Cassandra L. Wilson
Hus101
Professor Christia
02/01/2016

My Food Stamp Project Results Living in certain environments will affect how you chose to spend your money on groceries. Feeding a family of four is not easy but spending on a budget is even harder. Being allotted a certain amount of money from food stamps, has really made me realize the true value of your choices. I shopped at BI-LO because it was close to my home. That’s another barrier when your choices of grocery stores are not available. My main objective was to make sure that my family of four was feed for the entire week. My family consists of myself, my husband, and our two children. The amount of my food stamps for the week was $162.25. That’s not a whole lot but I succeeded at feeding my family. The first thing I had to do was to make a grocery list. My original grocery list consisted of:
Grits, eggs, toast, orange juice, bacon, milk, red hot links, Roger wood sausage, hamburger meat, French fries, Cranberry juice, peaches, hot dogs, Hawaiian punch, Pepsi, tuna, apples, peanut butter, jelly, noodles and oodles, corn chips, potato chips, chicken, rice, cornbread, collards, pork chop, roast beef, cabbages, neck bones, turkey necks, sweet peas, liver pudding, oatmeal, and kool aid. When I made my list I was thinking of buying items in bulk. That way we could use some of the items for more than one meal. When living on a budget, you have to make very important choices about quantity. I know that kids do eat a lot but as adults we will sacrifice for our children. Upon entrance into BI-LO the only thing on my mind was to shop wisely and look for bargains. Once I collected all the items from my original list, I was $25 dollars over my budget of
$162.25. So I had to adjust my shopping list to this: Breakfasts consisted of, grits, eggs, toast, orange juice, bacon, milk, and hot links. Lunches consisted of hamburgers, French fries, apples, Hawaiian punch, Cranberry Juice, tuna, corn dogs, Ritz crackers, easy squeeze cheese, cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, and Pepsi. Dinners consisted of rice, chicken, corn bread mix, self-rising flour, stew beef, cabbages, sweet peas, turkey necks, collards, pork chops, grease, and kool aid. After my adjustments my grocery bill came to $162.24. I had to put back the oatmeal, liver pudding, peanut butter, jelly, noodles of oodles, roast beef, corn chips, potato chips, Roger wood sausages, and hot dogs. The reason I chose to put those items back is because I could use more of the items that I had bought in bulk. We could eat some of the same food for more than one day. I made these decisions to make sure my family was fed. With the children being home all day, I knew that they would need snacks too. The only snacks that we had was apples. I sacrificed the corn chips and potato chips for the healthier choice. The kids probably wouldn’t understand the choice but it was made for their well-being. Living on food stamps makes you feel like you are not doing something right. It makes you feel like you are depending on the Government to feed your children. It makes you feel less of a parent especially when you have to put back some of your purchases because you don’t have enough money. Knowing all along that if you are getting food stamps you need them because of your temporary position. So as you can see from my chart, I had to use some of the same foods for multiple days and that’s why I bought a lot of my meats in bulk. Now I have a totally different outlook on people who live on food stamps. The monthly allowance for South Carolina needs some serious adjusting. It is definitely not enough money for a family of four at $649 dollars per month. It puts a strain on the parents because you are already feeling low for receiving food stamps but you just don’t have a choice at the time. Being on food stamps will and should make you as a parent want to do better. You will have people talking about you and your spouse because they think you should do better. Everybody falls upon bad times but doing this project and living on food stamps gave me a very uneasy feeling of discomfort. I didn’t like the way it made me feel. After living on food stamps as a parent makes me feel real inadequate. I feel this way because I had to put back some of my groceries and I couldn’t even begin to get the items that I wanted. It made me stressed, frustrated, but it also made me want to do better for my family. This experience has shown me the value of having money for what you need verses having a budget that you must live by due to your circumstances. I will always remember how valuable of a lesson I have learned from this project. This experiment has changed the way I look at grocery shopping now. It will never be the same and I will look for bargains instead, of just picking up the first thing I see. Living on food stamps is real but you don’t have to live their forever.