Consumer debt, credit cards, spending like we had the money to pay those bills is the problem.

Don’t live with a poverty mentality, beleive and act like you ARE RICH and you will do things to get rich!

I will agree with you that by gardening, canning and cooking from scratch that you can eat quite well on that amount. It does get harder if you have teenagers who eat more than two people and drink a lot of milk.

My 15 yr old son would drink over a half gallon of milk a day by himself. And I sure didn’t want to tell him not to drink it. Divide the other half gallon between the other two people and that is a cost of $5 per day or $35 off the top of that $110.

I don’t consider myself poor. We do quite well on our income but we are very frugal. We garden, can, barter and catch things on sale. I am a dedicated reduced meat buyer which means that we often eat steak at the cost of hamburger.

Our electric bill during the winter is about $65-70 per month because we have the wood water furnace which provides heat and hot water. While this saves us money, it does take a certain number of hours per week to cut and split wood.

And it’s depressing to know that if that is take home pay (spendable income) then I am sitting right on that line myself. But I am NOT living in poverty as I am debt free and only earning that much by choice, as it’s more than I need, and I value my time off more than the money. I am not destitute either – receive NO government help and don’t want any. I am over 50, have my retirement savings, and health insurance from work prodivded I work over 30 hrs a week, and I work 31

And if they need to figure net worth in there somewhere…. I’d be far far removed from any poverty figure, if they didn’t base it on income. Debt free means my house, car, and truck are all paid for also.

Guess it all depends on how you look at those figures and how well people have adapted to living on little. For some people, the poverty level income is an abundance and more than enough. For others, it isn’t.

There were a few times over the last twenty years when I needed food stamps but those were short periods and they appear to be over and blessedly so. I’m older, wiser, not sure I’m richer, but I sure am better at spending/not spending the little money I have. Getting a grip on the finances and pulling one’s head out of the sand certainly helps, and that’s what you’ve done! Way to go!