by Monica Palmer
“Those people don’t need free food; they need to learn how to manage their money.”
This past week, a man made this comment during a discussion about the recent easing of the federal guidelines for free and reduced price lunches at school. This person was pouting publicly about his tax-dollars paying for the meals of children who would, “grow up expecting handouts and not knowing how to balance their checkbooks.”
I took deep-breaths and counted to ten, which kept me from getting into a shouting match with the man, but my own sanity now dictates a response to his proposition that better money management can eliminate the need for assistance programs. Whether these words will ever meet that man’s gaze, I’ll never know, but perhaps they will inform someone who shares his opinions.
First, let’s talk income guidelines for the National School Lunch Program. The guidelines for qualifying for free or reduced lunches are established by the USDA. The thresholds are such that families who make 130 percent of the federal poverty rate qualify for free meals, while families earning 185 percent of the poverty rate are eligible for reduced-price meals.
This means for a family of four, the annual earnings have to be $31,525 or less to qualify for free meals and $44,863 or less to qualify for reduced-price meals. The new guidelines make it a bit easier to get help because during the 2014-15 school year the maximum wages to qualify were $31,013 and $44,123.
I created a fictional family who qualifies for reduced price lunches, and I worked out their monthly budget to see if they genuinely needed the discount for their kids’ meals at school and daycare.
Mike, the husband of the fictitious family, works full time as a hospital orderly, earning around $20,000/year. Alice, the wife, works as an elementary school teacher, earning $24,000/year. Mike and Alice have two children ages two and five.
After taxes, Mike and Alice have a household income of $34,478.60, giving them a monthly household budget of $2,873. Let’s subtract $600 for rent, $350 for car payments, $150 for car insurance, $200 for medical insurance, $300 for phone and utilities, $400 for childcare for the two-year old, $300 for Alice’s student loans, and $500 for groceries, and Mike and Alice have a whopping $73 dollars to put into savings. Oh, but wait…the kindergartner needs school supplies and clothes and Alice needs to pay out of pocket for the things she needs to get her classroom ready, so they have nothing left to put in the savings account.
Ok, I’m probably not as good at math as most, but I don’t think even the best mathematician could stretch that family’s budget to the point where a discounted lunch would seem like an unnecessary luxury instead of a blessing. Keep in mind, this family makes too much money to qualify for free school lunches. They wouldn’t even qualify for SNAP (food stamps).
My fictitious family is just barely making ends meet, but they think they are doing fine, because they both have full time jobs, and they get their bills paid every month. They just keep dancing on their tightrope and going along…until one day when Mike gets into a fender-bender or the five-year old breaks his arm. One financial shock like this could bring everything crashing down on this family, because they never have enough money to create an emergency fund.
Many Missouri families are financially dancing on tightropes, and safety nets like free and reduced school lunches and assistance from food banks are sometimes the only way to make sure their most basic human need is met.
Before hypothetically solving poverty problems with a money management class, we need to be willing to dance a mile in the shoes of the poor.