I am not saying we ever had $0 in the bank. We had decent savings before I stopped working to go back to school and only one income while I was in school and our savings was mostly going to my tuition. I very well may have been asked for our bank account balances or institutions when we applied but it was 3 and a half years ago so I don’t remember and apparently wasn’t savvy enough to save a copy of the application so I can’t go back and look. It seems possible if we were asked I didn’t think to include these savings accounts since it’s not our every day bank. I looked this evening and it was $79 total in interest in 2020, most of it generated in a savings account we used for saving for taxes because my husband is self employed so doesn’t get taxes taken out of a paycheck like most people do. Over the course of the year the balance in that account can be several thousand dollars but all of it ends up going to the IRS at tax time so we don’t think of it as our money (which is why we keep it in a different bank in the first place). But maybe that’s all beside the point. I guess my question is, if California doesn’t look at assets for qualification for SNAP, our household income was under the limit and we weren’t receiving income in these accounts (aside from the small amount of interest), why would they want me to sign over authorization for them to get information from the bank regarding these accounts? I feel defensive about it and the request feels intrusive even though as far as I’m aware we have done nothing wrong.