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This week Newark mayor Cory Booker made headlines as he began his food stamp challenge with about $28/week. It says directly on the SNAP website that food stamps are to supplement the food budget, not be the entire budget.
Based on calculations for New Jersey, a two-person household is expected to use about $320 of their own money on their food budget in addition to the food stamps they receive.
So...politics aside and sociological debates aside, why do these challenges only use the money from SNAP and never the expected personal contribution? Of course it is going to be challenging to use only $28/week but $28 was never intended to be the entire budget. I have a hard time taking these challenges seriously when this information is never brought up. It is never addressed. Why?
If that is on the SNAP website, those folks must be out of their minds. That would make a food budget of over $400 a month! That will buy a lot of rice and beans.
We budget $300 a month for two of us on a $100k+ income, and eat quite well.
Benefits vary widely state to state dependent on the cost of living and other factors including the applicant's income, number of dependents, school lunch programs....
Generally speaking, each receipient get about $1.50 per meal, less than $30 a week, per person.
If that is on the SNAP website, those folks must be out of their minds. That would make a food budget of over $400 a month! That will buy a lot of rice and beans.
We budget $300 a month for two of us on a $100k+ income, and eat quite well.
Food budgets depend on a lot of things. One of the ineffciencies in welfare.
What do you eat and where do you show make huge differences.
Where I used to live getting to a lower priced store could be hard if you didn't have a car(and even with public transit you are limited in how much you can carry...most sub-compact cars can carry more than a granny cart) so you could spend more.
Also the big budget killers are things like meats and something like simulac(for infants) or ensure milk(for sick elderly people)expensive items that may or may not be covered or fully covered elsewhere(depends).
Perhaps there are many people who don't have the money to contribute to their own food.
Here is a blog by a couple that started eating on $30 per week as an experiment and have kept it up for four years now. Eating on only what food stamps pays doesn't even take planning, just print our recipes that other people already put together.
One person can eat quite well on a $30.00 a week food budget as has been demonstrated over and over again.
Here is a sample shopping list I thought up in about 5 minutes:
1 gallon milk: $3.00
1/2 gallon orange juice: $3.00
1 box oatmeal $2.00
1 jar peanutbutter $3.00
1 loaf wheat bread $2.00
3 cans tuna fish $4.00
3 pounds chicken thighs $5.00
5 pounds potatoes $2.00
2 heads lettuce or spinach $3.00
3 pounds carrots $2.00
4 packs ramen noodles $1.00
One person can eat quite well on a $30.00 a week food budget as has been demonstrated over and over again.
Here is a sample shopping list I thought up in about 5 minutes:
1 gallon milk: $3.00
1/2 gallon orange juice: $3.00
1 box oatmeal $2.00
1 jar peanutbutter $3.00
1 loaf wheat bread $2.00
3 cans tuna fish $4.00
3 pounds chicken thighs $5.00
5 pounds potatoes $2.00
2 heads lettuce or spinach $3.00
3 pounds carrots $2.00
4 packs ramen noodles $1.00
That's a pretty starch-heavy diet. Also, around here a HALF gallon of milk is $3.00. A full gallon is almost $5. Your sample shopping list also assumes a fairly well-stocked pantry (herbs, spices, oil, vinegar, etc.), which may or may not be the case with a poor person/family.
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