Mayetra

I'm sorry if I got a bit passionate because we are very much in the minority but we get lumped into the majority even by the very people who are supposed to be helping us. I makes me mad as well because I see these families with brand new designer clothes and gold chains. Heck, their tiny babys are wearing gold chains and such. My boy is sitting in the hand-me-down from his older brother that I bought at a yard sale. It is just I have been in situations where people who really are in trouble, who really need the help let pride get in the way because they don't want to be viewed as

We are well below thrifty - $513. We spend about $300 a month. That includes cleaning, toilety/diapers, and pets. One school age child's lunch and my husband's lunch for work. We are hoping to start a backyard garden next spring and drop that even lower. May

Just to interject something to the sterotype here. We are a white, lower middle class family and we qualify for WIC. My husband works unloading trucks at Lowes. He works very hard, at night, hardly seeing his family so that we can live paycheck to paycheck. He comes home dirty and sweaty from unloading semi-trucks. He's been cut, hit in the head from falling pallets, and had his foot run over by a pallet jack - it can be tough unloading trucks. He never complains where there is a Hurricane and instead of helping to board up, he's unloading an emergency preps truck for last minute prepper

I did some online research and put notes on paper. I've started a binder with printed articles and notes on various topics of interest. I use page protectors with a strip of packing tape over the open edge to "seal" the page.

#1 Economic/Job Security - I was 5 months pregnant with our first child and my husband was laid off. We had zero family support. We were made to feel so humilated and had to jump through so many hoops just to get me medical care since we lost our insurance that I couldn't bare to get food stamps even though we qualified. We depleted our savings, rolled all our pennies, and finally were pawning stuff just to buy bread and peanut butter! - 9/11 had happened and the job market dropped out. Never again! #2 Hurricanes - I live in Florida. I lost most of my stuff in Hurricane Andrew. 'nuff said