Getting Food Stamps

Video Transcript

"This is financial adviser Patrick Munro talking about an issue that does pop up in recessionary times: Getting food stamps. If an individual has a family to feed or themselves to feed and they really have tried everything in getting a job, and their unemployment has run out, they need to survive in a lawful sense. The way to do that is to go down to the Department of Human Resources in their community -- Social Services, as it's known in other communities -- and it's really known in the vernacular as the welfare office. If you go in there, you will meet a case manager and the case manager will walk you though a series of paperwork, and they're...they do what's called intake. They find out if you have any assets at all. And in most cases, don't show up there if you do because they'll turn you away. But if you find yourself really at the bottom, they will issue you what's called food stamps. Now, in the old times, food stamps were actually just that -- they were stamps. But nowadays, a food stamp recipient receives what looks like a credit card or a debit card, and it has a certain value to it. And you can present yourself at the grocery store and, in a not so intrusive way, pay for your goods with your welfare card, also a food stamp card. This is financial adviser Patrick Munro talking about getting food stamps."