Food or Heat? Why Some Seniors Have to Choose

There is no question that Michigan is one of the hardest hit states with the rise in home foreclosures, the lack of decent paying jobs and high heating costs. People are actually struggling just to put food on the table to feed their families especially during the Holiday season. One of the hardest hit sectors of this society are our Senior Citizens.

With so many seniors on fixed or low incomes, the high heating dollar placed on fuel oil this year is causing them to choose between buying a loaf of bread or buying a gallon of kerosene.

Many seniors are pouring their retirement savings into their yearly heating bills, worst of all many are choosing to not heat their homes at all. No one should live like this. It hits home when it affects a loved one in your own family. Of all the people I know my own parents have been hit the hardest.

My parents who live in the mid thumb of Michigan, have been retired for about 5 years now. With the economy worsening, it has been harder for them to keep their Michigan home warm during the brutal winter months. They heat their home with fuel oil and a small kerosene heater. It costs them over ten dollars a day to heat with kerosene, but that doesn't heat the whole house. When they do fire up their furnace and burn the fuel oil, it takes a long time for the whole house to even reach a warm temperature, thus resulting in burning a lot more oil.

Sometimes to my frightening disappointment, I hear they just don't use the heat at all. They say they want to conserve their fuel oil. It scares me to think they do this, when I know how cold it gets on some of these blustery fall and winter nights.

When I went up for a visit this past weekend, I sat down and had a candid interview with the two of them, I asked them if they wouldn't mind sharing some of their struggles so maybe in some way other Michigan Seniors would feel they are not alone during these hard times either.

"It has been a long time that you have heated this house with fuel oil hasn't it?" "Yes it has been over thirty five years."