March 22, 2021

What People Are Spending Their Stimulus Checks On

From much-needed dental work to a literal garden of hope.

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The $1,400 checks from the American Rescue Plan have been hitting bank accounts across the country, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been curious about how people are spending their new infusions of cash. Here are just a few plans from a recent audience callout, as well as a friendly invitation to subscribe to our newsletter to join in on similar conversations, daily news hits, and much more. 

A literal garden of hope

My fiance and I will both be getting the full $1,400, for a total of $2,800 coming into the household coffers. We plan to use it for getting our organic vegetable garden/orchard going this year. We just purchased a new house in February, with a lovely huge garden area, complete with an established compost bin. Buying seeds and seed starter supplies, plus soil amendments will make the stimulus the gift that keeps on giving.  The rest will go right into savings. —Shannon

Long overdue health check-ups and car maintenance

When my next infusion of funds arrives, I hope to do what I’d planned for the first two: get my vision checked (my bifocal specs are waaayyyy out of date) and get my car fixed so it doesn’t overheat so easily…I’m on Social Security and have a part-time job that nets me $73 a week. Woohoo! If I can, I’d also like to pay off my credit card debt (it’s small) and maybe get ahead on utilities and phone accounts. That’s about as frivolous as I get these days. —Susan

Focus on grad school

I’m an older graduate student who went back to school after my kids grew up. I lost the job I used to pay tuition and fees because of COVID. My refund will help me not have to take time off.  That makes me overjoyed!!! —Jules

Housing charity

The last one went to the local food bank. The local food banks are doing ok at the moment, so it will go elsewhere, probably housing. The important thing is to put it somewhere it will be spent quickly instead of sitting in my savings account doing nothing. —Walt

Furniture to finally welcome guests after a long year

When I relocated from Westchester County, New York to Salem, Massachusetts in late January 2020, I expected visits from my grandchildren, as well as the family members I left behind in NY. After spending the entire month of February sick with a constant non-COVID cough, the shutdown went into effect, and so no guests could visit. For the first time in my life, I spent months without touching another living creature.

I think I’ll buy some furniture so that my home can be ready to welcome my long-awaited guests this Summer (fingers crossed!). I haven’t felt any enthusiasm for setting up my home since I live alone, and it was too sad to be getting ready to see those I love most in the world until now. It will be fun to get out and get to know my new neighborhood.—Claudia

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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