issue with paycheck has made me not eat for a few days now...
Replies
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You need Dave Ramsey. Not MFP. https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/the-secret-to-saving-money
I agree. If your savings is so low that you can't afford to buy groceries when you don't have a paycheck then you're cutting it too close. Dave seems to have a grasp on how to help people like this.4 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Are you telling me you don't have an emergency credit card?
Get one ASAP. It's not a good idea to get into financial debt but this truly is an emergency. You can literally walk into a bank and walk out with a credit card.
Get your financial house in order. Get your pantry staples in order.
Getting a credit card is not necessarily as easy as you think - my spouse makes well above the US median household income and can't get a credit card because of bad credit. We have no idea whether the OP can walk into a bank and walk out with a credit card.
There are programs to address this. When I lived in the Boston area, I was a part of a group of volunteers that provided financial counseling help to women from a couple of different shelters. We taught them how to request hardship assistance [credit cards] from banks or get on payment plans that had lower interest payments and/or waived fees. We then met with them regularly to go over their budgets, help them monitor (and build!) their credit scores, and work towards saving their money so that they could get into their own (or subsidized) housing.
We worked with women who were not able to secure lines of credit for a number of reasons, including ones where family members had taken advantage of their names/identities and ruined their credit scores. Dealing with credit agencies, collections, and creditors is difficult but they all have systems in place to be able to provide some relief.
If your spouse is having issues acquiring a line of credit, look into a secured credit card to start out with. If your credit score is poor, a bank is more likely to extend a line of credit If it's backed up by a small sum in a checking account designated to cover costs if a payment cannot be made on the credit card.
This is all part of getting one's financial house in order.
Again, this is not me promoting getting into credit card debt. This is me advocating for being prepared In case of an emergency. More than anything, I'd suggest having an emergency fund, but clearly that's not an option right at this moment.
ETA:Aaron_K123 wrote: »Assuming you live in the United States you can apply to have a debit card given to you with a balance that you can then use to buy food with. Called the SNAP program.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility
It requires that your household income is below a certain level, but honestly if your household income is above that level then you should be able to afford to buy some food for yourself so I'm going to assume it is low enough to qualify.
Assuming your household is two people you would get $352 a month for purchasing food and since it sounds like it is only you who is going without that should be plenty for buying enough food to support yourself.
This is definitely something else to look at.
I don't mean to derail or nitpick, but you LITERALLY said getting a credit card was as easy as walking into a bank. You literally used the word "literally". The programs you're talking about are great, but they require quite a lot more effort than your initial post indicated. Certainly I agree that getting ones finances in order is vital. I've been working on that for a while now. It can be a lot of work, though, and when it comes to bad credit, sometimes the only remedy is time.4 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »JaydedMiss wrote: »I feel like your making excuses to starve yourself, You had potatoes and just chose not to eat them and now your worrying about "damage"? So when we tell you there is none is that in your mind us telling you its okay? And to lazy to cook is one thing but when someone makes you food after 2 days not eating to have to be forced to eat is worrying.
I feel similarly to JaydedMiss here in that I also worry about how much of this is literally having no means with which to eat and how much of this is an excuse to actively avoid eating because you are concerned about your weight. There are ways of getting food if you commit to pursuing them (I don't mean stealing, I mean legally). You have to want to eat though.
Agreed. If your bf has coworkers willing to buy him food he probably could've asked them for a few bucks for bread and peanut butter that he could've paid back on pay day. I hope you're okay, OP.1 -
Am I overly pessimistic to think that this might just be a clever way of asking if fasting as a means of weight loss will cause damage? That the "I can't afford food" statement is just to avoid people not answering the question about if harm is caused and rather just telling them to stop fasting and eat normally? Something just doesn't smell right to me.
I'm not sure that is what this is but just to be clear although I don't think fasting for two days will cause your body permanent harm I do think that repeatedly fasting over and over again as a means of losing weight is not a good strategy and will lead to potential issues with nutrition and loss of muscle mass or even bone density.
If this is not a secret wish to fast oneself to thinness by making excuses to avoid food entirely and is legitimately not having access to food then please take the time to get on an appropriate subsidy program or, if you make too much money to qualify, get your finances in order so that you may purchase food as a priority over other less important things. Being in the US part of my tax dollars go to subsidize food for those below the poverty line, I am aware of that and I support that and I think you should take advantage of that if you need to.9 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Are you telling me you don't have an emergency credit card?
Get one ASAP. It's not a good idea to get into financial debt but this truly is an emergency. You can literally walk into a bank and walk out with a credit card.
Get your financial house in order. Get your pantry staples in order.
Getting a credit card is not necessarily as easy as you think - my spouse makes well above the US median household income and can't get a credit card because of bad credit. We have no idea whether the OP can walk into a bank and walk out with a credit card.
There are programs to address this. When I lived in the Boston area, I was a part of a group of volunteers that provided financial counseling help to women from a couple of different shelters. We taught them how to request hardship assistance [credit cards] from banks or get on payment plans that had lower interest payments and/or waived fees. We then met with them regularly to go over their budgets, help them monitor (and build!) their credit scores, and work towards saving their money so that they could get into their own (or subsidized) housing.
We worked with women who were not able to secure lines of credit for a number of reasons, including ones where family members had taken advantage of their names/identities and ruined their credit scores. Dealing with credit agencies, collections, and creditors is difficult but they all have systems in place to be able to provide some relief.
If your spouse is having issues acquiring a line of credit, look into a secured credit card to start out with. If your credit score is poor, a bank is more likely to extend a line of credit If it's backed up by a small sum in a checking account designated to cover costs if a payment cannot be made on the credit card.
This is all part of getting one's financial house in order.
Again, this is not me promoting getting into credit card debt. This is me advocating for being prepared In case of an emergency. More than anything, I'd suggest having an emergency fund, but clearly that's not an option right at this moment.
ETA:Aaron_K123 wrote: »Assuming you live in the United States you can apply to have a debit card given to you with a balance that you can then use to buy food with. Called the SNAP program.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility
It requires that your household income is below a certain level, but honestly if your household income is above that level then you should be able to afford to buy some food for yourself so I'm going to assume it is low enough to qualify.
Assuming your household is two people you would get $352 a month for purchasing food and since it sounds like it is only you who is going without that should be plenty for buying enough food to support yourself.
This is definitely something else to look at.
I don't mean to derail or nitpick, but you LITERALLY said getting a credit card was as easy as walking into a bank. You literally used the word "literally". The programs you're talking about are great, but they require quite a lot more effort than your initial post indicated. Certainly I agree that getting ones finances in order is vital. I've been working on that for a while now. It can be a lot of work, though, and when it comes to bad credit, sometimes the only remedy is time.
You're right, I did. I had assumed that OP is young and had no credit card, and as such, had no credit history (read, no low credit score preventing OP from getting access to a credit line). OP also has had paychecks previously (although not in the last 4weeks), so there's at least somewhat of a proof of income.
My statement was based on a lot of assumptions that oversimplified the situation. IF my assumptions were correct, getting access to a line of credit should not be a problem, and quite literally as easy as walking into a bank. If they were not, then the other programs (which do take a lot more time, effort, and work) would be applicable.
My hope was that OP would chime in and either correct me (at which point we could all band together and provide some guidance) or see it as an option to get food TONIGHT. Getting OP IMMEDIATE relief was my goal, after which we could go down the path of helping OP figure the rest of it out.0 -
suzannesimmons3 wrote: »
Three days with nothing but tea, coffee, and one serving of mashed potatoes (if the weight estimate is correct, it was about half a baking potato or less).
ETA quote from OP showing three days:only was able to eat about 4-6 oz of mashed potatoes yesterday... that and one cup of coffee in the morning... this is my third day of this and the hunger pains are subsiding but I know I gotta eat... Is it weird that the hunger goes away after a few days?
First 2 days since we ran out of money and food was one cup of coffee in the morning and one cup of tea at night... no worries i supplement with lots of water. My bf is worried cause he is still eating but I don't have any co-workers who just buy me food when I'm struggling... So he made some potatoes cause its all we have left and I was able to eat something yesterday but I didn't even feel like cooking at that point, nor was I hungry. He kinda forced it in front of my face and watched me eat it... I'm hoping that this is normal and tomorrow I'll go get groceries and everything will be back to normal. I guess I'm afraid that since i didn't eat for a while that when I do eat, I'll gain more weight to supplement what I lost. Unsure how that works...
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only was able to eat about 4-6 oz of mashed potatoes yesterday... that and one cup of coffee in the morning... this is my third day of this and the hunger pains are subsiding but I know I gotta eat... Is it weird that the hunger goes away after a few days?
First 2 days since we ran out of money and food was one cup of coffee in the morning and one cup of tea at night... no worries i supplement with lots of water. My bf is worried cause he is still eating but I don't have any co-workers who just buy me food when I'm struggling... So he made some potatoes cause its all we have left and I was able to eat something yesterday but I didn't even feel like cooking at that point, nor was I hungry. He kinda forced it in front of my face and watched me eat it... I'm hoping that this is normal and tomorrow I'll go get groceries and everything will be back to normal. I guess I'm afraid that since i didn't eat for a while that when I do eat, I'll gain more weight to supplement what I lost. Unsure how that works...
I would not worry about your weight and just start eating an appropriate amount of calories asap.
When restocking your kitchen:
Meal planning is a good idea if you have a tight budget. Having a couple of weeks worth of non-perishable foods like powdered milk, oatmeal, dry beans, flour, peanut butter, pasta, rice is a good idea.
Low budget friendly foods where I live are things like oatmeal, tuna, whole chicken or chicken thighs, dry beans, lentils, rice, pasta, bread, peanut butter, eggs, potatoes, carrots, apples, ground turkey, cabbage, onions, canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables. Generic/store brands can be pretty cheap but are not poor quality.
Low budget menu planning and recipes:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/40dollarmenu.htm
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/70dollarmenu.htm
http://www.budgetbytes.com
http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/03/35-meatless-meals.html
http://www.meatlessmonday.com/favorite-recipes/
http://www.lentils.org/recipes-cooking/recipes/
Some MFP threads you may find useful:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10518784/healthy-food-choice-on-a-budget/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10500423/costing-a-lot-more-money-to-eat-healthier/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10490067/most-healthy-food-options-are-very-expensive-and-im-on-a-very-poor-budget-what-to-do/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10614805/need-quick-cheap-nutritious-food#latest
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