Nicole Stevens doesn’t know how much further she can stretch her grocery budget.
Stevens, 40, based in Battle Creek, Michigan, is a single mother raising two teenage boys. She relies heavily on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), more commonly known as food stamps, to feed her family. Before the pandemic, Stevens recalls being able to spend just $300 on her family’s big monthly supermarket haul. This always meant that she had a little bit of money left over to make additional trips to the store whenever staples like milk and bread inevitably ran out. Today, the same monthly shopping trip costs her $500.
Stevens often racks her brain trying to understand what is driving the increase. The frozen dinners her kids love now cost $12 a pack, which she considers expensive for a single meal. A box of cereal goes for $6 these days, more costly than she has ever seen. And eggs are so pricey at the moment that Stevens half-joked about investing in a backyard hen.
