Eating Up the Budget

“We were living pretty well until the whole COVID situation. Then half my clients dropped off the face of the earth. Since COVID, we have struggled more than we ever had in Florida,” says Rachel Wilson, a transplant from Kansas City, a hairdresser and single parent. With hair dressing down to a part-time job, she’s now an Instacart shopper six days a week and is trying to find a third gig.

Wilson, 41, has a grown son, Tyler, 22, who has his own place and is working. “I have more than once borrowed from my child,” she says. At home to support are daughter Grace, 17, son Jaxson, 8, and Seth, 16, a family friend in need of a place to stay, and two dogs. She coupons “a lot,” buys in bulk to save money and gets the grocery store butcher to cut meat into smaller portions to stretch over more meals. An acquaintance gets her access to grocery store food being cleared on its sell-by date, which she then takes home and freezes immediately. She receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. However, intricate program rules involving hours worked and income recently knocked her benefit down by $200 a month to $400 even though her income didn’t improve. “It was really, really rough the last 45 days. There are days when we eat something we don’t want to, but it’s food and there’s seasoning and we can make it taste good.”

Tags: ALICE in Florida