I am on SSDI in my late 40’s living with my 76 year old father in his little bitty, 100 year old shoe box of a house. Feels like a damn coffin.
Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for everything I have. My home, my income, my car etc. but man…I wish I wasn’t struggling so hard. I feel life isn’t fair. I know that anyone would say “Buck up! that’s exactly right! Life is NOT fair so get over it.” I understand that and agree. I am just having a moment. That’s all.
My kids dad has a great six figure career at Boeing with retirement, pension (he got in on that deal before it ended 25 years ago) and lot’s of savings. He is taking my kids to Europe this summer. I am surely grateful that my kids get to go! but, damn, I wish I could do that for them. All I can offer is a ride in my POS car to the movies. They are very grateful, well-mannered kids. It’s just me.
I ain’t gonna lie. I am so fu*cking tired of being piss poor. I am too ambitious and smart for this. I hate MI. I can’t wait to finish Community College and, hopefully, be stable enough to work FT and get my own place and maybe have a couple bucks for a massage I’d love that.
Thanks for listening to my whining. Much appreciated.
I’m tired of it as well…I have 0 income of my own and am completely dependent on my parents…
Best of luck with your job search! Things can always turn around. My grandparents got married right out of Highschool and were dirt poor living in a garage until my granddad finally got his degree like you. Today they are very very wealthy. You never know where life will take you…
Thanks for the pep talk I won’t be done with school for years. I have to do all my prereqs to even get into the program, then it’s another 2 years in the program. I have to just deal with SSDI and living with my dad until then. Hopefully, I don’t get kicked off of it during that time.
I am right in the same spot. Turns out my neuroscience bachelor degree won’t do jack for me in the job department…so now I am going for my bachelors in nursing which has a definite job at the end…but I have to take a year of prerequisites before I can even apply to the program…have to survive living at home until I can get through all that and start my career.
We’ll get there. Maybe things are a bit too slow for our liking now but we’ll get there.
I am also tired of being poor. Not much I can do except apply for jobs. I mean there is the possibility of going to school again but would it be for a phd? I already have a master’s. You are rich in that you have kids. I was never successful with the opposite sex. I can still see myself getting a decent job with a decent income. In fact I already have a potential job lined up. The problem is that I don’t see any success with women. It is the area that I have done the worst in my entire life.
Seeing anna full of determination fills me with determination.
That’s a wonderful thing to say. Thank you. As far as the opposite sex, I have no good advice. I have been used and used. I am never attracted to anyone anyway but, even if I were, I would get hurt. I have been celibate for 2 years with no plans to date or change.
My financial situation has changed often since I became an adult.
@Anna is right, things change. I’ve been poor often but I also had years where I had extra money to do some great, fun things and buy some luxuries. I’ve been in debt many times for thousands of dollars for years at a time. But then life blesses me with windfalls or good circumstances where I can relax about money and I could afford to buy a ton of CD’s or a nice closet full of clothes or pay my own way when my family had invited me to functions and stuff.
I remember being poor and far from home in my car with no gas and no money except 27 cents to put in the gas tank and hope I make it home. But then I remember some time in the 80’s when I was working and collecting SSDI (perfectly legit… Social Security knew exactly how much money I was earning). But for some reason I was out of debt and I had a ton of money. I remember going to the record store and buying all the Beatles records I could find at once, it was about ten records. I also bought many other records too.
At that time I also bought a really nice tape cassette deck for my car with great speakers and then paid about $70.00 to have it installed. I remember being by myself one night in the room I had to share with another guy and the whim hit me to go to the nearby Sears and buy a nice tape player for my room. I figured I would spend about a hundred dollars to get a really nice one. I was walking around Sears and I saw a rack system stereo system that was originally selling for a $1000 dollars but it was on sale for $500. On the spur of the moment, I decided to buy it. It was pretty nice. But at that time in my life I could afford to do things like that. That was about 1985.
Unfortunately not more than a year later my fortunes reversed themselves and I was broke again and I had to sell my record collection and some other things for food so I wouldn’t starve. This is how life goes. After that I was poor for the next 4 or 5 years.
That’s funny @77nick77, we just picked up an old stereo rack system with 100watt speakers on the sidewalk for free last month, the owner kept all the manuals and dated when it was bought- 1985.
Works like a charm, has a turn table, tuner, 6 CD player, sounds great, all for free.
Me too, I was self employed with 10k in my bank account the month before I got this illness and now I’m on ssdi while working part time slowly but surely coming out of credit card debt.
Wanna know something funny? I still have a pair of $450 Prada sunglasses from when I had money. I wear them in my $3K POS car. What a GD joke! I
sold and gave away damn near every nice thing I have except 2 things; I have a beautiful patent coral Coach handbag and matching wallet and those damn sunglasses. I refuse to get rid of them! Ha! I have worn those sunglasses with clothes I got from the clothing bank. Since I have been on SSDI, I have purchased new clothing but I didn’t get it at Nordstrom, I can tell ya that! The contrast is quite something. In a bin, covered with dust, out in my dad’s garage, are a $300 pair of jeans that don’t fit me anymore cuz I gained weight on risperidone. I drive around in my $3k car thinking "Damn, the payment, alone, on my old repo’d Mercedes was $750 a month. That’s 3/4 of my income now."
Yep I roll that 03 Camry rockin’ my Prada’s like a fool. F*uck em
Yeah, I used to cruise around in my two or three thousand dollar Honda car wearing my Ray-Bans sunglasses. Those aren’t even close to what you paid for your Prada’s but in the 1980’s and 1990’s they were the cool, stylish things to wear.
It is cool to read this. When I first got psychotic - I traveled across the ocean to be with my family and well I did not have a job for 2 months. I did not have any money. My dad bought my cigarettes and I did not have money for clothes either. My parents live in a small apartment too. I love them and their craziness but over there, it is more like work to surive, most people do not have extra income unless thievery or some luck in business.
Now I am very comfy, more than comfy, and grateful too. I have a nice car, my own office, house, but it is the same in a way you know? I don’t think I am happier, I am more comfortable and feel safer. That is the difference I have noticed.
I liked my life better before. For a lot of reasons. Most of all because I had control over my brain or, at least, it felt like I did. I enjoyed taking my kids to dinner, being really fit and meeting friends for appetizers (even if they were frenemies!, haha), and wearing trendy clothes. I had a beautiful apartment in an upper scale neighborhood right in the Town Center. Now I have a bedroom in a tiny, old house with old, used furniture in a poor neighborhood. It ‘looks’ like a 100 year old person has lived here for 60 years. I used to have a huge walk-in closet. Now my little closet is less than my arms stretched and, just for good measure, the rod bows like it’s gonna break with just a few clothes on it. Just as well; I got fat and can’t wear any of my old clothes anyway.
I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t like having money over being poor
I can understand how it feels to be deprived. Personally, I can get by on very little, but I don’t have the commitments you have. If I had kids I would want to be able to give them things too.
That’s a big one with me. It hurts. They don’t ask for anything and they are grateful for just time spent but I wish I could take them on a trip. Many trips for that matter. Maybe down the road.
I am very grateful too. Very. I could be out on the street if it weren’t for my little bedroom. But I hope for more in the future. I think a person can be very grateful and still be ambitious or miss the past.
I’d love that.