Getting a Job Means Losing Medical Insurance
Yes, I finally seem to have gotten a job.
It turns out I had to know someone. I’ve applied for many a job, yet without knowing someone at the potential place of employment I hadn’t gotten any. Either the economy is really messed up or my résumé is really messed up.
Anyway, a friend…
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Ex-Husband Out of Jail
My ex-husband was released from prison after serving about eighteen months. The kids and I hadn’t seen him for nearly two years.
And he wanted to see his kids.
Before he went to prison I managed to get sole custody of our children, and while he was at prison I managed to have their last…
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Measuring Failure: Jobs I Didn’t Get
Except for the two years I was in graduate school, during which I applied for and did some pretty serious internships, I…
Unemployment “Benefits” Create Huge Cell Phone Bill
It’s 2011 and I’m still unemployed. The holidays are over so I can start whining again.
I have worked 1 ½ days as a substitute teacher. Can you live on $80/week?
And I’ve discovered the latest burdensome irony in my state of underemployment. My cell phone bill has been really huge…
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I Love My Medicaid Doctor – and Other Blessings in Keeping with the Season
This column is usually a forum for me to rant about the challenges and frustrations that I encounter as a poor person.
But, in keeping with the holidays, today I want to express thanks for my family’s many blessings – mostly the results of kind people doing good deeds. I am hopeful that…
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How to Handle Collection Agencies
I’ve written before in this space about how my ex-husband ran up debt in my name (and my daughter’s!) on the internet before going off to prison. Although I filed a police report the company passed the debt along to a collection agency, Amerassist, and they’ve been harassing me for the…
How I Almost Became a Car Salesman — Just So I Could Buy a Car
The lease on my 2006 all-wheel-drive Toyota Matrix was soon ending so I started researching cars, trying to figure out what I could afford.
My first ridiculous revelation: I could afford a leased new car, one even better than my Matrix, and the monthly payments would be less than my old monthly…
Broke? Jobless? Carless? Prioritize Your Panic
I’m seeing a new therapist through a local health center in our new community to help me through this crisis that’s lasted, oh, about seven years now. My therapist is alarmed. Alarmed! She is concerned that my ex-husband is out of prison and what is my plan about that? I need to get a court…
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My Year of Financial Crisis and Magical Thinking
This is my year of magical thinking. So many bad things have happened that the good things stand out and yell:
“God has a plan” and
“Everything happens for a reason” and
“God wouldn’t send you something you couldn’t handle.”
. . . all the platitudes I’ve heard from…
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Date Me! I’m Poor and Pissed Off at My Ex-Husband!
There’s nothing like an impoverished, enraged divorcee to really spark the interest of eligible bachelors.
When I first got separated in 2004, and then divorced in 2006, I still believed in love and, after ten years of unhappy marriage, I hoped for romance and adventure. I felt I still had…
