How a social media group dubbed Mom Jeans is helping people fight inflation | 24CA News

Over a six-week interval, as a part of the ‘Out of Pocket’ collection, Global News is inspecting how inflation is impacting Canadians from coast to coast.

Lise LeBlanc was a mom of two managing a single-income family battling a mountain of debt when she based the not-for-profit and Facebook group Mom Jeans.

“I had just taken on an additional piece of debt — I had just bought a new couch, buy now pay later. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ I already had debt, I was like, ‘This is so stupid,’” stated LeBlanc, who’s from Saskatoon.

The group will typically take part in ‘no spend’ challenges, the place members are inspired to purchase nothing however the requirements, and bimonthly clothes swaps to advertise spending much less on clothes.

“It kind of started as just this debt challenge, ‘Let’s motivate each other to get rid of debt,’ and it really has morphed into this whole community group,” LeBlanc stated.

“People really quickly realized that it was a safe space to talk about their problems and ask questions that they may not feel comfortable asking their family or asking publicly.”

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LeBlanc started specializing in serving to ladies who had not too long ago separated from their accomplice and had been studying to stability single-income households, however these days, she is seeing households hit tougher and tougher by inflation.

Statistics Canada stated the costs for groceries in Canada in 2022 rose on the quickest tempo since 1981, with costs going up by 6.6 per cent in Saskatchewan on common.

“As far as inflation, groceries seem to be the biggest thing coming up,” stated LeBlanc. “In our house, we just really stick to the basics: rice, beans, produce that’s on sale and frozen produce. We don’t buy meat or dairy; it is really expensive.”

While wages had been on the rise close to the tip of final 12 months, they haven’t stored up with the rise in dwelling prices.

When Samantha Schneider joined Mom Jeans, she took on an unofficial management position relating to fundraising and organizing help for members.

“We started organizing clothing drives, and grocery drives for members,” stated Schneider.

They hosted bimonthly clothes swaps and provided issues to different members of the group earlier than throwing one thing away.

“There is a lot of waste reduction in a lot of ways. Every bit goes a long way for a lot of these people and a lot of these women,” stated Schneider.

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Mom Jeans now provides emergency funds and micro-loans to members to discourage bank card use.

“We look at their income, we give them an amount that we think is reasonable for them to pay back and give them quite a generous payback period and it is all based on trust,” LeBlanc defined.

She stated the group has skilled 100 per cent compensation for the reason that program started.

Caleigh Farkas, a two-year member of Mom Jeans from Martensville, Sask., stated Mom Jeans got here into her life at simply the best time.

“I was in the middle of a separation, grieving the loss of my mother, and raising a two-year-old and a six-month-old,” stated Farkas.

In May of 2021, Farkas skilled sudden automobile bother that was going to lead to $1,000 in repairs.

“We are very anti-credit card,” stated LeBlanc. “It gets a lot of people into trouble and there are a lot of members in there who are climbing their way out of credit card debt.”

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Mom Jeans was in a position to supply Farkas the cash for her automobile restore from the pot of emergency funding that the group had created.

“It really helped,” stated Farkas. “The support was obviously needed. I was a student at the time as well and had student loans.”

LeBlanc defined that Mom Jeans members typically talk about how scary and unsure it feels to be chargeable for a big pile of debt.

LeBlanc labored as an administrative assistant making roughly $42,000 per 12 months when she based Mom Jeans in 2019. After mortgage funds, daycare and month-to-month payments, she defined that there was little or no left on the finish of every month.

She had accrued virtually $53,000 of debt.

“When I decided that I needed to make a change, I was all in.”

She began donating plasma twice every week, promoting issues from her home and taking any small, odd job she might discover.

LeBlanc ended up paying off $52,905 of debt in 20 months utilizing Dave Ramsey’s ‘debt snowball’ technique.

“You pay the minimum balance on all your debts and put a little extra into the smallest debt. Once that debt is paid off, you take the amount you were paying into it, plus the little extra, and add that amount to your second-smallest debt and so on until the debt is gone,” LeBlanc explains.

“My approach worked for me, but won’t work for everyone,” she stated. “Those who prefer a slower and gentler approach are valid, and it can be done low and slow as well.”

The Facebook web page is accepting new members however will stay non-public to guard the vulnerability of a few of the individuals who publish.

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