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gaw – I know it’s right cuz I see it everyday, whether or not you believe it is a separate issue 🙂 Obviously it is too complicated of a subject to hash out in a chat room but you are welcome to talk to our volunteer CFP’S next time you are in town!
Syag: What sort of expenses are we talking about that are “needed”? If medical is paid for and assuming rent is <1K (I see that it is an invalid assumption in parts of the country, but it is true (I think) in places like Lakewood, for example), why can’t a newly married family with only one child “make it” on 25K-30K? I grant you they may not be able to afford a nice car, and it wouldn’t be simple, but it should be doable.
I await your (and others’) thoughts.
Making 25k-30k, the adults in the household would NOT qualify for Medicaid medical insurance. And they would qualify for only a small amount of food stamps.
I dunno why you need 25-30k. in israel you could def do it on 1500-1600 a month.
We need a Jewish homeless shelter in NYC.
Too many people cannot afford the high rents. Too many homeless Jews spend their nights in Shomrei Shabbos and 770, and r”l, on the streets and in the subways and maybe also in cars.
A shelter where frum Jews can feel comfortable, where those who are down on their mazal can be safe and protected from the mentally ill and drug addicts, would be gevaldig.
Ken yehi ratzon.
I agree that u could possibly (maybe, if ur very very frugal) make it on 25-30 w/out a kid,but w/ a kid no way.Babysitting costs close to 6000 a year if its for a half day and a full day its close to 10000. Add that to rent (for which the government does not help w/) formula,food,car (insurance cost more for an old car, and if ur not 25 then its even more) gas and other home/living expenses, no way ur making it (at least not in ny) this is only true if ur not getting help from mommy/ima and tatty/abba (which many people dont have)
so what are the COJO’s doing about it?
Use coupons.
shinina, I don’t know where you get the idea that insurance costs more for an old car. Liability should be roughly the same and if it’s old, it’s probably not worth it to have collision or comprehensive.
Chulent, maybe it depends on the state. In my (“out of town”) state, a family with children making 25k-30k *would* qualify for Medicaid for the whole family and a significant amount of food stamps.
I don’t know much about it, but I understand that people in the “voluntary simplicity” movement have figured out how to live decently on absurdly low incomes, much less than most people consider adequate. Their strategies are worth looking into for frum families struggling to make ends meet.
rebdoniel,
I had no idea there is a significant frum homeless population! That’s horrifying! Do you know this for a fact? How many people are we talking about (although each one is for sure a tragedy!).
Stop with the Chumras
If you cant afford it, there is no need for expensive Chalov Yisroel, Chassidic Shechita, Twizzlers with Hemish Haschgachas. Hemish brands in general when cheaper kosher non-hemish brands are available
ZD,
Chassideshe shechita meat, in my experience, is no more expensive. For a small family, the financial difference in keeping these chumras is negotiable. You just have a pet peeve against them.
Empire Chicken is cheaper, Millers Cheese is cheaper.
Kleins ice cream is twice the price of Turkey Hill.
Hemish Twizzlers costs about $1 or 2 more than non Hemish Twizzlers.
C’Y Milk costs more , even in the regular supermarket.
Zdad: If you would have left out the Twizzlers you would have maybe seemed believable to those that aren’t familiar with your postings. Can you please look yourself in the mirror and confront your demons?
Empire is not cheaper than Alle (Marvid) where I shop. I happen to eat Empire; it’s supposed to be very reliable.
Natural and Kosher cheese is very affordable.
Someone who is pinching pennies shouldn’t be buying much ice cream anyways. Of course, CY products in general are more expensive, but not so much so that it really makes much of a difference in a family’s budget.
CY cheese, milk, and PY bread and other products is more expensive. If you hold by it that’s your business no one should tell you to save money by not keeping it.
Twizzlers was just a subsitute for anything that is made by a normal brand and a Hemish Sticker is slapped on it. Ive seen it on paskez stuff, Ruffles and more.
Read about how Yidden lived 100 years ago, and you’ll feel like a millionaire.
Imagine the kashruth issues when milk was sold by “quality” depending on how much, and with what, it was dilluted?
Imagine having to rely on checking ingredients, and generally not being able to buy any processed foods.
Imagine housing when most families used sheets instead of walls, and people often had to take in boarders.
Don’t even ask what it was like when the standard work week was 54 hours, including a Saturdays, and religious discrimination was considered public policy rather than something you could sue over.
Consider what is what like when on finding out she was pregnant, a woman knew there was only a 50% chance the child would make it to adulthood – and a good chance she wouldn’t live that long, and even survive childbirth.
Then stop whining.
ZD,
Some of those products (maybe even most) are manufactured differently for the heimishe companies. Most heimishe products are made in big factories which are kashered for their production. Usually they use separate packaging, but sometimes they save on the cost by using the same packaging and just adding a sticker.
I should have pointed out in my earlier post that many who keep CY do so not as a chumra, but as the actual halacha. Many poskim did not agree with R’ Moshe Feinstein’s heter.
MorahRach: If you hold by it that’s your business no one should tell you to save money by not keeping it.
Agreed. Unless it’s your rov.
Do you really think twizzlers changes anything in the production process when these “run” are created. Its extortion plain and simple there is not a single difference between the Hemish twizzlers and the regular twizzlers.
They have a huge factory and it costs money to change even one iota of the proccess. Too bad too many are fooled and are forced to pay more for these products
ZD,
Make up your mind. Are you discussing Twizzlers, or, Twizzlers was just a subsitute for anything that is made by a normal brand and a Hemish Sticker is slapped on it. Ive seen it on paskez stuff, Ruffles and more.
Not I am not discussing only Twizzlers, Since I dont have a word for all that stuff that they stick the hemish sticker on it, I am just calling them twizzlers since thats one of the products that has it.
If you Like Mike and Ike or Ruffles, You can call them that as they have it too
If Ruffles has a heimishe hechsher (I’ve never seen it), then they make sure it’s bishul Yisroel. Some poskim require it for potato chips.
Some salad mixes have a KAJ sticker on them. They are more stringent in the standards for cleaning and inspecting for insects.
Some cereals also involve bishul Yisroel issues.
I don’t know whether Twizzlers involves any change, or it’s simply a marketing tool. Either way, it’s valid, because some people simply do not automatically accept the national hechsherim, because they are meikil on certain halachos which some heimishe hechsherim are machmir on, and its easier to buy items with a hechsher which keeps one’s personal standards than to do research on every product.
The purpose, believe it or not, is not to make you, ZD, pay more. You can still buy your Twizzlers in Walmart if you want. Nobody’s stopping you. I buy mine in Costco, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if my local kosher supermarket carries Twizzlers with a shtreimel on it.
BTW, I think Mike and Ike’s uses some questionable food coloring in some flavors, which aren’t in the ones with the stickers.
Tell me ZD: you ever go on vacation? If yes, I think you should cut down. You ever go bowling or any other recreation? I think you should cut down. As much as this is my business, is as much as what someone else chooses to eat or purchase is your business.Get real….
The title of this thread is how to spend less and buying twizzelers without a hemish sticker is cheaper and you arent sacrficing anything except the right to pay more
ZD,
On another thread you advocated boycotting a store which carries Twizzlers with an extra sticker. And on this thread, you wrote, “Its extortion plain and simple”. To you, this is not just about saving a few cents.
GAW,
Does the S”A say one should compromise his halachic standards?
We do find such a concept regarding d’mai, but that was built into the din.
Gavra: I thought this thread was about NOT accepting tzeddakah but living within ones means, unlike the thread this is a spin-off of. As such, it would be advisable to only give advice that readers are likely to implement, not simply “stir the pot” by jumping on their religious stringencies first.
Aside from the fact that one probably needs to be matir neder before changing a minhag, assuming for arguments sake that all these kashrus issues are just minhagim.
Aside from the fact that one probably needs to be matir neder before changing a minhag, assuming for arguments sake that all these kashrus issues are just minhagim.
I doubt your grandparents and great-grandparents only ate Hemish brands.
And the point is people are being many times forced to accept chumras and spend more money when cheaper alternatives are available. Living within ones means , means avoiding expensive luxuries and a chumra is just that a “Luxury”
ZD,
Who said anything about forcing someone?
There are communal and Shidduch pressures to keep chumras, otherwise you wont get into a good school or get a good shidduch for your children
ZD:you are so off, as far off as you can get!! Don’t tell me you actually believe that someone can’t make ends meet because of their so called ” chumros” in choices of food?? Your arrogance…….
If there’s one thing that really gets me mad is when someone is in need, and all people want to give him is eitzas. Open your heart and your wallet, if you choose not to, keep your ideas to yourself as well.
Heimishe brands? If that means making almost everything at home then most definitely yes pre-war, there wasn’t much beyond staples available. Afterwards they followed their community standards, very heimish where applicable, but regular coffee, cereal etc. I don’t think they ate Twizzlers…
I don’t see anybody forcing their chumros on others, I do see some here trying to arm-twist others into accepting their kulos…
I really didn’t want to debate you exactly because of your mindset equating chumros with luxuries. Do you think when my grandparents scrubbed their walls for pesach they were indulging in luxuries? So what’s the difference when it comes to buying shmira matza? Having mesiras nefesh for yiddishkeit is the polar opposite of spending money on luxuries.
It is not a “Kula” to eat the regular twizzlers
We are not obligated to finance people’s chumros. Period.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
Normal kosher food should be more than sufficient.
Beans, pasta, oil, spices, noodles, eggs, potatoes, onions, canned vegetables, fruits, etc. are more than enough to build meals from.
Limit meat to Shabbos chicken and yom tov.
Kosher cheeses are very expensive, sadly. Unless you go to Pic and Pay, where they have Sugar River (CRC) and Monsey Dairy (OK) for good prices.
This is how u make it.No shopping at heimishe places aside for where u have no choice (basically for me this is meat/poultry, challos, gefilte fish), no fish aside from gefilte or frozen, no cakes, no heimshe nosh, no beef these are only for rich people or people on EBT (food stamps), no take out, no eating out, no vacation, no bungalow colony, no wine for shabbos only grape juice, no flowers for shabbos they end up in the garbage anyways, no hand made matzo, no deri lulav, no cleaners use wash machine, no goyta (i wonder who cleans her house), buy generic store brands. keep the ideas coming…
Being that this thread got hijacked by the very important twizzler discussion, it seems that my post about Jewish homeless people got overlooked, so here it is again:
“rebdoniel,
I had no idea there is a significant frum homeless population! That’s horrifying! Do you know this for a fact? How many people are we talking about (although each one is for sure a tragedy!).”
There are at any given time people sleeping in Shomrei Shabbos and 770, and people on the streets of 13 Avenue, Kingston Avenue, Coney Island Avenue, etc.
Bill Rapfogel addressed a conference I coordinated with Uri L’Tzedek where he spoke about the Jewish working poor.
Young Baalei teshuva, Israeli yordim, ffb people who lack a good education and aren’t in kollel or yeshiva gedola, immigrants, and stam poor people who can’t get on Section 8 are basically the frum homeless.
The Met council wanted to open a frum homeless shelter that would be respectful of shabbos and kashrus, with separate sections for men and women, of course (although there are far more homeless men than women and children), but he saud that DHS and czar Bloomberg gave them too much of a hassle with red tape.
Reb D – that is shocking! What can ordinary people do to help?
ChanieE: Give Tzedakah.
I cannot singlehandedly solve the homeless problem and I don’t know of any organizations that are working on it, so I am asking for a practical suggestion. Of course we can always daven and general tzedaka is certainly a good thing, but what can any of us do about THIS problem?
ChanieE: You may not singlehandedly solve the homeless problem regardless of what you do, but the best practical suggestion for an ordinary person to help alleviate THIS problem is to give Tzedakah to organizations working on it (and there are such organizations) or better yet to give Tzedakah directly to homeless yidden.
It’s shver.
The homeless are not a monolithic demographic. Some are sadly those who are good people and just fell through the cracks, whereas others have serious issues with mental illness and substance abuse.
A community-sponsored shelter is the only option.
Perhaps people feel it would be a busha, yet we have all kinds of frum welfare organizations.
Like I said, I don’t know of any organizations working with the homeless. Could someone provide a name?
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