Welfare is Fixed......

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
On sunday I picked katie up really early and we sat on the front porch and talked. I didn't have time to get into any "deep" stuff, so I focused more in the present and her money issues, lack of budgeting skills ect. That is the more pressing issue anyway.

When M lost his job her disability for alex went back up to 700.00 per month. Her rent is 125, cable about the same. There was really no reason for her to have run out of money. And I almost blasted her with that. But I did happen to stop and think first. While I'm sure a portion of it did get wasted on stupid things, probably a large portion........The girl doesn't know how to cook at all. M claims to know how to cook, but he doesn't either. If it's not pre packaged, they don't have a clue what to do with it. Living in motel rooms for years upon years, you don't have any real opportunity to cook normal cooking. So I didn't blast her. Instead I explained that the more she could learn to cook from scratch the lower her food bill would be, and told her I'd be more than happy to teach her, even if it's talking her through cooking a meal over the phone. I've gotten rather good at that doing it for easy child and Nichole.

She seems eager to learn the couponing. I've agreed to help her learn. But she has to buy her own sunday papers, cut her coupons and keep them organized. IF I happen to have ones I know I won't use and my coupon buddies won't use, but know she will.....I'll pass them on. Otherwise, no. I explained this is how easy child, nichole and I do it. Nichole is the only one who eats yogurt, she gets all the yogurt coupons. I've got the dogs.......I get dog stuff coupons. Nichole has the baby, she gets baby stuff coupons. And so on. But usually we don't share unless one of us has a ton of one we don't intend to buy much of and someone else needs it. Like Nichole due to bedrest hasn't been able to do the coupons. When she came down last weekend....krogers had a heck of a sale on cereal. Well, I'd already bought 14 boxes. easy child was picking up her 12. I still had 2 coupons left over and easy child had 2 so we gave them to Nichole who could then buy her 12. Know what I mean?? If katie had had money, we'd have split the extras between them. (but I gave her cereal that needed to be eaten soon....so evened out anyway)

IF we can manage to get 3 people's shopping into my car, she can ride along to shop. Otherwise I've got to come up with another plan to get her out. Now that we probably won't have to take easy child's wheelchair it might be possible, once easy child's driving again it will be more possible.

She listened to me last week and kept calling welfare non stop, sending M out to do paperwork or have it filled out whatever......called again monday and then yesterday it was corrected. She'll get 86.00 for the rest of this month and then back to her 400.00 next month. She's got some major learning to do.........to me 400.00 for food is a frimping FORTUNE......she made it sound like they were starving her. lol

She wants to help us can so she can learn that too.

She was very sociable and helpful sunday......taking the chair in and out of the car for me, which is great cuz after the 3rd store I'm ready to leave the darn thing behind. ugh

I have all the kids school supplies. Only thing left is kayla's zippered binder and what I'm seeing them selling for.......teacher is gonna have to be happy with a normal one I got on sale or someone else is going to have to buy it.

She's been super social. Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to push the social thing. If I don't keep it going.......she thinks I don't want any more to do with her and doesn't contact us. I have to wonder if M has to do with that.....but I suppose it could just be her too.

So, for now we'll work with this and see where it leads. It shouldn't be long before I'll be able to have kayla over to start helping me with the flower garden too.
 
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HaoZi

Guest
Promising start. Wait til after school starts and hit the supply clearance sales, you might get lucky on that zippered binder. Kiddo is re-using her one from last year, it held up pretty well. Once those spiral notebooks go down to .10 each I buy a box of them if I can get it.
 

Mattsmom277

Active Member
Hope she gets good at the couponing. Doing something positive for her family will do her good. Saving money and having pride in accomplishing providing adequately for her children will help her in ways far beyond the simple provisions brought into the home and it sounds like she's gone a long time without any "real" feeling of accomplishment.

Thinking on that zippered binder, do you have a freecycle group for your town? If so it can't hurt to post asking if anyone has a good condition one they no longer have use for. Perhaps if you could find one that way, you could tell her you've found one, have her write a short thank you note on her daughters behalf and drag her along with you for pick up. It wouldn't hurt her to reach out in a freecycle group for help and to understand those groups work on recycling principals, waste not want not, and on appreciation from those on the receiving end of their unneeded items. Gratitude and recognition for what others do to help out would be a positive lesson for her too, while also getting that much wanted binder.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Lisa,

I saw zippered binders at Odd Lots last week for $3. Any specific stuff, or just "not ugly"? If they still have them tomorrow night, I'll grab one.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Just not ugly would be ok. Has to have the zipper is all. And thanks! I'm an idiot and didn't think to look at oddlots when we were there.
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
Text me a picture of a zippered binder........the clearance center here gets TONS of school stuff.....TONS...and a lot of it is nearly new..(loads of rich kids)
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
I have an idea..........

Can we do a post that would be like a school supply thing ---------where we list what we have or what anyone finds cheap? I probably have stuff here that I've got in drawers if people are needy this year......?

ANYONE? I mean I'm not sure how we could do it? (brain not working so good today)
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Well we could do at least a post of where to find the good sales for super cheap school supplies.

Staples is at it again starting next week. Not sure what the items are per se, but I'll tell you I've picked up so much stuff for 1 cent and 10 cents there it's just not funny.

Krogers has crayons for a quarter right now.

I mostly bought with katie's kids in mind so didn't get large amts of anything
 
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HaoZi

Guest
Walgreens has pencils for .19 and mini-highlighters for .09 (limit 4 highlighters). CVS has those black and blue BIC pens 2/$1. Outside of really great sales Wal-Mart is still usually the cheapest here - their price for the spiral notebooks is still below anyone else's sale price right now (.20) and composition books as well (.40).
 

susiestar

Roll With It
I'm so glad that so far the middle school doesn't want zippered binders. Cause each teacher would require a separate one for her class and I don't want to buy six of them, nor do I want my kid carrying six of them!
 

Cheerwyn

New Member
It all sounds like positive steps. You've really honed in on a very basic point -- all those years of living in hotel rooms and from hand to mouth -- she has little or no concept of every day cooking and budgeting in her adult life. The idea of using coupons and sales to buy multiples of things for future use is just alien to someone who has lived from day to day.

Have you guys checked out some of the online sites that post coupon matchups for specific grocery stores or foster coupon trains/exchanges? The ones that jump to mind are couponmom, iheartkroger, iheartcvs, and afullcup. I've joined a coupon train on afullcup...members post their wish lists of coupons that they're looking for and trade with others. One of the things that I like the most about the site is connecting with other moms who are also in the same boat - trying to be frugal. Something like that might really help Katie connect with other people who are in the same boat as she is but are making positive steps to be frugal and take care of their families.
 
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