Food Stamp Challenge

This holiday season we were blessed to have nice warm homes and plenty of food to eat.  Mary and I spent time over Christmas thinking of ways to develop empathy with those who don't have these things. We were inspired by Newark Mayor Cory Booker to do the food stamp challenge and see what it's like to live on a fixed budget and depend on food stamps.  Hopefully we'll develop greater understanding of the challenges of poverty.

We are planning to start January the 14th. Some of you have expressed interest in following us so we are putting our adventures up on our travel blog.  Our friends Casey and Omar have joined us so hopefully they'll let us share their stories too.  Casey is actually getting a jump on us and starting two weeks of doing the challenge tomorrow, January the 7th!   

New York permits a single person $200 a month ($45 a week) and a couple $360 ($40 a week/person). (http://otda.ny.gov/programs/snap/) Mary and I tracked all the money we spent in a week, it came to several times that. (a shocking amount we don't care to mention here!)  If we make it the month, we'll donate the difference in our spending to the local homeless shelter.

Members   Max Monthly Allowance

     1       -   $200

     2       -   $367

     3       -   $526

     4       -   $668