Is it your money to spend when you still owe someone or are getting assistance? - Page 2

[ilovemygirl]

OP Here .. Thanks for all the replies. 

Just to clear up... my question was in regards to people who regularly and openly flaunt spending that is constant and wasteful. I certainly don't begrudge a family having a nice time at the fair one day or renting a movie once in a while, having a special item or two that were obtained as gifts or inexpensively second hand, etc. 

[lilyka]

Does it even matter if they are obtained second hand or as gifts or even on sale?  I mean no one, regardless of how much they make should spend beyond their means but if a little help with groceries or utilities stretched your means you are entitled to spend it on whatever is important to you.  We all have a our things we spend on.  Spend foolishly on even. i would say the majority of our purchases are happy making anyway.  we could dress like hutterites, live in tiny houses, and eat beans and rice every day and get along just fine.  But we choose not to.  Because doing something else makes us happy.   I could live in  a much smaller house, share a room with one of my kids, get rid of our pets, stop lighting candles and burning insense when we pray.  Really my kids do not need birthday cakes or gifts, they have everything they need and they are a little over weight.  We don't need to go camping or out to movies, they can walk to school.  Don't need the fancy school supplies.  Would not die without air conditioning and could turn the heat down.  I could drive a beater car and take my chances.  Heck, I could get of the computer right now and learn some auto repair. There are lots of things we could do to cheapen our lives.  but we like little things that make us happy and comfortable and consider most of them worth the money.

there are a million ways I could cut back, but honestly how i spend my money and how that effects my family is my business.  I am on medicaid so my kids don't need health insurance...boom I have an extra $100 added to my child support, because we have the poor pass we get discounts on stuff.  Boom saved $100 on swim passes and art classes.  Now I have $200 above our budget to spend however I want.  and if i want a designer bag or name brand clothes for my kids I am really as entitled to it as anyone else.  Lets face it, no one needs it.  So long as I am providing for my family (be it with assistance or not) and no one is getting neglected and we are not going into debt, no one has a right to judge.

[terese17]

If I owe my sister 50$ and instead I spend that money getting my hair done, yes, I should prob give her the 50$ first. However, a problem arises when someone else, who is not part of the situation, decides that they have a say. What if my sister tells me to go bet my hair done? And you only know that I owe her money, and that I spent that money on my hair? None of your business, and I don't owe you an explanation. Now if you are referring to this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/19/leroy-fick-lottery-winner-food-stamps_n_864113.html. Then I think you might have something.

[Drummer's Wife]

Originally Posted by terese17 

My children go to private schools basically for free because of our income. We are also on WIC and the kids get medicaid. I'm confused by this post. Does this mean that I am never supposed to rent a dollar movie? Am I supposed to get rid of our Internet and telephones? I guess the iPad that I am writing on now, which was a bonus at work, should have been sold? None of them are necessary to live. I have expensive name brand shoes, purses, wallets, diaper bags. All are hand me-downs from other people. I'm sure the people behind me at the grocery store are wondering what the he'll when I pay with my WIC checks wearing my coach shoes and my petunia pickle bottom diaper bag. Should I turn to them and say "well really it's ok, because these are all gifts and second hand.".

Quit judging other people unless you've walked a mile in their shoes.


Wouldn't it be easier if all the poor people would just go away and then we wouldn't have to think about them?

Didn't you know? poor people shouldn't have nice things.

[MidwifeErika]

I don't worry about it one way or another. If a person qualifies for assistance without cheating or lying, then they are entitled to that assistance regardless of what they do with all the rest of their money.

[Comtessa]

Originally Posted by lilyka 

Does it even matter if they are obtained second hand or as gifts or even on sale?  I mean no one, regardless of how much they make should spend beyond their means but if a little help with groceries or utilities stretched your means you are entitled to spend it on whatever is important to you.  We all have a our things we spend on.  Spend foolishly on even. i would say the majority of our purchases are happy making anyway.  we could dress like hutterites, live in tiny houses, and eat beans and rice every day and get along just fine.  But we choose not to.  Because doing something else makes us happy.   I could live in  a much smaller house, share a room with one of my kids, get rid of our pets, stop lighting candles and burning insense when we pray.  Really my kids do not need birthday cakes or gifts, they have everything they need and they are a little over weight.  We don't need to go camping or out to movies, they can walk to school.  Don't need the fancy school supplies.  Would not die without air conditioning and could turn the heat down.  I could drive a beater car and take my chances.  Heck, I could get of the computer right now and learn some auto repair. There are lots of things we could do to cheapen our lives.  but we like little things that make us happy and comfortable and consider most of them worth the money.

there are a million ways I could cut back, but honestly how i spend my money and how that effects my family is my business.  I am on medicaid so my kids don't need health insurance...boom I have an extra $100 added to my child support, because we have the poor pass we get discounts on stuff.  Boom saved $100 on swim passes and art classes.  Now I have $200 above our budget to spend however I want.  and if i want a designer bag or name brand clothes for my kids I am really as entitled to it as anyone else.  Lets face it, no one needs it.  So long as I am providing for my family (be it with assistance or not) and no one is getting neglected and we are not going into debt, no one has a right to judge.

I think lilyka put it well. 

I think part of the problem is the way we're framing the question.  We're asking, "Are poor people / people who owe money / people receiving assistance entitled to spend money on frivolous things?"

As though people who are NOT poor, do NOT owe money, do NOT receive assistance, ARE entitled to those things.

Perhaps we should be asking, instead, Why do any of us feel entitled to anything?  I mean, regardless of how much money we make, am I entitled to spend the money we have on anything I deem important or valuable?  Where does a responsible person draw the line?  At some point, I think we all need to say, "yes, this money is in my possession, but that possession does not give me carte blanche to spend on whatever I feel like having or doing." 

Here's two major reasons why:

1) I think we ALL owe a debt, somewhere.  My BIL is a millionaire.  Why?  Because he's a VP of a bank that got bailed out using taxpayer money.  And he got a big bonus as a result.  Argue the ethics of that all you like (I certainly have!!!) -- but the end result is, he's wealthy.  But he owes that wealth to the taxpayers as surely as the person who is receiving food stamps.  Perhaps MORE, because the food stamps are part of our collective responsibility as a society to ensure that nobody goes hungry -- and paying for my BIL's new grand piano just doesn't fit comfortably in my view of good use of taxpayer dollars, KWIM? 

Even people who have "worked hard" to earn a lot of money can't chalk that all up to their own effort.  At some point, we all owe what we have to someone else.  Poor people in developing countries subsidize our wealth every day.  I couldn't afford to buy clothes, electronics, food, if somebody at some point on the chain did not sew those clothes, put together those electronics (and mine the metals that go into them), grow and pick the food, etc., at rock-bottom non-livable wages.  Right?  We all know that. 

You could even track it back a few generations and say, to some degree, what I have depends upon the world into which I was born.  If I am born a poor woman in Uganda, it doesn't matter how hard I work, I'm not gonna have the opportunities to gain wealth that a middle-class man in Germany or Denmark would have (for example).  It's not as though the playing field is entirely even, right?  Everyone starts at at different place.  Loans, benefits, aid, etc. are an attempt to level that playing field enough to ensure that nobody completely falls through the cracks of survival.  And still they do, every day. 
 

2) It is part of the way that I understand my faith, and my responsibility to the world as a Christian.  As St. Basil the Great said, “The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot;
the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.” 

So no, as long as people around me are poor, hungry, oppressed by our economic system, inadequately clothed, developing foot abscesses from wearing bad shoes all winter on the streets ... I really feel that I am NOT entitled to luxuries.  Do I do a very good job of forgoing them?  No.  But I'm working on it.  And in the meantime, I confess that as sin, because I truly believe that it is.  For me, or for someone else, regardless of where they got their money. 

[mamarhu]

Beautiful post, Comtessa. That is exactly what I wanted to figure out how to say! But taking one step back, I think the real sin is having (things, food, opportunities, health, love, whatever) without gratitude. It is the attitude of entitlement that irks me, whether it is a wealthy person expecting better service at a resturaunt, or a poor person always feeling they deserve more and more assistance. I don't begrudge anyone pleasure in life, in (almost!) whatever form that takes, but I am saddened when they can't appreciate it. 

[Geigerin]

There's a really great challenge that a number of members of congress took part in a while back. They had to survive on the food stamp (now SNAP) budget for 30 days. In our state, citizens are eligible for assistance at 200% the poverty level (which is very outdated, btw...I believe HHS is working on updating the definition of 'poverty' in the US). That's definitely an income level that requires assistance. That might be a great challenge to try. Limit your houshold 'income' and only eat on a food stamp budget & only shop on a federal poverty level budget. You most likely wouldn't have anything left after paying necessities.

As far as 'luxuries,' I know there was a report released a few years back by one of the conservative think tanks saying that the 'poor' in the US aren't as 'poor' as folks in other countries. This is because most Americans have clean water, microwaves, tvs, etc. It's. Really absurd comparison. A family of 4 making $22k/year may own a second-hand television that they could sell on Craigslist for 25 bucks, but that won't pay the bills when the primary breadwinner is hospitalizd with no health insurance and no paid leave.

One more thought...We were on assistance when I was a little girl. My mom owned one pair of Calvin Klein jeans that she had on layaway for months. She worked her fingers to the bone to provide, but my deadbeat dad didn't pay child support, and we needed help. My paternal grandparents still talk about mom's jeans & it really ticks me off. She was frugal, worked hard & ultimately became very successful. (She and my dad who raised me are wealthy now.) And although she can't fit into them anymore, she still has those jeans in her dresser.

[ilovemygirl]

Thank you for these great and well thought out replies. I think what the last three posters said was more of what I was getting at. The whole -just because you can doesn't mean you should- type of thing. 

I know several bloggers have done the month long food stamp challenge. There's also a website called live below the line that's the same premise just more global. 

[inkedmamajama]

Originally Posted by insidevoice 

With SNAP benefits- their entire POINT is to free up money in a budget to be able to afford other things and give a family some breathing space while keeping food on the table. 

Every $1 of SNAP benefits generates about double that impact in the local economy- it is one of the FEW economic stimuli that actually work.  

Should we say that people who receive those benefits are only to spend that freed up money on things WE deem appropriate?  I don't think so- it's a slippery slope. So maybe, after spending $200 in SNAP benefits on food for the family someone spends $50 on frivolous fun- say an outing to a county fair- is that really so wrong?  I don't think so.  I think it's wonderful that the burden is lifted enough that the family has an improved quality of life.  

THANK YOU. ^^VOICE OF REASON, Y'ALL!!^^