<prompt> Human: This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stampsA cautionary tale of personal finance gone wrong. House poor, unexpected pregnancy with twins, layoffs, underemployment and eventually getting government assistance to get back on their feet. update: This thread went bonkers. Im new to Reddit, though Ive lurked pf for a while. Saw some of the amazing bits of Reddit, saw some of the terrible bits. Thanks to all who shared their personal experiences dealing with the US public assistance programs in their different forms. The next time someone asks pf if they can buy this house tomorrow because they have a baby on the way, and by the way they need to finance a 30k minivan but it should be ok because theyre middle class? Point them to this article. PS: Some people seem confused, I am not the author of this article. pf is set up to post to self.personalfinance by default. Wish I could have racked up this link karma though. :Assistant: This is a good example of how circumstances snowballed pretty quickly. When it rains it pours. Id be interested to know more details about how they prepared beforehand vs. how they prepare afterwards - there is mention of some savings, but its only mentioned in passing.We get a lot of people in rpersonalfinance that inquire about wasting money in a savings account as their emergency fund. I dont think anyone has ever had to use their emergency fund complained about the returns they lost by not having it in something with a better return.I also thought it was interesting how the author described the stigma of being on food stampsgovernment assistance. Theres abuse in the system to be sure, but I really dont believe that everyone in an assistance program is out to cheat the taxpayer. The author seems to be the type that, if not for this experience, might be the woman criticizing someone on food stamps for buying root beer.Article summary for me: Your job isnt as secure as you think it is, check your judgments at the door, shit happens, be prepared.Human: When I see people use the taxpayer in this circumstance, theyre forgetting that this couple ARE ALSO the taxpayer. They paid into the system before, and assuming they got back to middle class jobs for the rest of their careers, they likely paid more into the system than they likely took out in this rough patch. This is a huge benefit for our economy and society financially, and I would also argue, morally.  <response>: I worked at an employment insurance office for a while, and it was interesting to watch the reactions of people coming in to apply for it. Some were pretty matter of fact, some were clearly embarrassed. I had one older guy who came in and said proudly that it was the first time he was applying in 50 years or something like that. I wanted to tell him and others that its nothing to be ashamed of. Public assistance is essentially insurance you pay into with your taxes. You might as well be proud of or ashamed of filing a health insurance claim. 