The SNAP application deadline for Colorado’s fiscal review cycle was quietly approaching in early January 2026 when I first heard Roy Haddad’s name. A pastor at a Denver congregation — who asked not to be identified by name — reached out to say he knew a man in the pews who was struggling in a way he didn’t quite know how to talk about. “He’s proud,” the pastor told me over the phone. “But he’s also drowning.” A few days later, I was sitting across from Roy at a diner near his apartment in Lakewood, Colorado, and he was already apologizing for being late because he’d picked up an extra shift.
Roy Haddad is 55, a registered nurse with 26 years of experience and a master’s degree in nursing he finished in 2019. He is also, as of February 2026, a SNAP recipient — receiving $281 per month in food assistance through the Colorado PEAK system. For a man who spent the better part of his adult life taking vitals on people who paid for their hospital cafeteria meals with EBT cards, this fact lands differently than most financial data points I report on.
A Nurse Who Always Had a Side Hustle — Until He Didn’t
Roy is exactly the kind of person who resists being written about. When I asked him to describe himself, he said, “I’m just somebody who works a lot and still can’t get ahead.” That understated framing does not do justice to what he’s actually been juggling. He works roughly 36 hours a week as a floor nurse at a long-term care facility in Aurora, earning approximately $3,700 per month after taxes — low for a credentialed RN, but a reflection of the facility’s pay scale and his part-time classification.
In 2021, Roy launched a small medical staffing and shift-coordination consultancy he operated as an LLC. At its peak in mid-2023, the side business was bringing in close to $3,200 a month. He used it to chip away at the $68,400 in federal graduate student loans he took out to finish his MSN, and to send $400 a month to his younger sister Dena, who is in her third year studying social work at the University of Northern Colorado.
Then the business started bleeding. Healthcare facilities he’d contracted with began building in-house staffing systems. By autumn 2025, monthly revenue had fallen to roughly $800. By December, it was $620.
“The worst part isn’t the money,” Roy told me, turning his coffee cup slowly on the table. “The worst part is I have a master’s degree, I’ve been a nurse for 26 years, and I’m calling my sister to tell her I might not be able to send the $400 this month. That call wrecked me.”
The Month He Looked Up the SNAP Income Limits
Roy told me he first checked the SNAP eligibility guidelines in November 2025, alone at his kitchen table after doing the math on what the holiday months were going to look like. He didn’t tell anyone he was looking. He didn’t apply yet.
Under USDA SNAP eligibility rules, the gross monthly income limit for a household of one in the contiguous United States is 130% of the federal poverty level — $1,632 per month as of fiscal year 2026. Roy’s combined income, once his business declined and he accounted for his loan payment obligations, was hovering close enough to that threshold that he qualified. His net income after allowable deductions — including a shelter deduction and his student loan interest — pushed him firmly into eligible territory under Colorado’s calculation.
He finally submitted his application through Colorado PEAK on January 9, 2026. He was approved 18 days later. His benefit: $281 per month loaded onto an EBT card.
What the Numbers Actually Look Like Month to Month
When I asked Roy to walk me through his monthly budget, he pulled out his phone and read from a notes app. The picture is tight. His nursing job nets roughly $3,700. His student loan payment under an income-driven repayment plan runs $310 per month. Rent on his one-bedroom apartment is $1,440. He sends $400 to his sister Dena. Utilities, phone, and transportation eat another $520. Before groceries, before any emergency, he has approximately $1,030 left over in a good month.
“A good month” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. In months where the LLC brings in nothing — which has happened twice since October — Roy is pulling from a savings account that, as of our conversation, held $2,100. He has no 401(k), no IRA, no investment account of any kind. At 55, his retirement savings balance is zero.
The SNAP benefit, Roy said, functionally freed up $281 a month that he redirected toward his savings cushion. It’s not transformative. But it kept Dena’s $400 intact in February, which was the month he’d been most worried about.
The Side Hustle Pivot — and What It’s Costing Him
Roy isn’t the kind of person who accepts stasis easily. By the time I met him, he’d already started pursuing two new income streams: tutoring nursing students online for $40 per session, and applying for per-diem nursing shifts through a staffing app. He’d completed four tutoring sessions in January and five per-diem shifts in February, adding roughly $900 to his income in each of those months.
The challenge, as he described it, is sustainability. Per-diem shifts are physically exhausting on top of his regular 36-hour schedule. Tutoring requires prep time he has to carve out after night shifts. He mentioned, almost as an aside, that he hadn’t had a full weekend off since October.
What he has not done — and was candid about — is open any kind of retirement account. He’s aware of the SAVE plan disruptions affecting income-driven repayment borrowers, which have created uncertainty around his loan timeline. According to Federal Student Aid, the SAVE plan has faced ongoing legal challenges that have left many borrowers in processing limbo. Roy told me he received a forbearance notice in late 2025 and has been trying to figure out what it means for the roughly 14 years he has left under his repayment schedule.
What He Wants People to Understand
I asked Roy, near the end of our conversation, what he would want someone to know if they were sitting where he was — a skilled professional, mid-50s, staring down a SNAP application and feeling the specific shame of it. He didn’t answer immediately. He looked out the diner window for a moment.
“I think I always told myself that benefits were for people who didn’t try hard enough,” he said. “I worked nights during nursing school. I did a master’s while working full-time. And I’m still here. That belief — that effort is enough — it’s a lie that a lot of us are told and we repeat it to ourselves until the numbers stop adding up.”
He also wanted me to note something practical: the application process through Colorado PEAK was less complicated than he expected. He completed it in under an hour. He wished he had applied sooner — perhaps as early as October, when the writing on the wall for his LLC was already legible.
According to USDA Food and Nutrition Service data, approximately 42 million Americans participate in SNAP in any given month — and a meaningful share of those participants are working adults in households with earned income. The program explicitly allows for working recipients; the stigma around it, Roy told me, is something the data doesn’t capture.
When I left the diner, Roy was already checking a staffing app for open shifts the following weekend. He had a tutoring session scheduled for that evening. His savings account, he said, was the one number he was watching more closely than anything else. He needed it to hold until Dena graduated in May 2027. After that, he said, maybe the math would change. He didn’t sound entirely convinced.
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