrs. Dawgg's) combined paychecks to equal that one year's paycheck. Yet we could both go 5 years (or longer) without a job and survive quite easily. All because we got our priorities in order long ago.

I've watched friends go through nearly the same thing as these folks in the article. They just couldn't understand why they didn't have any money left at the end of the month.

They asked me for help so I walked them out to their garage and showed them their TWO new SUVs they financed (over 35K each), pointed to their Abercrombe and Fitch clothes and did a once over of their grocery bill and explained what the problem was. All of the stuff mentioned was bought on credit, all of the stuff mentioned are considered liabilities. They were blowing money right and left on stuff that would not put a dime in their pocket. They had a crisis of priorities!

The family mentioned had a crisis of priorities long before they lost the job! They gambled the money train would never stop. They apparently lived an extravagant lifestyle with no thought to a contingency plan for bad times.

I hate to break this bad news to you all but layoffs happen! Further if you don't have the ability to go two or three years (or longer) without a job and still feed your family and maintain your assets then you are dancing on a razor blade.

If you are down to beggin for money on the street then you've definitely need to focus on necessities. Coffee is not a necessity at that point. It is a luxury. Take that two bucks and either buy more food or better yet invest in something that will make you more money.