Your Wallet Doesn’t Live Alone
It’s all over the news right now: How will this new budget bill affect your wallet?
I understand why people want to know. We’re all trying to make the math work in a world where rent, groceries, and the simplest necessities keep getting more expensive. We’re told to measure our well-being in dollar signs. We’re trained to protect what’s “ours.”
But there’s a cost to thinking that way.
And the cost is each other.
The lie we’ve been sold
Somewhere along the way, we started believing that our wallets live alone. That my family’s survival has nothing to do with yours. That your neighbor’s empty fridge won’t touch your kitchen table. That the child who goes to bed hungry isn’t your problem.
But it is. It always is.
Every cut to Medicaid, every dollar yanked away from SNAP, every so-called “savings” that comes from gutting programs for families and kids and older neighbors, that money doesn’t disappear. It just shows up somewhere else. We see it in crowded ERs, in kids who can’t focus because they haven’t eaten, in parents skipping their own medication so they can keep the lights on one more month.
We pay for it in ways that spreadsheets don’t show.
The real return on investment
The data is clear, if we’re willing to see it:
Every $1 in SNAP benefits puts about $1.50 back into the local economy. That’s food on a table and dollars flowing to corner stores, farmers markets, and grocery clerks.
Kids with access to nutrition support and health care grow up healthier, stay in school longer, and earn more as adults. That means higher lifetime tax contributions and stronger communities.
Medicaid expansion saves lives - and money. When people get care early, they avoid catastrophic bills that spill over into homelessness, bankruptcy, and worse.
It’s a smart investment that pays for itself, in healthier people, more stable families, and communities that can weather storms together.
So, what’s in it for us?
The better question isn’t “What’s in it for me?”
It’s “What’s in it for us?”
What happens when a neighbor gets to keep their apartment because they had just enough help? When a parent doesn’t have to choose between the electric bill and medicine? When a child’s only worry at school is their homework, not where dinner’s coming from?
What happens is that we all rise. Because your wallet doesn’t live alone. And neither does mine.
The world we say we want
Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if we saw each other the way we really are, not burdens to be cut, but potential to be nurtured.
We talk a lot about personal responsibility, but too little about collective responsibility. We forget that the true return on investment is a community where no one falls so far that they can’t get back up. That’s what I want for my neighborhood. For yours. For all of us.
So as the debates rage on about tax cuts and budget lines, I hope we remember the bigger truth:
We are better when we invest in everyone.
And the cost of forgetting that is so much higher than any bill.
At Make-A-Day, we see what’s possible when we remember that truth. We see it when a hot meal turns into a conversation, and a conversation turns into hope. We see it when people show up for each other, again and again.
We’re not here to ask what’s in it for one of us…we’re here to build what’s possible for all of us.