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I've been reading many threads here from people who are unemployed and a lot of comments from those who aren't. I'd like to start a thread about what the unemployed, without current or future UI benefits past March, plan to do to survive.
If this sounds like an old diary from the Great Depression, well, if it looks like a tomato, smells like a tomato, and is rotten like a tomato, then it is tomorrow's lunch....
I also realize posters will want to vent but I think others may benefit from your ideas, so please be constructive. "Get a job" would be just plain hurtful, and may not actually apply to every poster, because I am phrasing the question like this:
"IF you find yourself unemployed, without further benefits, what are your plans for surviving? What kind of shelter would you have and how would you pay for it, what would you eat everyday, how would you pay for food, electricity, plumbing, etc.
I'll go first:
If I were unemployed without further benefits, I would plan on having macaroni every night because I can make a week's worth of sauce with one can of large tomatoes and one can of paste mixed with 5 cans of water for $3.00. I would also think about purchasing frozen dinners on sale (about $2.00 each). Each dinner, while usually weight control, has recommended daily allowances so I will have one balanced nutritious meal.
I will live with my parents or other family member. I will sell my car. I will network to barter, instead of paying money for something I need. I imagine the black market will be thriving at that point.
Each town has at least one church with a food bank that I will visit once a week. I will patch my clothes using drapes from the house I sell.
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PS: Please be genuine and refrain from picking apart another's idea no matter how they sound, I imagine there are 5 million or so in need of help in this area.
Backpack tent sleeping bag..old car not registered and no insurance and just keep driving around the country looking for handouts or odd jobs to get gas and live by...no TV no phone no taxes..no headaches anymore. Last resort..to stay warm and eat good everyday is commit a crime and be sent to jail (quite a few will do this)!
Best bet is to study where the best jails are in the nation that takes care of the inmates the best..heard up in Maine they have 52inch plasma TV on a 155 channel dish connection.
Sadly, Carlo I think you may be right about the jail/prison idea....I can imagine people committing crimes just to get the health benefits and guaranteed shelter of prison. Maybe when that's starts happening Congress will finally get it.....
Well yesterday I open my door to my friend ..... We became unemployed the same time at work..... Her last check was last week and her family became homeless yesterday..........every place (social services) we call or visited for help; we receive the same line ( if we help you today how are you going to pay for the next month) .....I had to hold my tongue so bad it's not funny.....unemployment rate here in central florida ranges from 11.2% to 16.9% .....we got a letter from the census; so we decided to give them a call and ask about our job status( we both score 28 out of 28) ....they are not calling anyone as yet
We did find a website that offers free cell phone service and we found a program called homeless prevention program( that pays your rent and utilities for three months)...it will be open to take names on April 1st
Well yesterday I open my door to my friend ..... We became unemployed the same time at work..... Her last check was last week and her family became homeless yesterday..........every place (social services) we call or visited for help; we receive the same line ( if we help you today how are you going to pay for the next month) .....I had to hold my tongue so bad it's not funny.....unemployment rate here in central florida ranges from 11.2% to 16.9% .....we got a letter from the census; so we decided to give them a call and ask about our job status( we both score 28 out of 28) ....they are not calling anyone as yet
We did find a website that offers free cell phone service and we found a program called homeless prevention program( that pays your rent and utilities for three months)...it will be open to take names on April 1st
sorry to here this...it's effing sad how our government waists all this money on war and fighting terror while people are gonna die from something over here that they can actually do something about....people over here will die from starvation and having no roof over their heads
these bastards never should have outsourced all of these jobs to other countries...and they fight a war on terror killing almost as many of the innocent people as they do the terrorists over there without protecting our borders here from terror.....i actually think the government would love to see all of us more reliant on them so they can control our every move....
that is why these banker bailouts and this health care bull@#%$ is being pushed for so hard...to put us all into more debt...why fight so hard for healthcare when no one will have a job if the economy keeps getting worse?....this is all a bunch of bull@#!$ and i feel bad about what you and i and everyone else is dealing with right now because of the people in powerful places...they should be ashamed of themselves
I've thought about this topic many times in the last couple of months.....i lost my job and me and the roomates couldnt afford the rent because one of them got in a car wreck and couldnt work either so i moved back in with my mom in a different state....but she has liver disease and her stomach hurts all the time....she's done everything the doctors told her for the last few years....well if she passes away i know for sure that i might be living in my car ....so ive thought about this a lot and my first step would be to drive back to Florida and live in a warmer enviroment out of my car...for food i don't know what i would do yet...
it would be nice to get food stamps but ive tried that here living with my mother but they don't allow me food stamps since my mother makes 30k a year....which is bull%#$! because now they put the burden on her of buying my food which i enjoy her cooking but i dont enjoy her buying food for me at this age....so food stamps are out of the question....i guess i would go eat at a shelter or something or go fishing and steal fruit off of the orange trees....for water i guess i'd find a spring and live near it....i guess for bathing i would find some buckets and fill them with spring water and take them back to where i was staying and wash up....
and of coarse i would probably take a crap outside like a monkey ...lol...but i think id have to steal some toilet paper from a gas station or something once every 2 weeks or find an area that has nice leaves...I was homeless before as a kid when me and my family lived out of a car but being an adult is different because i always depended on my parents to think of what we would do next but i guess this is what i would do now if times got that desperate. Good luck to all of you who are in crappy situations also with no one that wants to reach out and help when they know they can...
RazorRob I feel every keystroke you type.... I had already started to inconvience my family when I renting a room out to help pay for the utilities in the house..... Now I have open my door to my friend and her family to prevent them from sleeping in their car.....I have cut off the AC/HEAT in my house to save on the light bill, shop at Save A Lot and Dollar Tree and had plenty of gargage sales to keep my car afloat.......and yes my unemployment checks helps me with rent .....$245 a week mmmmmmmmm
Well...it's a scary thought. I am waiting to see if I was accepted as a bilingual candidate for an alternative teaching certification program. If I get in, the program starts in June, the week after my benefits end. Although the program costs money and doesn't pay me anything, which is a problem in and of itself (they require full-time attendance for 6 weeks, so you can't work anywhere while you go unless you work nights or weekends). I'm not sure how I will survive the three months I will have no income anymore while I wait for my first teaching paycheck.
If I am not accepted into the program, and still have no job, and my benefits end on schedule (in June), I will have maybe another month or so before I exhaust my savings. Then I would start pulling out my retirement funds, which would get me a few more months. Then after that, I would probably move home for the second time, and sell all my furniture and most of my belongings because this time I wouldn't have the money to pay for a storage unit. I don't know what I'd do from there because they live in the country. I had to move back to Dallas and take my chances because I couldn't find work while I was at their house. I just really don't know. 7 1/2 months out of work now, it's hard to not feel hopeless sometimes.
RazorRob I feel every keystroke you type.... I had already started to inconvience my family when I renting a room out to help pay for the utilities in the house..... Now I have open my door to my friend and her family to prevent them from sleeping in their car.....I have cut off the AC/HEAT in my house to save on the light bill, shop at Save A Lot and Dollar Tree and had plenty of gargage sales to keep my car afloat.......and yes my unemployment checks helps me with rent .....$245 a week mmmmmmmmm
that is a nice thing you did letting your friend live there....if i could help people like u i would but i need help myself.....sucks that people in power don't care or understand what we are going through
Granted, it would take money and preparation to buy some of this type of equipment and gear, so you would need to use a few UI checks and not pay some of your last bills if you did such a thing.
Living out of a vehicle is not really feasible if you have a family with young children, though. It would work best for single people.
Thanks for that Link ozlo. One hurdle might be that some may have small children like you said or debt that they can't walk away from, for example those who went to college or beyond with crushing student loans. I hear debt collectors can be real resourceful and losing the car one lives in wouldn't be an option.
I like the idea of taking in a border or moving to a warmer location to avoid freezing to death, maybe bartering for a room or a camper to pull.
I.m also getting an idea that maybe immigrants can be tapped for their information, provided they speak some english. They do this all the time, living 2 or three families to a unit, traveling from one place to another and working in fruit groves during the growing season or in fast food places off the beaten path, like in Arizona, New Mexico and Florida.
I have also seen artists selling jewelry or vases and artwork on American Indian Reservations, and elsewhere, for that matter.
Thanks for the posts so far.
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