Nurse making $70K takes food from food banks, claims she's broke while living rent-free with her parents: 'She’s approaching 40.'

Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor

Jun 4, 2026 8:30 PM EDT

She sounds like a real piece of work.

How would you define being "broke"? To me, brokenness is less about your income and more about how you use your money. Someone making $200K could be broke, and someone making $50K could not be broke, depending on how much either of them saves. If the $50K earner has a paid-off house, no car note, a healthy emergency fund, and is contributing to their retirement accounts, I would argue that they are not broke. If a high earner is in debt, going on vacations they can't afford, and spending half of their income on their mortgage, they are broke IMHO.

It's much easier to have sympathy for someone making $30K a year and struggling to feed their family than for someone making $70K a year who could afford to feed their family if they stopped making stupid financial choices. The woman in this story doesn't even have a family to feed, yet she's complaining that she's broke and needs to go to the food bank to eat. She's a nurse who makes $70K per year! If that's not shameful enough, she lives at home with her parents, so she has literally no other bills she needs to take care of besides food.

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_{A model representing a nurse who makes $70K, yet gets her groceries from food banks, lives at home with her parents, and complains about being "broke" to her friends who are actually broke.}
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My friend is well off and acting broke and it’s making me angry. What should I do?

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_{A representation of a woman going on a shopping spree with her friend, despite complaining that she's broke and can't afford to buy groceries.}
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_{A picture of a food pantry, a service which is not intended for nurses who make $70K per year and don't have any bills to worry about.}
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Depending on your definition of broke, and considering her wacky spending habits, she could very well be broke. That doesn't mean that what she's doing isn't heinous on every moral level.
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The worst thing about this is that she probably doesn't even think she's doing anything wrong.