Creative and restorative ways of helping people learn to do what they should

[Soloist]

A close friend shared with me how a Christian warehouse owner found a truck being loaded up in the night at his warehouse. He calmly walked up to the thieves and helped them load the truck. After a while one of the thieves said, “Wait, who are you?”
The Christian said, “I’m the owner,”
At least one of those thieves submitted his life to Christ that night.

That is a testimony

[Josh]

See my post at viewtopic.php?p=211662#p211662; basically, in my state a family of 4 children where dad works and mom stays at home with the kids effectively has an identical standard of living whether they earn $13/hr or $100,000 a year. I happened to have computed this and learned about these programs because (a) I was trying to help a family at church that struggled to get by, where dad was making $13/hr and sporadically employed, and (b) I myself earned less than $13/hr, so I signed up for programs my family was eligible for. I also helped my wife's cousin sign up when she had cancer and couldn't work for a while, and then was partially disabled so whilst she worked full time, she couldn't earn as much as she was used to.

Now, the challenge I face is this: most people would agree that $100,000 a year is a lot of income to get by with a family of 4 children in semi-rural Ohio. You can see the exact budget amounts in my post. Yet a family such as this may feel like they don't have enough to get by. They seem to be challenged to learn better habits to budget and save money.

Yet we have families in church with a baby or two where dad is earning $25/hr, they aren't eligible for all of these subsidies, and yet they seem to be doing just fine.

I would like to hear creative and restorative ways to help such people into living a better lifestyle. I think it's fine to earn $13/hr and accept state aid, but what is not acceptable is being mired in poverty despite being very, very heavily subsidised.