Oh SNAP! Comfort Breeds Dependence; Scarcity Builds Drive

We push into the hard edges of SNAP: who it helps, who it misses, and how incentives shape what ends up on the table. From $292 to $975, from whole loins to rice and beans, we test frugal tools, rant about fast food EBT, and ask for real stories from the field.

• why discomfort can drive progress and comfort can stall it
• how SNAP amounts compare to real grocery costs
• eating well on less using bulk cuts and staples
• unfair hoops after layoffs and how people game the rules
• concerns about EBT at fast food and corner stores
• proposal for curated food boxes to improve nutrition
• rising bills, cutting subs, and living within limits
• hustle culture myths versus patient, steady work
• family housing and support as cost relief
• the push and pull between safety nets and self‑reliance

Chapters

• 0:00 Show Open And Host Intro
• 0:24 SNAP Cuts Spark A Rant
• 1:24 Coughs, Nicotine, And Long COVID
• 2:24 Starving Artist Days In NYC
• 3:34 How Much SNAP Pays
• 5:02 Eating Well On A Budget
• 7:10 Rice, Beans, And Tough Love
• 8:49 Denied After Paying In
• 10:04 EBT At Fast Food And Liquor
• 11:35 One In Seven On SNAP
• 12:38 Bills, Subscriptions, And Cutting Costs
• 14:12 Work Ethic Stories And Perspective

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Traders Do. Thinking about on the ride in, of course, everything is filled with snap talk. And I mean, like, you know, the snap benefits, the EBT cards, whatever, it's all ending here this week, right? And I thought that I got something to say about it. I couldn't just let that one go. By the way, if you hear me having a cough drop in my mouth, it is because I do. It's, dude, I got this freaking cold at the beginning of last month. So it's September, first week of September. I still have this stupid cough. Anyone ever tried those nicotine patches? I've heard a nicotine kills this long COVID or everyone, whatever they're calling it. But for the symptoms from having COVID, I I had to have had it, dude. I can't get rid of those stupid coughs. So I'm gonna try some nicotine gum again, I think on the way home and see what happens because I'm over it. I won't even smoke cigarettes, but on the risk of getting addicted to nicotine. I don't care because I I can't I can't keep going like this. Anyway, I was doing some research on these supplemental nutrition assistance program. And by the way, I can talk about it because I was your basic starving artist living in New York City, literally living on hot dog per day. You know, those hot dog vendors you always see in the streets of New York. Well, they're on every corner. And back in the day, I think it was a buck, maybe two bucks for a pop. I think it was a pop and a dog. Maybe it was a pop dog and chip. I can't remember. That was like so long ago. That was back in 1999, dude. Believe it or not. So long time ago. Anyway, I would just eat one of those a day. And let's not forget all of the walking I did. Like I would literally I would I wouldn't take any mass trans for the most part because I was a starving artist, except for what my my dad and my stepmom would give me a metro card, and it gave me access to the subways and stuff. But for the most part, I walked around a lot and burning all kinds of calories and not eating any of it back. So I can I wasn't starving, but it's a little bit you you don't realize how little you need to live. You don't need that much food as an adult, a teenager or a kid, you do, you know, you gotta put down some food. But as an adult, you really only have to eat one time a day, maybe two, and and I mean, and that's not a lot of food either. You don't need a steak every day or whatever, right? So really didn't know how much people got paid. I thought it was$87 a month, not$187. And so I'm actually in my office, and because I want to do some investigation as I'm talking here out loud, and I actually just typed in what the average is in Metro Detroit, and it's insane, man, how much these people get. You're not supposed to be comfortable. This is supposed to suck. This is supposed to be a time in your life to when you don't want to be on this. I get how this generational thing, this is saying the one-person household can get$292 per month. Okay, I would say that's a fair amount. I don't know, that's uh that's less than$100 a week. That's not a lot, but a four-person household can get$975 a month, dude. That's a lot of freaking money, man. And free money, we spend about I think it's$800 to$1,000 a month. Now my wife would know better than me. I don't really pay attention, but we eat freaking good, dude. Like we got freezer full of food, like three freezer full of food, actually. And I'm talking about ribs. I get all this stuff when it's on sale, right? If I see racks of ribs on sale for two bucks a pound, I try and empty out the freezer, it's gone. It's mine. Because you know, you get it while you can, otherwise, they're four bucks a pound or whatever, right? So we got, I think, a brisket in there, a couple pork bellies that I get good. If you ever get pork shoulders, you can get a whole pork shoulder. I got one in there for 13 bucks I paid for the whole thing, and that's like 10 pounds of meat or something like that, and a tiny little bone. So, I mean, you can do it, man. You can eat really well on not a lot. And it's not like I'm trying to, it's just I love meat and I love smoking food and I love you know grilling, and that's the that's what I get. I get I focus on those cuts. If you ever get like a whole prime cut, my my little boy was craving lots of beef when he was brewing in my my wife's belly, and she would eat literally a steak every day of New York strips that she used to, I think this is just what she was getting, New York's or something like that. I can't remember, it doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is, we didn't buy a New York strip every day. You buy the whole loin, and it's like I forgot how many pounds. Basically, I think you get 27 steaks out of this for I don't know, 80 bucks. And I mean, that's that's like it's a meal a day, it's 80 bucks, that's a month, that's a month of food, right? Every day she ate a steak for 80 bucks a month, dude. That's not a lot of money. I mean, you can do it, you can eat really well if you're smart, buy the whole cut, cut it up yourself, or have the butcher do it, blah blah. All I'm saying is I don't know. I saw someone talk about like you should really get a box of food and just give into you, and you need to figure it out. Like rice, beans, maybe a bit of meat, but you can live on rice and beans. I mean, it's the whole amino acids, the whole protein, it's supposed to suck. This is not supposed to be a good time in your life to where you're gonna want to like go ahead and live on this for the next year. You know, and it ticks me off is that I got laid off. I paid tens of thousands of dollars into the system. But when I wanted to see if I could use it just to like help, you know, for a little bit because my son was new, six months, I think it was six months old, and I got laid off. I was like, well, see if I can get some of this because why not? I paid into it and I'm laid off, not making money, and why not? Yeah, right, dude. They said your net worth has to be this and you have to do this, and you couldn't make this this year. And I'm like, Yeah, but I just got laid off. I mean, it was bull crap, dude. The amount of hoops they make you jump through, I get they want you to be poor, but I know there's people out there that figure the system out and they're not poor, they're driving nice cars, they got you know their clothes and their hair, the nails, just the whole thing like they're talking about on the internet. And it's it is upsetting. And I really think that you should just be given it a box or shipped a box. Like they do shipping of food now for groceries, right? White, like blue apron or whatever else. There's that misfit foods you can get boxes of. They can ship food to the house in a cooler and it's done. That's that's what you get. That's it. That's what you get for the week or every other week or for the month, however, they can do it. I don't know. But I also understand that it's a huge racket, right? So because liquor stores take EBT, my wife said she saw the other day at Taco Bell they take EBT. And I had to edit out, I had a I dropped a cuss word, dude. I never cussed before. I'm kind of worked up about this actually, because this is this is a baloney man. And I think that this needs to be revamped anyways. But what I was getting at is like there is a whole market, right? There's a whole stream of income that stores and whatever, and I say stores, I mean like corner stores, grocery stores, whatever, are getting this money and it's millions of dollars. 42 million people are on Snap right now. That's crazy, by the way. We're the world's richest country, or so they tell us. You're telling me that one in seven people has to be on some kind of supplemental food income to make ends meet. I don't understand that. I don't get it. But like, you know, as my dad always says, he's like, back in my day, we didn't have a cell phone payment, two car payments, two insurance payments on cars, cable bill, streaming bill, Netflix bills, Amazon bills. I mean, you know, I actually am kind of just overpaying 30 bucks a month for YouTube premium. I I I am on it and off again. I should have really been on it when my son was born because I watched a lot of TV early in the morning. But honestly, I don't even remember the commercials being that big of a hindrance, I guess. I don't know. I watched a lot of shows and because he was up all night. I don't know. Uh I lost my job, so it's like, okay, time to cut it out. That's it. Either we could afford it or not. I wasn't about to, you know, try and say that we're gonna not make any changes. It's not necessarily about making changes that makes the change. It's about just like living into the suck. You have to deal with it, and then in order for it to like, you don't want it to be like that no more. So even though I could afford YouTube premium, let's just say at the time, at least for the first couple of months, because I got a buyout package. But you know, as I was looking for jobs, whatever, I digress. But you don't want it to be comfortable. I 30 bucks a month isn't gonna make or break us, but you gotta make it be like, damn, every day I watch YouTube or whatever, and I have to deal with these stupid commercials because I don't have a job. And I think it's just the way it has to be. And we I remember I was working at ADT security a long time ago. I was in Flint, Michigan, of all places, doing alarms for businesses, no less. And I was not in a good area. And this guy from the Philippines, he owned this Chinese restaurant's building. He owned the building, not the restaurant. The restaurant was empty, the place went out of business, but the guy, you know, still has the building, and he was getting broken into because people wanted to steal the copper out of it. This is back in the copper days, right? The copper days, back in uh the day when 08, I think it was 09, people were stealing copper plumbing and all that stuff. And he's like, What's wrong with the people today, dude? He goes, Back in my country in the Philippines, if you don't work, you don't eat. You need to do something to fill the hole, right? People want all these handouts all the time, they want something for nothing. And it was a really interesting perspective because I mean I grew up in Franken Moose. I wasn't given anything. We were farmers, not I wasn't a farmer, but I worked, I worked on my buddy's farms, and you know, I'm I'm from hard work, you know, slaughtering chickens and collecting chicken eggs and feeding cows. And, you know, before we went to school, it's if I stayed the night there, we would get up, do chores, and then go to school. So I know, you know, I've been through it. And anyway, all I'm saying is it's hard to break the cycle. And I think that's what they're trying to do. They want the you to, of course, to be dependent on them because I think that universal basic income is coming out soon, or already beta testing it. And let's just say it's that you get a thousand bucks a month for free just to sit there and not do nothing because you can't get a job because the robots have taken over or whatever. We're being conditioned for that. I kind of believe that. And anyway, in a time during hustle culture, because that's what you see on YouTube is the hustle culture, these regular plane. I wish I knew if they were actually rented or not, but these regular guys, whatever, these gurus on trade or they're doing whatever side jobs and making driving these Lamborghinis, and they're 20 years old, and they gotta be rented, or they're trust fund babies, and they're making it look like they made all this money, like this Dan Balsarian guy. You know, he got found out now. He's gone because he was a trust fund baby, it's not real, it's his daddy's money, right? So, and any rate, all I'm saying is that it's out there, you gotta go get it. The money is out there, they want you to pick it up. That's it, go get it. But it's too easy to get the free government assistance. I get that too. And but they this is why they're they're doing what they're doing, they gotta make it turn on, turn it off, reboot, reset, and then maybe reapply or change the priorities or requirements or the length of time you can be on it. I don't know. All I know is something's gotta change because that ain't the way, you know, it's not sustainable for a country to do that. It's not fair either. Everyone's ticked off, and I get it too. And I also get that you do maybe need it a little bit here and there. But also there's the fact that we're getting away from family life. You know, back in the day, y'all lived maybe a generation, two or three, whatever, in one household, sharing all the bills. I couldn't even imagine having another family in the house and splitting everything up 50-50. That'd be sweet, dude. Like, imagine, but and a lot of countries do it, a lot of cultures do it, you know, and uh do it in this country as well. But I don't know. All I'm saying is if you are, you know, in the hustle and ticked off, and if you've ever been on the snap, if you haven't been on the snap, if you applied for it and got turned down because of whatever, I'd like to know about it just to, you know, maybe I don't know, use the mind or maybe give me something to talk about too in the next uh next episode. But all right, I gotta do some editing because I I dropped some cuss words and I gotta make sure that I get them all because I don't want to get shut down. All right, that's it for now. I just want to talk about that and kind of kind of rant and let you all know you're not alone. If you're ticked off of the system, I think reprieve is coming and it's about to get balanced out. All right, that's it. Whatever you do out there, be good or be good at it. Bye.