I was certainly astounded by your story in the May 2016 edition about the real budget of a real individual. This poor senior is so poor that he is getting Medicaid and Food Stamps (which my very high taxes pay for), can’t afford Con Edison or dental care (not paid for by Medicaid), can’t do laundry or buy dish soap or razor blades—yet his budget includes cable and a very expensive cell phone plan and a computer!!! None of which I can afford. Here’s some wiggle room for this poor guy and Whiskers. Cable is a luxury NOT a necessity. He can buy a prepaid phone for under $10 and add $5 in minutes to it every month. He can use the computers at the library. There! $214 of wiggle room. Stark hard arithmetic? More like a self-indulgent budget. It’s insulting that you would even pass this off as a real person—some of us actually do without luxuries like cable!
Feel free to publish this letter—and maybe you can teach this “poor” person how to budget like the rest of us do.
—Katy, West Village
