shit you don’t know about food stamps: a guest post!

when i was little, we were on food stamps, and i they looked like this. now you get a fancy plastic card!

i fell in love with amanda pleau and her totally sweet blog, misadventures in portland, about a year ago when she wrote a post about her spanx addiction.  it made me laugh so hard that i was extremely disruptive to others in my workplace. apparently, tax spreadsheets should not be quite so hilarious. also, i was wearing spanx at the time, so it really struck a chord with me.

point being, misadventures has had a place in my “best maine blogs” sidebar (and my heart) for a long time. a few months ago, she wrote this really amazing post about being a recipient of food stamps, and i knew i wanted her to write a companion piece for broke207, because i think there are a lot of young people out there who could benefit from the program, but either don’t know about it, or don’t think they qualify. shockingly, she accepted my request for an unpaid guest post (in between writing her own blog, working, and being a full time student), and here it is. please enjoy it for both its educational and entertainment value, and you should probably add her to your google reader and twitter feed, and head on over to her blog and devour the whole thing, leaving copious comments all the way.

**************************************************************************************

You know that feeling when you log into your Internet banking; your breath is caught in your chest, you start panicking? “Where the did all the money go? Oh my god, how am I going to pay my rent/phone/student loan/insurance? How exactly does one start turning tricks and how long does it take to get the money?” I’ve had that feeling intermittently throughout my twenties, from when I moved out at 21, to when I had a real job with the proper salary, and especially now that I’m a student again.

Two years ago, I wrote this article or my friend Mary. It was my first year back in school at the University of Southern Maine, and I was working twenty hours a week at a coffee shop. I felt great about my financial situation, hopeful for the future. I had goals! A budget! It’s laughable how much things have changed since then: I caused a car accident while driving without insurance, I’m looking at almost $30k in student loans after I graduate this year, and I lost my lucrative waitressing job for doing something really dumb. Once the shock of being fired wore off, that panicky feeling slowly crept up, and I fell into a bottomless pit of despair. “What am I going to doooooooo?”

I figured out my income/expense ratio. It wasn’t good. It only took a few days for me to decide to go to the Department of Health and Human Services and apply for food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. Once upon a time, there were actual stamp-like bills, but now it’s like a credit card.  I’m sure social service workers are probably super annoyed by the difference between the actual name of the program and the common vernacular. My case worker was pretty short with me. He said I needed a letter from my former employer confirming my termination (that was an awkward email), signatures from my roommates saying they were not feeding my sorry, lazy ass, proof that I was a full-time student working at least 20 hours a week, and pay stubs from my jobs. My jobs at that time consisted of a monthly column in the Portland Phoenix (for which I earned one whole Jackson), and my work-study job at the student newspaper. Very shortly after submitting all of my paperwork, I was admitted! There was no phone call, no confirmation, just a shiny new EBT (Electric Benefit Transfer) card with my name on it.

weekend pickthrough: a lesson in customer service edition.

today, something really lame happened. possibly my lamest retail run-in ever.

i was at the mall trying on dresses, and was feeling uncertain about a strapless number with somewhat poorly located pockets. still pretty cute, and at $19.99… definitely worth consideration.

so i threw a belt on it, walked out of the dressing room, and asked the nearest sales associate if she thought it was too poofy around the waist. as in: is the excess pocket fabric making it unflattering? (i may have even motioned to the bunchiness with my hand.)

apparently i wasn’t clear enough, because her response knocked me on my ass:

the road to hell.

is paved with crumpled shopping bags. i was doing really well on my $30 a week plan for needless weekend spending… and then this weekend descended in a haze of clearance racks and impulse buying. does anyone else ever feel like they’re possessed by the devil? come july, i’ll be making some drastic reductions in my spending (to disastrous results i’m sure), but in the meantime… let’s revel in this last summer binge with gusto.

1. target, my second home. i once vowed that i would stop sleeping in sweatpants and old t-shirts and start sleeping in sexy lingerie. i’m not doing a very good job, but two new pieces of pretty from the liberty of london collection @ $4.48 each significantly increase the odds. if someone would come over to my house and finally torch my heinous disintegrating sweatpants, then we’d really be in business.

2. we decided to go to windham for a change, and that goodwill never disappoints. found another addition to my three investigators collection (jupiter jones is gonna solve that mystery SO HARD), and some crazy plastic apple container. i don’t know why, but i’m a sucker for shit that’s shaped like fruit.

3. marden’s sweet marden’s. there’s a brand new gigantic fucking mardens that just opened up in the old walmart building in south portland. i’ll be posting a deep and dirty expose about my experience later this week, but until then… BEHOLD! hobo spanx no more (that’s control top panty hose with the legs cut off for those who aren’t yet aware of my secret shame)! $11.49 for a maidenform control shorts. sure, it feels like my organs are being crushed, but i look SO SKINNY.

4. i ditched the boyfriend in the car for a nap while i took off to the marshall’s for a while. he’s such an old man. amazing asymmetrical t-shirt for $8, and the most beautiful summer dress ever for $19.99. i’m too fat for spandex, but there was a boatload of really nice looking marc by marc jacobs swimwear if you’re in the market for that sort of thing.

5. last time i was at the gap, it was all prairie skirts and straw cowboy hats, which is probably somewhere between windpants and juicy sweatsuits on the scale of shit that i shouldn’t be wearing. mysteriously this weekend, everything was awesome and on sale. oh, and everything that was on sale was an additional 40% off. got a cute skirt and 2 pairs of mysteriously great fitting pairs of 1969 (regularly $79 a pair) for $51.

6. shaw’s was the final stop for grocery shopping, and probably the biggest retail coup of the day. WACKY MAC MOTHERFUCKER! there was and endcap fucking full of it randomly over by the raw chicken. i bought just a couple because i could, even though i didn’t have the coupon that made them free.  but the biggest score was easily the fiber one deal. on sale for buy one get one (@ $4.29 each), i had a stash of $.75/1 coupons that would double, making it $1.29 for 2 boxes $.65 a box. i got 8 boxes for $5.16 total. i even had a $5/$50 coupon which would bring the whole goddamn mess down to almost nothing. it would have been exceptionally impressive if the boyfriend could have been an adult about it, instead of just giggling like a maniac, and telling me how much i’m gonna poop.

$102.58– scandalous! anyway, appreciate it now before i cut myself off from the crazy shopping forever (or until august, whichever comes first). but if the demon possession should happen to be too strong for me… tell my family that i love them, and make sure you wrestle my dead ass into those spanx. i don’t want to be a bloated corpse.

weekend pickthrough- underwater edition.

much like a gigantic jellyfish, this week came out of nowhere. i had all these brilliant plans about getting 8 hours of sleep and being a productive and worthy human… and giant jelly just wobbled in and knocked the infrastructure out of my whole week. fuck.

obviously the wordpress.com feature was totally awesome, but my goal to try and answer all my comments is slowly killing me. maybe i’m 1/4 of the way through… and then of course there was the demon dog. not only did i have to pick up poop for the first time in my life (not impressed jamie- please stick to your regular pooping schedule!), but i also had to rearrange the whole way i formatted my life. no reading in bed because the light will keep the dog up… get up half an hour earlier than usual to take the dog on a walk… my texts to the boyfriend during the work day were no longer about our days or our plans, but about the dog’s bathroom habits and who was next on the walking schedule…

and then this morning, i awoke to find that the gentlemen putting on my new roof, had sealed me into my condo with a large piece of plywood over the door and several layers of blue tarps. i had to locate a hole in the tarps to scream through so that they could let me (and the dog) out. they seemed unimpressed. also, i got asphalt in my hair.

because i was so crazy sleepless behind this week, i haven’t mined as many great pickthrough items as usual.  but hopefully you can still find something to enjoy in this slightly truncated and hastily thrown together weekend pickthrough:

i thought that reviewing applebees on tripadvisor was the lamest possible thing you could do on the internet, i was wrong.

ghost towns of the recession.

does anyone else have one of these? i’m obsessed with trying one out (and frankly i see the “sexually suggestive” nature of the product to be a pro and not a con).

amanda jennifer shows us the hidden hazards of spanx.

what’s better than an adult spelling bee? a DRUNKEN adult spelling bee.

wait, you mean that the 3rd dimension isn’t new? incessant ramblings on the suckyness that is 3-D.

dirtnap daydreams. that portland food coma guy plans the ultimate fantasy binge before he heads to the big vomitorium in the sky. (bonus points for wanting to eat sushi off a naked lady).

am i totally stupid for not realizing that you can make ketchup in your very own kitchen? yeah, probably.

and of course, the week isn’t complete without a wistful fanboy wave goodbye to LOST (i don’t know about you, but i’d cut a bitch to get my hands on daniel faraday’s notebook).

squirrel talk

as you’ve probably figured out by now, there are a crapload of frugal websites floating out there on the internet. and let’s be truthful now, not all of them are good.  and frankly, a lot of them are EXACTLY THE SAME. they’re all pretty much crapping out the same deals, it’s really a question if you prefer seeing them on the pink background or the green. no disrespect, those websites provide a great service in doing all the tedious coupon homework so that we don’t have to, but it does seem like it’s getting harder and harder to find really original takes on thriftiness.  so every now and again when i do stumble upon something fresh, i gotta tell everybody in the neighborhood (that’s you) about it.

i love almostfrugal because it has an adorable squirrel mascot and not a sexified cartoon version of the author. i love almostfrugal because it ignores the deals entirely and focuses on starting productive discussions about the pitfalls of personal finance. but mostly, i love almostfrugal because it’s such a good listener. alongside their own daily generated content, they also seek out other money saving/deal seeking/penny pinching blog folks, and ask them what they’re doing. the same 4 questions every time, but always jammed full of new insight from the various participants. a gem from heather @ inexpensively from her turn on the almostfrugal merry-go-round: ” being frugal means we can lower our budget, but it doesn’t have to mean lowering our standards.” simple, honest, and smart as hell.

since it’s incredibly unlikely that they’ll be knocking on my door anytime soon (um, i mean ever), i thought i would try my hand at their little questionnaire:

what does frugality mean to you? (this sounds like a miss america question)
to me, frugality is the end goal. no matter how you make the magic happen (coupons, garage sales, or just learning to do without), frugality is what happens when we are able to assess the balance between our needs and wants and make decisions that will best serve our financial security. i’m not there yet. i feel like right now i’m just learning to pay attention to the fact that i AM spending. i’m hoping that someday in the near future i will learn how to pause before i get to the checkout counter and be able to successfully make those assessments. someday…

what is something that you do that is ‘typically’ frugally?
consignment & thrift shopping! i’m a complete goodwill whore. i generally refuse to pay retail for most stuff (shoes obviously excepted), but i also prefer old things to new. old navy is great and all, but in a town as small as this, you’re likely to end up on a metro bus with at least two other people wearing the same outfit. vintage keeps things interesting and unique. and the dirt cheapness doesn’t hurt either.

what is something frugal that you do that is unusual?
homemade spanx! shit is EXPENSIVE, and i’m sure that real thing works way better… but whenever i get a run in a pair of control top pantyhose or tights, i cut the legs off and wear them under dresses for stomach control and to reduce thigh rub friction. wow, that sounds really really pathetic when i say it out loud.

what are some of your longterm goals that being frugal will help you to accomplish?
well initially, i’d like to be revolving debt free and have at least 2 months of expenses socked away somewhere safe. and then maybe some retirement fundage? but it isn’t really even about that. like i said in question 1, i just want to figure out how to take a breath before i make a purchase big or small and be able to make a smart choice in the best interest of whatever my concrete financial goals might be. although i’d probably settle for being out of hock to bank of america.

i know, kind of lame! now your turn.