In light of recent comments that do not dignify workers making less than minimum wage, I want to share my personal experience (I speak for myself alone) of life on welfare.

(a thread)

Living below the American poverty line—first as a family of 3 then continuing as a family of 4—has a way of wrecking you. My family was in the upper echelon of those living on the poverty line for the 2.5 years we were officially on govt welfare.

While our household income was low, our social support was high, our transportation was private, our housing was 1800-sq-ft in a quiet lower-middle-class neighborhood; therefore, our experience was significantly less intense than many others who have low household incomes.

Our budget was weekly. We mostly dealt in cash w/ envelope system, as it was too easy to go over the budget w/ plastic. We did use credit every 1x in a while, especially when we were both unemployed & our daughter was freshly born. EVERY DAY I thought about money. ALL THE TIME.

There was not a lot of extra pennies and quarters around the house because they would get used. My mouth would sometimes water for fast food like Pavlov's dogs.

My heart would long for extras -- extra money that didn't have to go toward an event someone else had planned; extra for a small treat at the grocery store; extra to buy my son the toy he picked up; extra space in my head that wasn't occupied by financial stress;

extra for some raspberries that I really wanted to buy; extra so that we could splurge on the meal I was preparing for friends who were coming over; extra so I could give generously rather than stingily; extra so we could pay more than just the minimum on our credit card

When friends would ask me (or my husband, or our son) to go out to eat or celebrate a birthday, my mind would tense up with several consistent questions that would put me in a frozen state before I could answer:

1. Will they expect me to pay? 2. How much total will this cost—food, gas (how far away was the place), birthday gift? 3. Can I find that money in our budget somewhere? Where? Is our electric bill lower than usual? Could I spend $10 less on groceries this week so I can say yes?

4. Will I need to buy a birthday gift? Can I go w/o bringing a gift? Will they think I'm rude if I do? 5. If I tell them I want to come but can't because of $, will they offer to pay? Will I want them to offer to pay? If I do this too much will they feel I'm a burden? (etc.)

When I went to the grocery store: When I knew I would need to use my WIC vouchers in the grocery store, I would try to eliminate as many stress factors as I could. If family could watch the kids, I'd ask them.

If I could do it in the morning when less people were at the store, I'd go then. If I could go to a grocery store that didn't have a lot of traffic, I'd go there. I remember one time using them at WalMart. I only made that mistake once.

Not only was the WIC-specific food not marked, it wasn't simply the cheapest brand of peanut butter. So the long line of people behind me at the counter had to wait for the cashier to call someone to go find the right brand of bread.

Not only did I inconvenience people, I got to stand there while they huffed, & some made remarks about welfare under their breath; others to my face. I was so glad that @FoodLion had the WIC items marked clearly & so thankful that the employees never seemed to be annoyed at me.

They were trained well, understood fully how to insert the voucher into their machines, how to get me to sign, how to charge me more if I went over the $8 allotted for fruit. They always spoke kindly to me, despite the oft-annoyed looks on the faces of the customers behind me.

There were times their kind demeanor invoked emotions I would hide until I got to my car. ***I thank God for people who treated me with dignity, rather than assuming I was a leech on a failing system.***

Mail: My anxiety would often revolve around a trip to my own mailbox. Every time I got a letter from the govt to update our Medicaid status, I had, at most, 3 days to send it back in. I don't know why this happened, but the letter would be dated at least a week b/f I received it.

The office was about a 10-min drive from our home, but my best guess was that the social worker would write the letter, set the response date from that date, but the letter would not get sent out from the office for a few days. Nonetheless, I had to get our financial records out,

sometimes call my husband's employer for missing info to fill out the letter. This always took more than an hour to gather all the information needed & when I had to wait on responses from others, the stress would pile up.

Also: during this time, we got a letter from the IRS stating we owed them thousands of dollars because they had a decimal point in the wrong place for our income...stress upon stress upon stress.

#Welfare life is overrated & I can tell you that it's not one I enjoyed living. I felt guilty, sorry, overwhelmed, overlooked, undignified, like a societal leech, anxious, & worthless more than I felt any form of positive self worth.

Living life on the U.S. #Poverty line (for family of 4, in 2020 it's $26,200) is no cake walk.

Show others dignity. Give them grace upon grace upon grace. Both they *and* you need it. IMO, Stealing dignity from from the economic poor is demonic.

#PovertyLine

For the sake of clarity, this was our family's story in 2014 to 2017. While we've gone through two job losses (one very recently) this year, we are both gratefully employed. Thank you all for the kindness.