Lesson Learned: First Week

Food Stamps work.

I have been thinking and writing about food quite a bit this week. I've been discussing it with my family, numerous colleagues, and fellow students. I have found that our eating habits are somewhat atypical. While I love eating yummy meals and snacks, I never before really placed my diet in the context of most of the U.S. population (except when reading Michael Pollan or being surprised at the amount of soda that people drink). I don't eat meat, though I don't think much about the quantity of meat that others eat. I don’t eat much prepared food, but I never really give it much thought that most of the food sold in Smiths is heavily processed.

My first clue was when Casey the morning guy on KUTV2 took me shopping with the Grocery Guru two days before the project began. The Guru took me around Albertsons and we picked out about $130 worth of food for about $30 after coupons. The Guru paid for the food and I don't think that he could quite understand why I was going to bring it to the Utah Food Bank (which I did... the food weighed in at over 60 pounds!). There were two reasons: 1) I didn't want to stock up for the project, and 2) the food that he purchased for me wasn't as a whole the kind that my family eats.

My second clue was when a fellow student told me that his family with three children has a total monthly food budget of about $350. "How?" He answered that his family eats according to what is on sale. "If a mango isn't on sale, then we don't eat it." They buy items that are nearly expired from the "cart of cheap stuff that will soon be thrown out."

How has the Food Stamp budget been working for us?

Over the first few days of the poverty project my wife and I complained a bit about being hungry. This was probably as much psychological as anything. We certainly have not had much money left over for snacking. But we are not starving. And I do not think that the Food Stamp program is made to have people starve. It is supposed to be enough money for enough nutritional food.

Food Stamps work.

They feed families in need. Without our Food Stamp budget we would have needed to live on $11 for the three weeks. With this governmental assistance, hypothetical for us, we can eat many of our same meals, though with much less cheese and fruit, fewer vegetables, and very little snacking between meals.

Transportation

With $11 and change in our budget outside of Food Stamps, we cannot afford our car insurance or the gas to get around. So we are relying more on bikes, buses and our feet. Though I do drive on occasion, a bicycle is my main method of transportation. The times when I do drive are usually during time crunches or really long distances, such as the one that happened on Monday. I had a soccer game that was a 50 minute bike ride away. Before I even started playing I was tired. (Maybe that's why we lost.)

My wife is a bit more dependent upon the car. She has meetings and teaches classes at various locations which a car makes infinitely more convenient (and she is lazy). She has been jumping on the bus or her bike to reach these locations. Fortunately for her, she receives a free bus pass from work, or she would not be able to afford the bus/Trax system at all with our current budget.

The fact is that we are fortunate enough to have reliable bicycles, free bus passes and easy access to public transportation. If not, living in poverty would be that much more restrictive on our mobility. Like many aspects of this project, change in our travel habits has taken more organizational and practical time.

Thanks.

Food Part III: Food Stamps

Enough about us. Today we'll wrap up the food segments with some Food Stamp Program information. The following was taken from Utahn's Against Hunger, the 2008 Annual Report on Poverty in Utah, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program website.

• Nationally, the Food Stamp Program is now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP)
• Congress established the program under the passage of the Food Stamp Act of 1964
• Originally, books of food stamps were issued but today most benefits are issued via electronic benefits transfer that work like debit cards
  
• SNAP is the country's largest and most far reaching nutrition program
• In Utah there are over 130,000 people who benefit from the Food Stamp program each month
• 53 percent of Food Stamp recipients are children ages 17 and under
• On average, the Food Stamp Program provides just over $1 per meal in Utah
• Only around 60 percent of eligible people are enrolled in the program

Our budget is $1.52 per meal per person. The people we've spoken to about this project are either surprised that anyone could live on such a small budget or are surprised that the Food Stamp benefits that our family could really be receiving is so high. I think that this is related to the food choices people make and is deserving of more discussion later on in the project, so stay tuned.

Thanks,
Shawn

Food Part II: Reality

“I want something else.”

When Bea asks to eat something different for dinner we generally give in. “Ok, eat two more bites and we’ll give you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Friday night at the dinner table Bea used her usual phrase: “I want something else.” Our reply was not what she was expecting. “There isn’t anything else. You have to eat what you have.”

Living in budgetary poverty certainly focuses us in on the cost of our food. But cost is not the only issue we are facing. We spend about one to two hours budgeting (figuring out how much each meal costs) and preparing our meals (from steel cut oats in the morning to dry bean centered dishes at night… a can of beans is cost prohibitive). We also need to spend extra time doing legwork at the grocery store to check prices and make sure that items will fit into our budgeted meal: $1.52 per person. We cannot go to the store with a list of 20 items and leave with 30 additional impulse buys (like snacks). And the grocery store is not just a quick trip by car, since we cannot afford to use our car during these three weeks.

A little light in this picture is that for the next week or so we will not be spending any of our budget on lettuce. My gardening wife has a coldframe (like a mini-greenhouse) that is overflowing with greens. Starting tonight we will be competing with the snails for our salads until the lettuce is gone.

And we are hoping we will pluck some strawberries from our garden during the next 2 ½ weeks. Which is good, since fruit is one of the expenses we are having trouble accommodating.

Although we are disappointed that we won’t be able to purchase plants from the Wasatch Community Gardens’ annual Plant Sale on May 9th as we usually would, we feel very fortunate to have a garden at all. One of the tradeoffs of a more cost effective dwelling, such as an apartment, is not having land available for growing food for your family. The Food Stamps program does cover seeds, and if we did not have a home with a small yard, perhaps we would avail ourselves of the numerous community gardens that are thankfully sprouting up around town.

Another little light to have come out of the project is that last night Bea ate her first salad. She has never liked the texture of lettuce but tried it with some coaxing. She then wolfed through a generous serving. Although she managed to polish off the rest of my dinner, it made us happy to see her eating some greens.

I have been eating delicious food; my wife is a great cook (much of her inspiration during these past few days has come from www.101cookbooks.com). Nonetheless, while it is only the fourth day into the project, I already want something else. I want to take my family to Chanon Thai. Or go to Carlucci’s and get a treat. I already want to quit thinking about how much everything costs. I want to quit restricting my snacking.

I want something else.

Shawn



Our food and budget thus far:

May 1...May 2...
May 3...

Food Part I: Background

As I said before we tend to control our spending in most areas of our life, but we spend plenty on food. We take a list to the grocery store, and buy what is on our list, and then twenty other tasty things that we don't really need, but again, are tasty. If we are tired after a long day at work we eat out. Someone's birthday, we eat out. Picnic in the park? Let's get coffee and a treat. The third largest expense for us after our mortgage and childcare is food.

My family thinks a lot about food. We like what we like. We rotate the same recipes through our diet. We eat at the same restaurants every week or two. We shop at the same grocery store every week. We tend to eat healthily at home (in some part to counterbalance the eating out).

When we first decided to experiment with budgetary poverty, we realized of course that eating out would not be possible (since we only have $11 and change over the three weeks to spend on ready-to-eat and non-food items). We marked numerous more expensive items off our shopping list. But we decided to continue to eat in our usual way shopping at our usual store.

There is one detail about our spending over the next three weeks that I feel is important to point out. We are not going to go out and buy every item that we will be using, but will account for them as we go along and remove them from our final total. For instance, we will not buy a new jar of cinnamon if it is needed but will subtract the amounts we use as we use them. Most people in long- or short-term poverty are not starting from scratch. They have items that they replenish as needed.

One approach to living on a restricted food budget would be to purchase things in bulk at a wholesale club. Anyone who has $35 could afford a membership, but this would mean that a family on a restricted income would have to prioritize this expense over many other needed items. Using a store such as Costco also requires large amounts of money upfront, so while the food may last a long time, money would have to be saved up to pay for it. A Costco membership is just one of the many things that our family takes for granted.

Tomorrow I'll talk about what $1.52 per meal buys us.

Thanks,
Shawn

Family Portrait

My family lives in a modest 900 square foot house with a bountiful garden. We enjoy living downtown. We frequent the Salt Lake City Library, the Downtown Farmer’s Market, and many of the City’s celebrations and events that are a 15 minute walk away.

Our home is located six blocks from east/west and north/south Trax stops and one block from east/west and north/south bus stops. This fact is important. Notice that there is no “car” cost included in our budget. With only $11.36 over our three-week experiment, we would not be able afford a car, so it will remain in the driveway.

While we regularly eat out, we will not be visiting any of our favorite restaurants over the next three weeks.

We will not be able celebrate a birthday with a movie out. Further, we will have to forgo our Netflix films. If we had cable TV we would have needed to forgo that as well.

We also put away one of our mobile phones.

So how would living in poverty affect you? How close are you to where you work? How close to public transportation? Would you need to give up your a car? Most of your entertainment? Your phone? And what about travel? Even if you needed to travel for a funeral or a wedding, that expense would end up on your credit card. How many small purchases are you making each day and taking for granted - a coffee, a magazine, an afternoon snack, or lunch out with friends? Living on a restricted income puts families in a position where not only the major decisions have to be considered but every purchase has to be considered.

Thanks,
Shawn and Megan

Getting Ready

One and one half hours until we'll be living in poverty. Well, we'll kind of be living in poverty. This is an experiment where my family is going to be living at 100% of the federal poverty level for three weeks. What does that mean for us? $18,310 per year or $1,056.35 over the three week period. After our mortgage payment, one cell phone, childcare, utilities and health care we will already be starting way in the hole. So, we are in need of governmental assistance in the form of Food Stamps and a child care subsidy. The Food Stamps are going to provide us with $287.25. Pretty good really, except when you consider that this amount is only $1.52 per person per meal. This leaves us with $11.36 over the three week period for all of our non-food items. Toilet paper. Soap. Dental floss.

But, really, we won't be living in poverty. We'll talk about this in more depth later, but I'll quote Barbara Ehrenreich who did a longer term, more in depth experiment on poverty ten years ago: "there was no way I was going to 'experience poverty' or find out how it 'really feels' to be a long-term low-wage worker." After all, poverty, for us, is only three weeks. And we are volunteering. While it is not a game, this experience is really just a challenge for us, not a way of life.

Over the next three weeks I'll be writing about food, transportation, utilities, school, gardening, healthcare and more. My family will be learning a lot and will hopefully be able to teach a bit in the process.

Why are we doing this? To raise awareness about poverty that 254,000 Utans are experiencing. Who are these people in poverty? Almost all of the adults are employed but a large portion of this number are children.

Poverty can be ended for almost all of the people in this country. But it will take some long hard thinking and some heavy lifting.

I hope this will be a thorough and thought provoking blog.

Thank you.
Shawn