During our exhausting ordeal with leaving the military life and his civilian employee laying him off, we educated ourselves about our options for getting over the hump. We called the bank and asked to skip a month of payments on our van, we called the mortgage company and asked for the same, and we looked into unemployment benefits and food assistance programs. The latter was the biggest hit to our pride.
No one WANTS to be on food stamps. No self-respecting mother/father wants to admit to themselves that they screwed up financially by not having anything in savings and is now out of a job and can't even afford to put food on the table. It's not a proud moment. Really, it's not. So we applied for food stamps. We were well below the financial qualifications. A family of 5 living on a custodians income? You can imagine how "poor" we were.
When we first submitted the information, we got a call saying they were gonna expedite our case and get us supplements ASAP. We were very happy and relieved. The beginning of February, we were gonna have money for groceries. Awesome. By mid-February though, still no assistance. We'd call regularly and all they'd say is "The case is still pending". So on day 30, we got a "denied" letter. Denied?!?! Why??!?! We qualify and we're denied?!
The explanation we got was that our banking information showed that we had a savings account, but we didn't report how much money was in it. Um.... that's because there was NOTHING in it. In fact, our bank closed our savings account because it was empty for too long. So we had to appeal our case and send in a certified letter stating that we had no addition money stored away. They also had to verify that my husband's job really did lay him off. Because since he was still technically employed (they told him business was slow and they'd call him if they needed him), they also used that as grounds to deny us. Because although we qualified at that moment, he could return to work at any moment and thus no longer qualify. News flash to me that you can be denied because you MIGHT go back to work soon. In that case, no one should qualify. Everyone MIGHT find a better paying job soon or return to work soon.
I wasn't thrilled, but continued to play the game. Because we could really use that help to get us through the rough patch. So again, our case worker promised to expedite our appeals case and get us assistance as soon as possible. A week later, we called for an update. "When we appealed that case, it gave me another 30 days to make a decision. We'll let you know." *sigh* I gave up at that point. If we got it, we got it. It's now been close to 60 days. No letter in the mail, no phone calls and our case worker won't answer/return any of our calls. At this point, we're just calling to tell her that we're back on our feet and no longer need any assistance.
So my whole thought process in all of this is...... how exactly do people "abuse the system"? We couldn't even get through all the red tape to get INTO the system, let alone to abuse it!! lol I was venting to a friend of mine who made a very good point. Maybe that's WHY people 'abuse the system' and not report when they get new income or things like that. Look how hard it is to even get benefits in the first place!
*Note: I am not condoning cheating/abusing the system. It's not right and isn't fair to people who really do need it in the way that it's intended. But the point is, I played the game and it's frustrating and exhausting and defeating. So I can't fathom that the majority are abusing the system. The majority use it as it's intended (since it's so difficult to get it in the first place) and the few that do abuse it should NOT be a representation of all. Statistics show that less than 5% of recipients commit fraud to receive those benefits. It's a very small number, despite how people like to paint the picture of coach bags, fancy cars, new cell phones and food stamps.
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