Idle complaints of indebtedness and isolation
Comment box
- Scope: information, explanation of psychological state
- Tone: neutral, bummed, defeated
- Opinion: yes
- Sarcasm/humor: none
Hello. I usually talk about trains, except today, I just want to vent on my finances and my wishes for a less expensive world.
I have found myself in financial straits,as I had amassed debt last year, lost work for months and amassed more debt. It’s in the low tens of thousands. of course I also lost my healthcare because I live in a rich country run by morally destitute anti-intellectuals.
On paper, I will pay off the debt in 18-24 months, if god allows. I have work now.
This city’s transit system has been hobbled in bad faith and will be destroyed come January….Fares have already risen, service cut. My train to work will be cut because the state refuses to provide services for its most productive citizens. It is twice as long by bus, suicide by bicycle on roads built for tanks, so I will have to sacrifice time or life.
It seems the price of electricity has increased. I would generate my own, but it is impractical.
Sadly my possessions are breaking too. This is the way of things, it’s just miserable timing, and each discovery of a failing mechanism or dilapidated object piles onto the defeat. The window frame has rotted and the glass fallen -- the house is frozen. Not a single plant survives. (The landlord will fix it, but not hurriedly…..) Bulbs burnt out, rooms dark. My bicycle needs new brakes, a new chain, my helmet has been destroyed and should be replaced, but for now I have been riding without. The computer has broken after 14 years, admittedly about time…. An expensive thing to replace, so now I only have my phone, whose battery has degraded quite a lot and will not be usable for too much longer, and a small laptop on death’s door too. I had worn my single pair of walking shoes for 5 years until, yesterday, the sole fell off. (Thankfully, I have one more, but it is formal and uncomfortable) A new pair is more costly than I remember… I know a cheap one will disintegrate in a season and do nothing for the snow, and a quality one is beyond financial prudence. My jacket is worn and torn by years and embers, beyond my ability to sew, and I must darn and darn and darn all the socks and gloves with holes, which I hate to do, and i am not good at. The denim jeans are ripped, in a place difficult to patch, and the pockets torn. I cannot bear the cold the same anymore, so I also need an overcoat, which I cannot afford. The fitted sheets are inexplicably torn by some punitive act of god, probably irreparably. The pillows are compressed, worthless, and causing me pain. Even the tent, which I might use to regain some sanity in the woods, has had its elastic poles dried solid and is basically unusable. At least I have a few books.
My lifestyle is structurally cheap. Affordable city, relatively low rent, multiple housemates, no car, only occasional commute, no dog, no wife, no children. Not too much to pay for. I eat simply. I am content with it.
Yet somehow I find myself with hundreds of dollars of credit card purchases this month, more than an entire paycheck, and last was also more. Qualifying for a healthcare plan has reduced my medical costs, but the difference is withheld, and I’m realizing that often it costs more than it would cost out of pocket, so at best it makes no difference. The dental and vision are exorbitant, so I just hope I don’t get a cavity.
I suspect I need glasses, or will soon. I can tell my eyesight is beginning to worsen. But it’ll have to wait a couple years.
The fear of a worse medical emergency persists. The deductible is rather high for a plan that offers no HSA and the co-pay is unremarkable, the coverage limited. Perhaps the least useful healthcare plan I’ve ever had.
I do not gamble. I like to drink beer but have abstained recently. My hobbies are inspecting train and street infrastructure, studying the Holy Bible, moralizing on the internet and persuading the government to institute a better society. I lapse sometimes and make impulsive purchases, but not frequently. I have not even gone to see a game in two years.
It’s a great pain to review your statements and recognize that almost none of the purchases were wasteful, only a few technically unnecessary. There were just too many overall.
What upsets me most is the social distance I have gained from my condition of functional poverty. the agony of refusing visits, trips, games, concerts, shows, dinners, coffees, drinks grinds on me daily. Yes it is still nice to say hello, it is just not the same. The pity, or disgust, the symbolic offers of charity received. Mostly the confusion—the awkwardness, the unsolicited advice (which I don’t normally mind, but it gets old). I prefer to socialize with bourgeois progressives, academics and professionals who care about engineering and mathematics and government policy and theory. It’s what I care about. I do not really resent them, but everything they do costs more money than I possess, so it is difficult to see friends and I cannot hope to keep up with colleagues after work.
I don’t object to work but I resent the fact that I must pay for my own healthcare. I also resent that my government neglects my transportation and my safety. I resent the pollution of the air, the NIMBYism driving up rents and leaving the addicted even more hopeless. I acknowledge the mistakes I’ve made that have led me here. I can’t undo the past, but Congress could socialize all medicine in the next budget if it wanted to…. repeatedly chooses not to.
That’s all. I just wanted to complain. You can give me advice if you want. I’m relatively financially literate, just poor and human.
I'm sorry. Sometimes it feels like you hit bottom, then life throws you a shovel. I want to tell you it won't last forever, but I can't promise that, so I'll settle for I hope it won't last forever.
A couple practical things:
These window seal kits are relatively inexpensive, but they can make a surprising difference. Since you said the frame is rotten, you may be able to seal it to the trim instead. I have used them many times.
E6000 is a strong, flexible cement that would be perfect for gluing your shoe sole on.
I feel for you. You're feeling first hand what so many wealthy talking heads will dismiss with dumb statements like:
I wish every single person who ever told somebody to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to live your experience. Because what you're experiencing is the most common experience in America. And anybody above it doesn't really comprehend all of the poverty beartraps keeping you on a treadmill of "just getting by" and how incredibly shitty it feels.
I was in a similar position as you when Bitcoin first came around. I ended up earning about 26 of them passively while using my computer before GPU mining was even a thing. Ended selling them back when it was around $2 to avoid getting my utilities shut off instead of getting a payday loan. It was a good financial decision at the time, but it sucks that I could have been a millionaire if I just held on to that figurative lottery ticket.
I'm unemployed at the moment. I dumped more than half of my money out of my 401k to subside on because unemployment doesn't even pay the mortgage. My kids are not medically insured because of beuracracy, I'm not going to be medically insured in January because the Republicans are killing the only thing that keeps my horrible, shitty "good" ACA healh plan under $900 a month.
I've been completely nicotine free shince 2020, but each passing day since being laid off the cravings grow stronger. Nothing helps your financial wellbeing like a stress-induced addition relapse. And they pretend to wonder why there is an opioid crisis like a 3 year old trying to hide a broken vase.
We're in the process of uprooting our family, because we can no longer afford to live here. Even if I could find a wage at what I was earning before, the lack of job security means the risk if having to move anyway is too high. Hopefully we're doing so early enough that we won't inflict too much trauma on our children, one of whom is just now starting to make friends, and the other whom has several. Hell, the trauma for us parents too...we were finally starting to make new adult friends again too.
Fuck this country, fuck everyone who claims that simple improvements are simply impossible as they perpetually lower taxes for the wealthy, whom are throwing Great Gatsby parties with dancers in martini glasses while they kill food stamps and what piss-poor solution they insist is medical care.
Political violence is bad and all, but it's like they're daring people to have a Marie Antoinette reenactment.
Nicotine free since 2023 here. December will be two years. It's a bit disheartening to hear you still thinking about relapsing at 5 years. I'm so glad I quit, but just today I had a shit day at my shit job and wanted a cigarette so badly. I don't want to be like this forever.
Consider visiting a bankruptcy attorney for a free consultation. (If you are in the US)
depending on your circumstances, chapter 13 or chapter 7 might be a better option.
Financially illiterate opinion, sorry
@scroll_lock , to add to this, if your work offers EAP they also have financial advisors free, and if not one of us would be happy to forward your questions to ours.
Since you have no dependents and you're at negative monopoly money, pushing the table over and starting over from zero sounds like a win. There must be places on the Internet where people discuss their financial debt exit strategies to maximize their re-entry. The other players have cheated, robbed and stolen; in your place, I would feel excellent about minmaxing within that broken framework in every way I can.
You are in poverty, something I suspect not many here have been in. I come from a poor family, but we were never in the place you are. It seems like you are barely keeping your head above water. You’re already listing a bunch of things breaking down and a big setback could get you in real trouble.
Part of being in financial trouble is worrying and stress. This has a significant impact on your health. Take care of yourself and please don’t feel “others have it worse, so I shouldn’t complain”, because that is not true. You have a right to feel bad, it sounds like you are really in a very tough situation.
Have you considered getting help? There is, or should be, no shame in going to food banks or soup kitchens. Are there any programs in your area to support people in need? You might qualify for assistance. Around here, libraries often organize programs to connect people. And even if it is just to warm up and chill for a bit, it might be nice to hang out for a couple of hours in a corner of the library with a book. Take care of your mental health.
Around here, people are getting rid of older computers pretty often. What kind are you looking for?
It's windows 10 deprecation e-waste season!
(Or trying to repurpose those devices into Linux machines!)
To be more empathetic in my tone, however.
The world is a dark place right now for a lot of people, including OP. I hope folks on Tildes can band together to help build at least a small island of compassion and camaraderie.
I have no great contributions here, I just wanted to say that I can relate to those feelings. I was in a similar position in life previously (I even lost weight just because I was looking to save money splitting meals) and it especially sucks when there's a perfect storm of shitty things piling on top of each other. During that time, the one thing I felt I could focus on was exercising and so I did. I hated it but it was less bad than everything else I was dealing with and pretty much free (I started buying equipment eventually but at first I made it work with nothing). I'm glad I did that, now that I'm a better place, I'm also much healthier than I would have been had I not taken care of myself.
Please forgive me for throwing in advice when post was not tagged for such.
The social isolation part of it I can definitely empathize with and it probably is a deeper hurt than others.
Young Chocobean had very strict and authoritarian parents. Even as an older teenager I just wasn't allowed out with my friends when they had (what felt to me) were the best parts of hanging out. Sure, maybe I could go out for dinner or a movie, but I would be picked up and dropped off "on time", which means I didn't actually get to hang out waiting at the arcade before the movie starts, or be part of the silly banter while we waited outside. I just wasn't there for the late night karaokes, the playdd Video Games till 3am impromptu sleepovers, the deeper more vulnerable sharing moments in those hours.
I made up for lost time eventually, when I got my license, when I got married and moved out of the house, for example. And some of these friends I've had for more than 20 years, and Lord willing, I'll have another further 20 years' or more worth of late night chats to look forward to.
I hope you have a few friends who would want to just have you come over and we'll eat Kraft dinner and play games together till we fall asleep on the couch. Maybe you have one friend who'd show up early to chat, go into the restaurant and drink water with you till it's ordering time and leave together with you because the two of you have other plans (to raid Costco samples together and drink $1.50 hotdog pop until you get your money's worth). If you lived in the sticks nearby we could go fishing and foraging for berries and mushrooms, or grab our bows and shoot a few dozen arrows, or we could go to your place and practice throwing pebbles into a tin can together. I would ask if you wanted to come to food bank and help pack boxes together; sometimes there are goods we can't give out that are sent home with me, and if we're picking up a box at the end then that's two trips in one go.
Anyway long ramble, but I am only alive and chatting with you guys today because once upon a time, my father had nothing but a pair of swim trunks after fleeing a bad and brutal country. He showed up at a farm basically naked, feet covered with blood from oyster bed cuts, and a kindly couple, Mr And Mrs Wong, took him in, fed him, clothed him, let him sleep there until my dad got his new identification card, gave him money to get started with apprenticeship in town.
Similarly, you'll get through this, making use of whatever resources is available to you at this time, so that in the near future, you can share your expertise and resources with others who may come to your doorstep in need.
Edit: or we could go watch trains haha I'd prefer to be IN a train so I'm not outside in the sun or wind, but train stations are also super cool places, and one can also look at pictures of trains on the internet for free together
Some bits of advice that may help. The first, try to make friends with other working class people. On top of being able to relate to your struggles, they'll be able to share you tips and tricks, especially those particular to your area, for saving money (one that I'm aware of: the TooGoodToGo app for heavily discounted food that restaurants are about to throw out). The second, determine, if you haven't already, what the financially optimal strategy is for managing and paying off your debt. Medical debt, for instance, is much easier to negotiate down than other forms of debt. The third, use a debit card for everything except emergencies. Speaking from personal experience, even if you don't spend money on unnecessary things, it'll be much easier to budget when you're not paying for things you bought almost two months ago and you'll find that you'll be more strategic with how you spend. In college, I'd come up short after spending money things that were only necessary, but I didn't put as much effort as I could into getting the same things for cheaper until I started buying things through debit. The fourth, try to find a second part-time job if at all possible. It's definitely not easy time-wise, but it might just make your life less stressful than more to have a little bit more at the end of each month. It also helps a lot of the time in reducing long-term expenses to buy necessary goods and services earlier than later (ex. buying a new pillow before you get a neck problem), which is easier with a little extra cash (I know, easier said than done). Lastly, make very liberal use of charitable organizations and resources, for anything and everything you're eligible for. Where I live, charities have a very large stock of winter coats to give away for free/cheap.