Wyoming woman at a loss with money, health woes
WYOMING — Lorie Bolden has been receiving Social Security benefits for more than 15 years, never fully recovered from a weight loss surgery that went wrong.
The 54-year-old said living in …
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Wyoming woman at a loss with money, health woes
By WYOMING — Lorie Bolden has been receiving Social Security benefits for more than 15 years, never fully recovered from a weight loss surgery that went wrong.
The 54-year-old said living in poverty tests her body and soul daily.
Rising food prices are a large part of that burden. Ms. Bolden said the amount of food she could buy for $200 a month last year is now “barely enough to get through nine or 10 days.”
Her meals are most frequently cheese and crackers, ramen noodles, oatmeal and yogurt, paid for from her $129 a month in food stamps. She receives $941 from Social Security.
According to Ms. Bolden, “At the end of the month, I’m losing 10 pounds because I don’t have enough to eat, and then, I gain 10 pounds back in the first week of the month because I get paid. I’ve never be through that before because everything is up — electric, everything. It kills me.”
It’s also a struggle, she added, “to buy personal hygiene items — paper towels, toilet paper — because the cost is so high. The question sometimes becomes, do you buy food or do you buy paper products?
Sometimes, it’s that challenging because you are hungry, but you don’t have a couple dollars in your pocket, and the check isn’t coming for another five days.
“Every month, it’s a countdown.”
But she’s thankful for Catholic Charities, who has provided a payment for her electric bill in the past.
“I don’t know what I would do without it because I don’t have a big family, so there’s not a lot of support there,” she said.
Nevertheless, the bills keep arriving.
“It’s stressful because you don’t know what to do,” she said. “Your back is against the wall. You pray, and you hope, and I juggle to pay one thing or another.”
For example, at Christmastime, “I have a granddaughter, and to even spend 30 or 40 bucks on her, I have to forsake my phone bill for the month,” Ms. Bolden explained. “It gets to be too much to do that for two or three months. I’m always overdrafting on my debit card, and if I don’t, I can’t survive. That’s all there is to it. I’d rather pay the fees.
“That sounds silly, but it’s not when you can’t figure any other way to do it.”
Further, Ms. Bolden said, poverty has worsened her depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. And she has issues with blood clots and a hernia that requires surgery.
“It’s like you’re in this dark hole and just keep waiting and waiting for it to get better,” she added, “but most the time, it doesn’t.”
