I left my job about two months ago, and I applied for unemployment immediately. I got a new job today, but I STILL haven’t gotten my unemployment decision. Additionally, my food stamp application was delayed due to personal circumstances. In short, had I not had money saved for an emergency, I would have been mega-screwed.

I know some people are not in a position where they have the luxury of storing away significant amounts of cash but, if you are, I beg of you to do so if you aren’t already. I can’t imagine what position I’d be in right now if not for my budgeting.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

PS. I posted this here instead of in c/finance because the sidebar there specifies that it’s supposed to be for finance-related news.

  • bubblefizzpop@beehaw.orgEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I mean when you’re houseless, the last thing you’re doing is planning a riot that isn’t going to amount to anything either. The kind of change we need takes community, mutual aid, planning, resources, and making sure everyone can come together and stay afloat, and lots of time. It isn’t something that can happen overnight. When you are on the street you’re in survival mode, planning your next meal, how to survive, and how to get out of that situation. There’s no bandwidth left to do anything more than simply survive.

    That’s not a far cry from the situation a lot of people are in right now even if they have a roof over their heads. We’re all in survival mode trying to make sure the bills can be paid, there’s food on the table, and we don’t lose everything. We’re exhausted, burned out, and we have a huge empathy problem. We’re not functioning at full capacity and it’s hard to do much about the situation when it is purposefully built to keep crushing us to make sure we are also unable to fight and get out of it.

    If you want change, it’s up to you, me, and everyone else to start educating ourselves more on our history, how it got this way, and how to come together and build ourselves up in a community so that we can stand together and care for each other and actually make those changes that we want to see. It’s not easy but it would definitely help if people would stop blaming each other for the issues and point their fingers at the right people and again, educate themselves. All of this inevitably ties back into politics and too many people can’t grasp that concept either and refuse to participate which means they are actively choosing to not even try to understand how to have a better future. Some of us right now don’t have a choice because we’re targets.

    I don’t think people are quiet either, there’s plenty of discussions and videos even online of people discussing these things and feeling the same way. Things are changing. People are waking up to what’s happening but they have to decide to keep moving forward. We’re in a really weird place right now.

    Anyway I’ve rambled enough, there’s a lot more people who have much more knowledge on this than I do and who are more qualified to speak on it.