True Confessions

The articles are everywhere, " How to Survive on Food Stamps", " Stretching Your Food Stamp Dollars",  and my personal favorite is the articles where the author pretends to eat for a month using a food stamp allowance.  The issue with all of these? 95% of these articles are written by people who do not have to depend on food stamps to purchase their food. If they get hungry or run out of their allotted food stamp dollars they can purchase more food.

I titled this post "True Confessions" because my family and I receive food stamps. My husband works a full time job and I am a stay at home mother. I am also a breast cancer survivor and living with mild congestive heart failure due to damage done from the chemotherapy. We have five children ages fifteen, twelve, ten, eight, and six. Our eight year old has many developmental issues and autism ( as a side note, I was also pregnant with her while undergoing chemotherapy, which we believe could have caused some of the developmental issues).

My husband works at a local factory and brings home about $1600 a month, during the summer they work 50-60 hours a week and we eat like kings, but the rest of the year he might only work 20 hours a week.  Our family of seven receives $417 a month in food stamps.

I will be beginning a series May 1 on how our family eats on a food stamp budget. I plan to include our monthly meal plan, grocery receipts, budget stretching tips, how we eat gluten free/ real food diet on a tight budget and where I find the best deals on food.

I understand that some readers might feel angry that we receive any benefits, and that you do not want to support others with your hard earned money and that's okay if you feel that way. I felt that way too before I was diagnosed with cancer and my husband had to drop out of college and quit his job to take care of me and our three young children. Our plans never included using food stamps or being one of the faces of the working poor.  My hope is that this series will give hope to anyone struggling to feed their families on a tight budget.

This post is linked to The Modest Mom and Mom's the Word and Growing Homemakers