We will for somethings. With the state shut down, we can’t do anything on the state level. My job was contract work so no unemployment there.
To get the kind of goodies they have I would have to quit working completely and sell off my business. While it does not make enough to support us (yet) it does pay it’s bills and puts some money in to the household budget every month.
Last time we looked at SSI for the kids (and the wife, she should qualifiy for disability) we where told it’d take years and a lawyer to get it all done.
Still, Tuesday we’ll look in to it again.
We own the house, the land it’s on is rented but cheap enough (mobile home. we’re trying to live with in our means). we won’t be out on our butts but it might be roman noodles for me for a while.
Brother ... I have been stocking up the last couple of years and I probably have 20 or 30 cases of Raman ... you can do wonderful things with that ... even a nice, crunchy snack eaten dry.
“Last time we looked at SSI for the kids (and the wife, she should qualifiy for disability) we where told it’d take years and a lawyer to get it all done.”
It depends. When I suffered a traumatic brain injury, my application was submitted in March 2006 and I was approved - retroactively - in October the same year.
It’s all in having the right documentation; my doctors did a great job. SSI is there for those who are too disabled to be able to work - we pay (or paid) into it hoping we’ll never need it.
SSI should take six months and will be retroactive to the filing date. The lawyer takes his fee from the first check.
This will also automatically qualify your children for other benefits as well. I’m pretty sure self employed people pay ss tax, both sides, so you’ve paid into it.
Good luck and God bless.
Going on welfare is not the answer. Ask yourself — how did the people who are now on generations of welfare get there? Often because somebody’s grandmother or grandfather thought they'd fallen on hard times and needed some temporary help that turned into long-term dependency.
The biblical principle for helping others is that he who will not work, neither shall he eat. Note carefully that doesn't refer to those who “cannot” work, but those who “will not” work.
I am not in the practice of saying much about my own personal life on the internet, but when I was in college and graduate school, working full time to pay my tuition and bills, I was involved with an inner-city church where I saw firsthand the devastation caused by welfare programs. Not just many but most of the people on welfare were living considerably more comfortable lives than me, but they just couldn't understand how ***ANYBODY*** could make ends meet on the “small” amount of money they were getting (and which the taxes on my barely-over-minimum-wage job was paying). What really shocked me was when one father in the church with minimal job skills lost his job due to layoffs, had great difficulty finding another unskilled labor position, and was advised by his social worker to abandon his wife and kids so they'd qualify for food stamps and rent support.
That is unacceptable, and it is what the pre-Ronald Reagan welfare programs were leading to. We see the consequences now in Europe of people thinking it is perfectly normal to pay more than half of their incomes in taxes so other people can live off welfare without working.
As long as you are able to work, do not go on welfare. If there are no jobs in your area, try to move somewhere you can get a job. There may be a day you have no choice, but it absolutely must be your last choice to go on welfare.
By the way, I'm not giving advice I won't take. It's been a long time, but twice in my life, once in college/grad school and once later when the company for which I was working lost a major contract, my income was low enough to qualify for welfare benefits. I've never applied for them, and the only reason I knew that was because I was furious to see people around me who were taking benefits that I could have taken but definitely would not — my taxes went to pay for their refusal to work.
Repeating — don't do it unless you have no other choice, and make sure when you say you have no other choice that you **REALLY** do have no other choice, not merely that you don't see any other choice.