Shodan, you seem to be making the assumption that people on TANF have no other source of income. That is untrue. TANF, like many benefit programs, does permit a certain amount of income before losing eligibility, and many benefit programs gradually step down benefits as income rises.
Ravenman think limiting people to $420 a month total is a good idea. I explained why it wasn’t. Fortunatley, most welfare recipients have some modest source of income besides food stamps and TANF. That doesn’t mean they’re doing well - they’re still very poor - but household incomes on TANF are typically slightly larger than just the TANF benefit.
Does that make more sense now?
A currency exchange does not force you to breakdown your paycheck into $25 increments and then charge you for each such increment. This “reform” does that, and that’s why it’s so objectionable. It’s an excuse to make more money than other comparable arrangements would make.
The fees are charged by the EBT card vendor with whom the State of Kansas has a contract. Any fees charged by the ATM a given customer uses are ADDITIONAL.
Yes, the State of Kansas could write their contract with the EBT card vendor differently so that the vendor didn’t get to charge the customer. (The bank that provides the actual banking services to the customer could still charge fees, but the EBT vendor is actually providing services to the state. The state is just sloughing off the charges to the beneficiary.)
And yes, the EBT card vendor charges fees to make a cash withdrawal at a POS system too.
For those who don’t get the meaning of what $14.30 a month to access your money is when you make $429 a month, think of the bank charging you $90 to access your money if you make $3K monthly. That’s the equivilent.
You misunderstood me then. I don’t think it is good to limit people to any particular dollar amount of TANF. I’m saying that if you’re poor, whether you’re on assistance or not, the fact that you don’t have a lot of money is more effective in reducing frivolous purchases than any gimmick some half-stupid legislator can dream up.
Um, no. At the level we’re talking about, $14.30 probably means the equivalent of not eating a couple of meals. Going hungry, or having your kids go hungry, is more than simply “annoying” to me. YMMV.
Furthermore, that $14.30 assumes the availability of ATMs that will dispense money in five-dollar increments. I’ve never seen any like that; they may exist somewhere, but in these parts one that will dispense in ten-dollar increments is fairly rare. That means withdrawing a hundred bucks equals FIVE separate transactions on five separate days, not four.
Considering that I pay zero right now, it’d be far from annoying and I’d close and move my bank account immediately rather than put up with any sort of ridiculous fee like that.
The people in question here don’t get that choice though.
At a certain point of my life a $90 difference would’ve made me quite miserable when I chose what to cut and what to keep for that month’s expenses.
My typical lunch costs about $2-3. That $14.30 is essentially the cost of all the lunches I eat at work for a week…
Seen another way - I spent $15 on ground beef this month and got the protein portion of 8 meals out of it, which is usually the most expensive part of a meal.
It’s about the cost of an entire month’s worth of toilet paper and paper towels for my household.
It’s about what I pay for gas over a two week period, or half our fuel costs for the month.
At the level of income we’re talking about $14.30 is, indeed, a significant cost.
Why would food be the first thing knocked off the list? $14.30 is a couple of meals for me too, but if I lost it, why would I skip them instead of foregoing a less-essential expense?
Also, at my bank, I can use my ATM card to withdraw amounts that are not increments of twenty if I use the drive-through or go inside during bank hours. Perhaps the cards can withdraw the $25 daily allotment in person.
In Kansas, food benefits are separate from TANF, and actually average more per person than the TANF benefit, so there is no need to mentally convert the TANF ATM fee into meals lost. Also, the $14.30 is only lost IF the person chooses to get cash for the entire benefit amount. The card can be used as a debit card without incurring the fee.
Converting it into paper towels is even sillier. I generally forego paper towels as they are a ridiculous waste of money and bad for the environment, so I couldn’t care less about whether someone else has any.
And if you have to buy separate $25 dollar money orders to pay the Electric, Gas, Phone, and babysitter, isn’t that objectionable? What laws do you propose to limit those outrageous fees charged by teh evil currency exchanges?
OK, the EBT card vendor. Should they be required by law to accept a contract for which they earn no fees? I’m pretty sure the State would have put the contract for EBT card services out to bid, and this deal was the best they got.
Why? In my state, when you renew your annual license plate, you have the option of paying online, for a fee to the payment vendor. The state doesn’t pay, the driver does.
In that case the payment vendor is a third party doing the collecting. There’s no reason why the state can’t pay the benefits directly to the recipient. There’s no reason for the bank or the state to structure the payments in small amounts and require a fee to be paid on each one. Do you pay a license fee for every mile you drive?
My wife and I are both on SSDI. we receive the full amount, no strings and the bank manages to not collect a fee on each use of the bank card.
ETA: You have the option of paying online, you choose to pay the fee.
They’re not accepting a contract for which they earn no fees, and would not be required to do so even if they charged no fees to the beneficiary. The State itself pays them a fee for every case every month–several millions of dollars a year.
Yes, the state put the contract out for bid. It was done as a Request For Proposal; the state used the proposal as the basis for negotiation [meaning they didn’t just accept whatever the vendors bid]. The state negotiated the contract, and could have chosen to negotiate a contract with a different fee structure. (The EBT debit card used for Kansas unemployment benefits, e.g., has a completely different fee structure, including free withdrawals on the vendor’s ATM network.)
In most places, you have several options, usually something like 1) pay in person with no surcharge; 2) mail a check or money order, with no surcharge; and 3) pay online with a surcharge. You pick, and you have the option of picking a method that does not include any extra fees.
With the Kansas EBT card, you have no choice. You WILL receive your benefits solely and exclusively through this card, and you WILL pay whatever fees and surcharges the agency and its vendor impose. You have no option to pick a method that minimizes extra fees.
The point isn’t “what would be first knocked off the list” it is “suggest what else that money could be spent on”.
Although in my case my three largest expenses are rent, food (my food stamps cover about 1/3 to 1/2 of our monthly food costs, the rest is on us), and gas to get to and from work. There are months I purchase nothing else beyond that so what other expenses would I have to cut? There isn’t anything. Well, toilet paper. I suppose I could use junk mail flyers in lieu of that. And internet access, but since I use that in lieu of many phone calls, to keep in touch with family, to interact with my employer (check my schedule, some benefit and HR stuff), and it’s my primary entertainment it is kind of important to my life and useful beyond mere entertainment. And, oh yes, applications for benefits are largely on line these days, as are managing them. Yeah, I could go to the library for internet but then that would increase my transportation costs and severely restrict when I could go on line.
Keep in mind what is an “annoyance” to someone middle class could be much more than that to someone with a marginal income.
Where is this “in person” withdrawal to occur? This isn’t an account at a bank, it’s a bank administering the benefit delivery system. Not quite the same thing.
The system is clearly set up to force users to pay bank fees. Sure, shrug and say so what, you’d just change banks but the participants in this program have no choice. There are no alternatives if you receive benefits, you have to use this system.
Again, the point isn’t to actually substitute one for the other, it’s to illustrate what $14.30 can mean to a poor person.
Also, not everyone receives the full amount of any benefit. If the household is like mine you ARE paying for half your food each month so you need to budget sufficient funds from other sources for that purpose. If I had a new $14.30 fee that money would have to come from somewhere, and canceling my Netflix subscription would only cover half that. I can’t cut it from the rent. I can’t change the price of gas. I can wind up eating less or living on ramen noodles one week out of the month. Long term, that’s not really good for me.
Bully for you. Did you have the impression I’m filling up the bed of my pickup with them? They’re handy to have around and can double for TP if you run out. Naw, most of that cost is TP. If I eliminated paper towels I’d save maybe a buck or two a month.
Who the hell pays the baby sitter with a money order?
Also, you do have the option most places to either pay the utility bills in person or go through a third party that doesn’t charge fees (most of my local grocery stores will do this, although you need to allow a few days for payments to go through). Finally, some of us have our utilities included in our rent so that’s not an issue.
Finally, IF a poor person has a checking account (some of us do) they might be writing checks that don’t charge fees for the writing. My very first checking account (over 40 years ago now) allowed me to write 10 checks a month before charging me fees. My current account has no fees for writing checks.
However, as already pointed out, benefit recipients in Kansas have no choice - you can’t get your TANF benefit direct-deposited into your checking account, you have to make the transfer by withdrawing money as cash and depositing it in your bank account, thereby incurring a fee.
Why is it then that other states can manage to negotiate contracts where it is not the benefits recipients paying the money but rather the state? In other words, the way Kansas did it is not the only way to do it, and indeed is an uncommon way to do it.
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Owning a vehicle is optional. Eating is not. Obtaining shelter is not. Charging fees for an optional thing is one thing, charging it for essentials is a different matter because with the latter you have no choice.
So if you live in Kansas, your food benefits would come straight off the card, so no fees. Your card could also be used at the grocery store as a debit card for the rest of your food, again, no fees.
Would you be able to get the TANF benefit put into a bank account or pay rent directly from it? That seems to be the idea, but the article was not clear. The fees are for cash withdrawals and can be avoided by not using cash. The system is clearly set up to discourage the use of cash so people cannot spend the money on liquor, gambling, fortune tellers, or other prohibited pseudoexpenses.
Much of the world uses water instead of toilet paper, but in America we need something we can waste and throw away to feel like humans.