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Plus her rent in Greenwich is only $1850, which is pretty amazing. There are few places that cheap anymore in the NYC metro. Even the 1960s garden apartments in my town go for $1600+ now.
I give her credit. She is raising her kid in a good town with good schools rather than in the ghetto.
yes i saw that , but that doesn’t mean they can survive in that area regardless …poor decision as far as my opinion .
they cant afford it there period .
we all would love the perks of better areas and better school districts but when you can’t afford it you can’t afford it.
there is plenty of work and decent schools here in the city . as well as yonkers is reasonable .
my opinion is they are trying to live a life in a place they can’t. they don’t belong there.
i would have loved to live in scarsdale and send my kids to scarsdale schools . but you know what ? i was smart enough to know we can’t afford it
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-24-2023 at 11:39 AM..
It is fine, I think, for people to want to better themselves and their circumstances, but in my opinion, they need to earn the right to "move up" -- not just expect to move to an exclusive area and try to make it work for them when they couldn't afford to move there in the first place.
Imo, people need to adjust their lifestyle to their income.
But putting that aside, I think it is disgraceful that the education a child receives in the elementary grades depends on what neighborhood their parents live in. After the sixth grade, if a child at least knows the basics very well, they can go on to teach themselves if they are intelligent enough to do so, although I admit that this would take having supportive parents and teachers.
most desirable areas are always good , better , best when it comes to schools
what homes cost , how much you pay in school taxes and how desirable the area is based on the school system .
everything in westchester and the nearby connecticut towns are based on three things .
school system, proximity to nyc and whether the town has a dedicated metro north or amtrak train station with parking .
where my son is they pay 30k a year in real estate taxes and school tax .
but no dedicated station . greenwich has a dedicated station but lower taxes and hence the school system not rated as high as where my son is across the street in ryebrook
so while the good school systems are good in other areas ,the best are better because they simply have more money.
the best is considered scarsdale in westchester..my son had a 1600 sq foot home and paid 24k a year .
now in rye brook 10 miles north he pays 30k for 4800 sq ft.
so everything is directly related.
we were thinking of moving to hartsdale in westchester at one time as retirees .
that school system is rated good .
retirees can save a bundle , living in a great area if they don’t care about the school system .
See, this is what I mean. I would run out of food stamps every month, so I made the decision to learn to cook. I had no idea what spices I would need. So I thought I would get as many as I could. Spices are expensive and I wasn't in a position to toss food if I didn't like it. I wanted to make sure I liked and ate what I made. For that, you're putting me down.
But, if I had decided to not learn to cook and instead kept getting food stamps and running out of them and having to go to the food bank, you'd be putting me down for that, too.
Sometimes I don't know what you people want. Maybe you want the poor to do a dog and pony show for you so we can prove how useful we are and you can prove how generous you are when you throw some pennies at us.
I wanted to learn to cook well and I wanted more than salt and pepper. Well, salt, anyway. I don't like pepper and I don't have it in my cupboard today.
Incidentally, learning to cook and plan meals brought me from running out of food stamps at the end of the month to actually not having to go shopping until the middle of the next month because I had enough food to last until then. Cooking saved me a ton of money and even if you guys think the spices were excessive, it was well worth it to me.
What free stuff? I never got a free phone. As soon as I got my back pay from disability I moved out of low income housing. I am now only receiving $23 a month of food stamps and I've often thought about cancelling them, but I've been told to hang on to them for a little longer. The fact that I don't have to pay for Medicare is because of my low social security. You could get a waiver to not have to pay for social security, too. All you have to do is is cut your income waaay down.
You know, you people complain so much about people like me being funded by the taxpayers - dude, what do you think I did for more than 35 years? I worked and paid taxes. My taxes supported YOU! They paid for the infrastructure you drive on. They paid for your kids' free school. And since I don't have kids, it's really galling to me that people like you can have kids and not have to pay for them, relying on MY money to educate them.
But what really gets me is that people like you moan and groan about all the "freebies" poor people get. You're not exempt from the freebies. If you want them so bad, get rid of your money and you can have them, too.
I keep offering to trade places with you guys so you can enjoy all the freebies I supposedly get. But I guess the freebies aren't that great after all, because none of you seems to want to do that.
Why wouldn't you do that? You're the one being a snit about food stamps, acting like you could do it so much better. Here's your chance to prove it. Or are you afraid you can't make it on just food stamps?
What people like you don't realize is you can come down just as fast as you go up and all the good decisions in the world won't save you. You can do everything right and still fail. That's a lesson you haven't learned yet.
All if might take is one medical emergency, one natural disaster, or one job loss to pull you down and have you eating dirt. I've seen it happen. It's not pretty. And it sure makes a person humble in a big hurry.
As for a parasitic existence, I left home at barely 17, went back to high school full time and worked full time to support myself. I worked full time and went to community college full time while I was homeless. I bought my land with my disability money and lived on it without indoor running water, heat for only two hours a day, and no plumbing for a couple years. Somehow, I highly doubt if THAT were what it took to get you a nice house, you would opt to do that.
I now have a decent place to live on my own land, paid up (how much is your mortgage?), with septic, electric, and water. And on barely $20,000 a year in Social Security, I am looking forward to saving maybe $8000 every year. Why do you think I'd like to give up those food stamps?
So let's see you live on $12,000 a year. You couldn't do it. And you'll never be able to prove you can do it. I have. And I don't think you could live on $265 a month on food stamps, either.
What decade?
Just what I said. Use $265 a month ONLY for all your food needs. Tell us how you'd do it. What you'd buy, how much it cost. It's called the food stamp test and so far, every celebrity that's tried it has failed at it.
Look at it as a challenge. If you succeed, then when people tell you that you don't know what it's like to live on food stamps, you can come right back and tell them, you sure do.
That's close, but not exactly the same as doing it for yourself. When you yourself want a snack or or something besides hamburger to eat, you're not denying yourself that food because there's no money on your EBT card.
People who count their blessings every day the way you just did isn't called counting their blessings. It's called rubbing it in the noses of people who have less than you. For shame.
It’s always hilarious when one of CD’s Noble poor climbs on their high horse and deigns to lecture the rest of us. You have NO idea what some of us have been through.
I don’t talk about this a lot, because it’s really nobody’s business, and it’s rarely relevant to the discussions that I participate in on CD. But you’ve thrown down the gauntlet, so here goes. . .
Do a Google search on “Guayaquil Slums.” Check out the images. Pay special attention to pictures of the shacks made from split bamboo, sitting on top of stilts over a tidal estuary that serves as an open sewer for much of a city of millions. I VOLUNTARILY lived there for two years. I lived on approximately $150/month, with much of that going to rent a shack so filled with rats, snakes, and spiders that you wouldn’t set foot in it. You wouldn’t even walk down the street where I lived and worked. You’d be too terrified (with good reason) to do so. After paying rent, what little money was left over went to what was generally one meal a day. Usually a bowl of rice, with a fried egg on top. An occasional chicken leg, maybe a couple small slices of plantain. Other days, a small bowl of chicken foot soup. Food poisoning was a common occurrence. I’ve had amoebic dysentery multiple times. Trichuris trichiura, and a whole host of other parasites that left me ravaged, and I still suffer the effects of that today. When I went to Ecuador, I was 6’3”, 200 pounds. When I came home, I weighed 145. And I didn’t go down there as a lardass with a bunch of fat to lose. I was an athlete, with a body fat percentage of approximately 15%. No, I didn’t lose fat, I lost lean muscle mass. Tell us about the time that you lost more than 25% of your body weight, almost entirely in the form of lean muscle mass. I’ll wait. . .
You can’t even imagine what I’ve been through, and what my journey has entailed. Just sit back and enjoy your taxpayer funded, parasitic existence, but don’t you DARE ever try to lecture me again, about what the American poor go through. I’ve won that competition handily. . .
i grew up in a nyc housing project …4 of us lived in a small two bedroom apartment.
my mom had undiagnosed strep throat as a teen which turned in to rheumatic fever .
she never knew it and giving birth to my sister she had a massive heart attack .
she survived but her heart was severely damaged .
my dad was a pro drummer and he ended up having to go to work for the post office so he could have better medical benefits .
my moms medical bills were not covered 100% so we had little money to live on and she couldn’t work .
we were lucky and got an apartment in a city project ..it was a hellish place to live . i fell in with a bad crowd and the fact i turned out okay is a miracle .
but i swore to myself i would never raise my own family in one. it would have been all to easy to drift but i had to fight the drifting from one poor job to another
it is always far more difficult to do something about your situation then do nothing.
yes i saw that , but that doesn’t mean they can survive in that area regardless …poor decision as far as my opinion .
they cant afford it there period .
we all would love the perks of better areas and better school districts but when you can’t afford it you can’t afford it.
there is plenty of work and decent schools here in the city . as well as yonkers is reasonable .
my opinion is they are trying to live a life in a place they can’t. they don’t belong there.
i would have loved to live in scarsdale and send my kids to scarsdale schools . but you know what ? i was smart enough to know we can’t afford it
Well, she is a housekeeper and I imagine there is plenty of work for her there.
I see your point, though. I live in the least expensive town of the ones that surround me because I don't require a large or fancy home, schools don't matter because my kid is an on her own, but I liked what was in this area as far as things to do, food choices, the Atlantic Ocean, and of course easy transportation to the city.
Well, she is a housekeeper and I imagine there is plenty of work for her there
I see your point, though.I live in the least expensive town of the ones that surround me because I don't require a large or fancy home, schools don't matter because my kid is an on her own, but I liked what was in this area as far as things to do, food choices, the Atlantic Ocean, and of course easy transportation to the city.
but if she can’t afford to live there that’s on her.
it’s easy to get a house cleaner job in the city ..
our house cleaner we have lives in flushing which is a cheaper area and the days she comes to us she takes the bus , it’s 15-20 minutes at best
who’s fault is it that this woman in greenwich has to be a house keeper ?
this situation really gets zero sympathy from me and is actually click bait more then common sense or a hard luck story.
poor me , i can’t live in one of the most expensive places in the country because. clean houses ..
NYC is different.
You can get around very well without a car
exactly my point . there are far better areas for low end workers ,which is why nyc is the unskilled worker mecca , not living in greenwich
perhaps this sob story would get more sympathy from those who don’t know the area , but the nerve of a low end worker trying to live in an area even those of us who had good paying jobs can’t do is ridiculous
she may as well cry she can’t afford to live in beverly hills even though she insists on doing so.
what a stupid click bait article to anyone who knows better
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-24-2023 at 01:52 PM..
but if she can’t afford to live there that’s on her.
it’s easy to get a house cleaner job in the city ..
our house cleaner we have lives in flushing which is a cheaper area and the days she comes to us she takes the bus , it’s 15-20 minutes at best
who’s fault is it that this woman in greenwich has to be a house keeper ?
this situation really gets zero sympathy from me and is actually click bait more then common sense or a hard luck story.
poor me , i can’t live in one of the most expensive places in the country because. clean houses ..
I didn't get from the article that she was saying "poor me" just info as to why she used the food pantry.
I personally don't care if people use food pantries or soup kitchens. I support one near me in NJ, and I support City Harvest, which as you probably know rescues and redistributes food in the city rather than let it get thrown out.
We have enough food in this country to feed everybody, so let 'em eat, criminal, crippled, crazy or just plain poor. If someone takes food that they don't need, let karma get 'em.
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