People prefer a passive beggar. Now matter how genial or affable or goodlooking you are, do not walk right up to people with an empty cup. Many of those new to the begging profession make this fatal error. Sensible sidewalkers will avert their eyes and may even run away when accosted by a bum with a cup. Why? Because you could be any urban lunatic and everyone knows you should not allow yourself to be inveigled into a conversation with an urban lunatic.

Location Location Location. “I just need to find a spot that’s well-traveled, not too upscale, not too squalid,” said Ian Vandersnooten*, a young professional beggar we found on West 58th Street in New York City last Sunday. “You have to calculate just the right mix of pathetic and grubby, so people think ‘If not for the grace of God’ and all that. They have to be able to imagine themselves where you are. Which isn’t so hard for people to imagine lately. Anyway, I sit against the wall with my cup out and a little sign that says ‘please help.’ Yes, just like that with the lower case letters — very humble and wretched. I’m out of the way but at the same time unavoidable.”

At this point in our conversation, Vandersnooten humbly accepted a dollar bill from a passing tourist. “Thank you,” he said. And then to us: “This is very important: I don’t allow myself to meet eyes with people until after they’ve contributed. Then it’s important to say a polite ‘thank you,’ but you shouldn’t slobber with gratitude or anything like that. People don’t want to see that. You have to think about your repeat customer.”

Vanderslooten looked like a beggar, even though he was wearing a suit. “I always wear a suit,” he said. “Just don’t get it cleaned for a while. Nothing says failure like a man in a grubby suit.”

Another mistake the nouveau poor make is the attempt to shake hands. Once you abandon your glad-handing sales or administrative or teaching or supervisory job to take up begging, you are no longer in a profession where handshaking is valued or desired. Especially since, to keep up appearances, your hand and the rest of you will have that veneer of greasy grime necessary for your profession. People do not want to come into contact with the grime, or any possible open or suppurating sores, or any tuberculosis or AIDS germs or just any residue of failure and desperation.

Your most important tool is a tatty paper or Styrofoam coffee cup — preferably a generic brand. This is absolutely necessary. As in the handshake, above, people do not want to touch you. They will avoid accidental contact through placing money in your hand. The paper cup makes it easier for everyone by eliminating embarrassment and the possibility of contamination. But, remember to use a generic cup — something pretty cheesy. Studies I’ve imagined show that people will not put money into a Starbucks coffee cup, because they do not want to think they are paying for your premium coffee habit.

Even the side of the freeway can be a successful spot for begging nowadays. Polls* indicate that 80% of people who see someone begging on the side of a freeway think “Damn, that guy must be really hard-up to be begging on the side of a freeway!” and if traffic is stopped long enough they will hand over whatever bill comes first out of their wallets. Begging on a major highway is risky, but those risks can pay off.

Location again. When begging from passing cars, it is best not to accost your customers, but rather hold up a sign and a cup and glance around woefully until someone waves a bill out their window.

Although many new beggars think that having a doe-eyed doggie or two hunkering mournfully at their side will boost business, surveys* have demonstrated just the opposite. Although most humans have a soft spot for domesticated creatures, many see a beggar’s dog(s) and start to ponder the expense of feeding it, clothing it in whatever tacky ensemble of pink spangled dog shirt & diaper you’ve chosen, plus medical expenses for the creature. Most customers then decide to direct their charitable dollars towards a beggar with a more compelling plight. (Survey responders didn’t say, but we knew they were thinking, “He could always eat his dog.”)

If you happen to be a parent, hopefully of a baby or submissive toddler, dress your child in a tatty grimy onesey, place it in a rickety old stroller, and encourage it to display the expression of wide-eyed listlessness that denotes hunger. Add a grubby pair of Mickey Mouse ears for extra pathos. You will be the beggar to beat on your block.

If times have already grown grim for you, and you’ve found yourself living on the street in a cardboard refrigerator box, use this to your advantage. Those with cardboard houses on streets (especially streets with urine stains) can actually sleep while making money, their plight is so bleak. Simply place your cup and sign next to your cardboard bed, and go on with your life. Of course you will periodically need to collect your earnings (no direct-deposit in the begging business!).

* all surveys and polls conducted for this article are fictional. So are interviews. In fact, all empirical evidence for this article has been completely fabricated.

The post Advice for Beggars appeared first on The Faster Times.

Of course, it’s a part-time temporary job with no benefits, but a job nonetheless. I am teaching freshmen how to write (and think) at a local university.

In the meantime, I have been keeping myself and my kids going with

a) a small unemployment check each week, based on the income from my last part-time low-paying job. b) food stamps (SNAP) c) Medicaid d) most of what’s left of my 401k after my divorce lawyer got hold of it. e) “loans” from family, and, finally, after years, some money from my ex-husband, who has been released from prison and already has a job.

I am now faced with a moral dilemma. Do I hasten to call Social Services to let them know that I have some income? Do I assume (conveniently) that when I file my weekly unemployment and check the box that I have been working and fill in the amount I make per week that Social Services will magically know about my change in status through the state’s computerized bureaucracy? Or do I wait for them to send one of those periodic notices asking me to verify my status, income and living situation?

Or do I just lie? I only have a part-time job for only one semester. As an adjunct professor, I am not guaranteed ongoing employment and the only benefit I get is a daily free cup of coffee (well, I get to be called “Professor” too). What if I tell all the agencies I’m employed and it lasts only four months? Then I will have to start the whole benefits application process over again.

Another issue — both of my kids have gone off to boarding school. Boarding schools have shorter school years, because they are 24/7, and they have month-long vacations in the middle, just like college. So I figure my kids are away about two-thirds of the time, perhaps three-fourths. But I am still their sole guardian (and paying fees to the schools; despite their generous scholarships there are still expenses); their legal home is my address. Does social services need to know about this? I get letters to my apartment saying my kids can have a free lunch at the local public school — yet my son has never gone to school in this town and we have notified the district that my daughter will be away. The head doesn’t seem to know what the body is doing, as they say. I could just “forget” to tell them things — and see how long it takes them to figure it out.

Then I could just say, “Whoops!”

My conscience tells me that yes, Social Services needs to know. They are giving me food stamps for three people year-round. But I can’t say I haven’t played with the idea of lying or at least just not being quite as proactive as I might have been.

Perhaps you can imagine how frightening it is to let go of these safety nets. . .to actually go about initiating the process that will remove them. The devil on my left shoulder says, “Just wait until they catch up with you” and the angel on my right shoulder says,” You need to call them and write a letter immediately. The support from the government has helped you through a frighteningly rough time; it has saved you and your kids — now it’s someone else’s turn.” The notices from Social Services say, “You must inform us immediately of a change in status.”

I think, Clearly I am no longer eligible for the unemployment and the food stamps for three. But I’m still not making much money — what if they decide to take away the Medicaid? I don’t know what I’ll do.

Are you in suspense? Well, luckily for me I not only have a strong moral compass, I also have the spectacle of my ex-husband going to prison to remind me about doing the right thing. I have two kids I have to set an example for. I also have a column in which I share all my financial adventures. Wouldn’t it be funny if I were writing here “Haha! I have a job but still get unemployment benefits because I lie!”

I’m sure that would make me very popular.

So I called my social worker and explained the situation. I sent the letter with all the details per his instructions. I filed my last Unemployment form and checked the box that I am working. Wham! Unemployment benefits gone and food stamps reduced dramatically (I was surprised to see that, at least for now, they will still give me a small amount — but that tells you how much adjunct college professors get paid). I can imagine that a lot of people have a hard time resisting the temptation to defraud the welfare system when the time comes to wean themselves off. But that doesn’t mean that I think that the government safety nets are a bad thing. Inequities in education/jobs/taxes are a bad thing. Our economy is a bad thing.

And one last factor for me — my job doesn’t pay me anything until I have been working for a month. And my kids needed lots of clothes (uniforms) and whatnot for school. So this month I have been using my credit card to survive. Let’s see how that works out.

The post Welfare and My Moral Dilemma appeared first on The Faster Times.

The kids know that I’ve used up their entire college savings – a few thousand dollars donated by my mother. I also have used up all their regular savings — birthday money, Christmas money they’ve gotten from relatives, allowance — to pay for stuff like food and rent. Basic stuff kids shouldn’t have to worry about. They know that no money they keep with me is safe. It’s kind of funny because, back in the day, I was the one who shielded their small college funds from their dad and insisted they learn to save. Haha.

My daughter is fourteen, and as an American teenager she’s bombarded by ads for clothes, makeup, skincare products. She wants that stuff. I usually give her money to go out with friends so she doesn’t feel like a pariah. (I’m the pariah), but she’s got to be pretty careful about how much she spends. And she feels bad about her clothes.

My son goes away to school in New York, and when we visit him there we have to eat at restaurants. When confronted with a menu, my kids fret about cost, sometimes to the point of seizing up: they cannot make a decision. We usually get a sandwich at Subway when we’re in New York.

While my daughter can still find pleasure in shopping, it’s an unpleasant chore for my son and me. Presents, socks, clothes, supplies for camp — all of these purchases are fraught with anxiety. My son freezes whenever I need to spend money on him. He had to work up the courage to finally discuss this with me (when you have a kid that balks over a squirt gun purchase, it’s hard to tell what the problem is). He said he doesn’t mind spending his own money, if he’s managed to save some. He’s happier not spending money at all: when he grew out of his sneakers, and we discovered my old sneakers fit him, he was content to wear them.

One of the shocking revelations for me as a college student and young adult was living in apartments. Not so my daughter. I have been letting her sleep in the bedroom in our apartment, and one night when I was in that room I heard our downstairs neighbors having sex. I hope my daughter doesn’t hear this, I thought. When I finally got the nerve up to ask her about it, she blithely flipped her hand in dismissal, “Oh yeah, that. No big deal.” (This is a small complaint in light of some others’ circumstances. On the other hand, there goes innocence.)

My kids have seen their share of scary movies and taken them in stride. My son, especially, loves to watch movies with me, and we laugh off big-screen violence. But one film he could not handle was The Pursuit of Happyness. In this 2006 film, Will Smith plays a real-life San Francisco salesman, Chris Gardner, who loses his home and struggles to survive. Smith’s son Jaden Smith debuted as his film son, a five-year-old who goes through homelessness and hunger with him. The critics who called this film a feel-good movie certainly didn’t see it from our perspective. I got the DVD, and the scene where Gardner and his son sleep in a public bathroom and the scene where the boy loses his Captain America action figure because they have to get to the shelter before it closes were too painful for my kids to watch. We had to turn it off. If my son discovered me furtively trying to watch the rest (I had to get to the happy ending), he protested passionately and stormed out.

Could there a plus side for my kids in our situation? There has been already. I don’t have to remind them to do their homework — they feel a compulsion to succeed that’s linked to their very survival. I appreciate that I don’t have to worry about this, and my kids have “earned” their way into some very good schools and camps, like the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth nerd camps that they’re both attending now.

I comfort myself by considering the truly empathetic view my children take towards others who are struggling, and the maturity they have gained. They give to beggars; my daughter has used money gifted to her for birthdays and holidays to buy household items (we have a pretty good television, thanks to her). She was moved to tears when a writer acquaintance lost his housing; she insisted we let him crash on our floor for a while.

We of us who are struggling in this economy have a kinship with immigrants. There’s no complacency — we do what we can to help the next generation succeed. It’s all about the children. And our children tend to equate success with financial gain. My kids have been told not to pursue the arts; that they would have to study business or math and engineering in order to make a living. My degrees, in literature and writing, are of little “value.”

Last weekend my son came home from camp and I took him, in 100 degree heat, to see the new Captain America movie. I went to pay — whoa! Even though we were at a matinee it was $12 a ticket for us to see the 3D version of the movie. Of course we smuggled in treats and water — we rarely pay for movie-theater treats — but on this hottest of days the icees were too tempting: my son loves them and I wanted one too. I spent the $5 each for an icee: lime for him and cherry for me, and my son hissed, “you didn’t have to buy two!” But as we sat in the theater, watcing the most excellent movie we’ve seen in a while, sipping the sweet, tart, freezing, tingly, creamy ice, trying each other’s flavor, it was pure pleasure. Are these not the sensations of childhood? And I will do anything I can to fortify the humanness of my kids.

The post My Kids Are Freaked Out about Money appeared first on The Faster Times.

James Verone is not your typical hero. He’s a fifty-nine year old dude with a gray beard and scary eyes (at least in his mug shot) who used to drive a Coke truck. He looks like the kind of guy you’d want to walk past real fast.

Verone lost his job as a truck driver and was left without medical insurance. Of course, in the good old USA, land of wealthy hedge-fund crooks who buy islands and whatnot, he could not get medical attention for his chronic back, foot and carpal tunnel problems and for the painful growth protruding out of his chest. Yeah, we’re the super-rich country where a guy has something growing out of his chest and we say, too bad you don’t have a job right now so you don’t have health insurance, now get your ugly infirmity away from me.

But I digress. The point is, Verone worked for years, and then lost his job, and he was screwed when he got sick.

Verone had the good sense to decide to rob a bank for $1 so he could go to prison. And he had the supreme good sense to notify the press of his intentions. Now his story is national news (and I like the Daily Beast’s take on it here). He’s the Rosa Parks of healthcare reform.

Meanwhile, my other new hero, Tom Lutz, is (was) the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside. He got so disgusted with budget cuts in the UC system that he quit. He wrote an angry and articulate and seditious letter to his former employers, the people of California, a small sample of which reads, “Thirty years ago UC received 9% of the state budget and prisons 3%. Now UC gets 3% and the prison-industrial complex gets 9%. The legislature is taking the money that should be used to educate the best of its citizens and using it enrich the people who make a profit from the imprisoning the poorest.”

“The only thing that has a chance of turning this devastation around is student activism,” is another thing Lutz says in his letter which you can read – which you must read – here.

Both of these issues are close to my heart – health insurance because I sometimes get sick[1] and the importance of a quality public education, well, doesn’t everything depend on that?

I was a UC graduate myself (Berkeley). I always felt I had an excellent education and I was proud to have attended one of the best public universities in the country. I felt it prepared me to be a critical thinker and a good citizen. It is a sorrow for me to see the UC system sink into mediocrity.

Dare I hope that more people will start to act? Dare I hope that Obama will be elected to a second term, will be emboldened by activist citizens, unfettered by reelection considerations, and will somehow shake off those who seem to want to keep the poor and uneducated poor and uneducated?

Verone and Lutz – two very different men—but both heroes in my book. Lutz for calling for some civil disobedience and Verone for doing some.

The post James Verone and Tom Lutz and It’s Time for Some Civil Disobedience appeared first on The Faster Times.

Homeless 1: A good friend and single mom who spent years working in the media industry in a high-powered job told me this week that she would have to give up her last tiny apartment in New York City and move in with relatives. This smart and capable woman wasn’t finding a job. A tear rolled down her cheek as she said, “I used to own such a beautiful home.”

Homeless 2: Another friend and single mom told me that she had moved out of her apartment in expectation of new digs. The deal for the new digs, through “relatives,” fell through. Having nowhere to sleep, she has been sneaking naps at work. Like me, she had to declare bankruptcy during her divorce, and was punished for years for having the faith to invest in a family business that failed[2].

Homeless 3: my last friend is a very accomplished writer who can’t make ends meet. He broke up with his girlfriend and ended up homeless. So for the last week he’s been sleeping on a small mattress in my living room/dressing room/bedroom – the one room where I also live, dress, and sleep.

It’s horrible to be in your thirties, forties, and fifties and be in circumstances like those in which my friends and I find ourselves. Losing your home, having your dreams destroyed, sleeping in strange places, feeling unstable and buffeted by the economic maelstrom all suck.

I can think of one thing that I have that these people don’t have[3] – money left in my 401(k).

When I was in my early twenties I didn’t think about saving in a 401(k), especially when I worked in book publishing in New York City and barely got by. But in my late twenties I got a job at Standard & Poor’s, the financial information company, and there I quickly learned about the importance of saving in a 401(k).

The money you save is pre-tax, so you barely notice it missing from your paycheck. You don’t have to pay tax on it until you use it presumably at age 59 1/2 . I saved the maximum allowed at my company – 10%.

Many companies match the money – mine did. They didn’t match all of it but a generous percentage. What is this? Free Money.

I also worked at S&P long enough to be vested in a retirement fund the company gave its employees.

I was able to choose where to invest this money, and I invested it in “the market” – as represented by a mutual fund based on the S&P 500. This was a relatively safe investment. Using the dollar-cost-averaging technique, I invested the same amount each pay period, thus always buying less when the price was high, and more when the price was low.

Since I started investing in my twenties, I saw my money grow through dividend reinvestments and when the mutual fund increased in value. When you start saving early enough, the money compounds – it’s like a geometric expansion. (Is it obvious I am not an investment advisor? Yes, I think so . . . but these concepts are easy enough for even me to manage.) It was impressed on me while I worked at S&P the very important fact – you must start saving early and saving regularly. It was all automatic — I rarely thought about it.

By the time I got married, when I was 33, I had about $200,000 in my IRA (I had to roll it over to an investment company when I left my job at S&P – if you don’t take any money out you don’t lose any of it.)

You can imagine how my husband drooled over that sum while we were married. He persistently asked me to take it out, to invest it in “our” company, or to use it as a down-payment on a house. I said no, over and over. I gave him all my non-retirement money, I gave him all my good credit, but I never gave him my IRA.

I don’t know how I resisted, especially when it came to a house down payment. I really wanted to stop moving and have a home. I think I always said no because withdrawing money from your IRA before retirement involves all sorts of penalties – 30% tax, 10% penalty – you lose at least 40%, or nearly half. So I resisted.

Here’s where I lost money: my husband wanted a vicious, expensive, rich-man’s divorce. We went through a mediating lawyer, then my husband went after me by hiring another lawyer and we went through “collaboration” – which meant my husband persecuting me through a new lawyer until that lawyer gave up and referred us to “litigation” lawyers.

By the time it got to litigation, my husband had been squandering so much money on the divorce that my new lawyer asked me to sign a contract saying I would use my 401(k) to pay him. I think this is pretty unusual. The “family” money is used to pay a divorce, but, in my case, the “family” money was controlled by my husband. I was embattled enough to agree to this. And I immediately had to withdraw $70,000 just to pay my lawyer’s first bill. Minus tax and penalties, that meant I paid him about $42,000.

And so my abusive divorce went on, year after year. I had to declare bankruptcy because all of our family debts were in my name. My IRA was safe from the bankruptcy declaration – I could keep it. I was left penniless after the divorce, except for the IRA. I still get a $50,000 past due bill every month from my lawyer, but he hasn’t asked me or sued me for the money left in my IRA – probably a stab of conscience.

To reiterate: the IRA was safe from bankruptcy and and is usually safe from lawyers.

I lost more of my retirement savings because of the economic meltdown and the decreased value of the market.

I am able to apply for food stamps and Medicaid and financial aid for my kids even though I have that IRA savings. Technically, I can’t access it until I’m 59

The post Why You Must Save in your 401(k) – No Excuses, NOW appeared first on The Faster Times.

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 whose son goes to the same boarding choir school as mine thought I’d make a good teacher at the community college where she teaches – in Baltimore. So she brokered a job for me with her boss, the head of the English Department there.

So I “applied” for the job and he responded: yes, I could teach. But when I mentioned in a subsequent email that I didn’t actually live in Baltimore and would be relocating from Connecticut he balked.

“This isn’t the kind of job you relocate for,” he wrote me. The job is an adjunct professor position teaching English at a community college – no benefits, low pay, and he couldn’t guarantee me classes so I might end up with nothing. (Being a college teacher is a disastrous career choice in a lot of ways, I’ve been warned by friends and by this article in The Nation, which discouraged me from going for a PhD. And I just discovered this FaceBook “note” from Tom Lutz, head of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside – he is outraged by the cuts in education.) And yet I think it’s the thing I’d be best suited for — I would be teaching something I loved and around adults I could use the F word without provoking phone calls from outraged parents.

So my friend, who I’ll call Karina because that’s her name, learned that her boss and I had sort of mutually abandoned the idea.

“He can’t guarantee me classes,” I told her.

She intervened.

“Just ask him to sign you up for potential classes now,” she said. “If it turns out last minute that you can’t come then you can decide then.” Meanwhile, Karina went to her boss and vouched for me more aggressively, I assume.

When I emailed again asking him to assign me classes, my future boss emailed me back, a very kind email saying that he didn’t want me to think that I was a charity case, that he thought I’d make a good teacher, and he offered me a couple of classes that most likely wouldn’t be cancelled because they were required freshman comp classes. He even said that he understood my situation and my need to bulk up on classes, and that he would try to get me a third class, an unusual boon for a starting adjunct teacher.

So now I’m moving to Baltimore. I don’t think I’ve ever been there.

I have mixed feelings. I’m worried about the expense of moving, and trying to figure out whether I should move the “temporary” stuff I have in this apartment or whether I should move all my stored stuff, keeping some in an apartment (yet to be found) and some in self-storage. Although this will be an enormous moving expense, we would have some of our own furniture and perhaps save some money long-term on storage expenses.

My kids and I really miss our beds, our pots and pans, our spoons, our miscellaneous stuff that happens to be inaccessible in storage.

In Baltimore I will actually have friends nearby, most notably Karina and her family. I don’t know anyone here in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Now that I’m preparing to leave, I’m noticing that Glastonbury is almost painfully beautiful, especially in the spring. There’s a woe that accompanies being buffeted around by circumstances – a woe that’s only alleviated by lots of television.

But my biggest concern is medical insurance.

I called my social worker here in Connecticut and asked whether my Medicaid and food stamp benefits could be transferred to Maryland. He laughed, but not in a mean way. Each state handles these benefits individually, he told me. We had a long conversation in which he simultaneously apprised me of my welfare benefits and supported my decision to take a job even if it meant losing said benefits.

“In this economy, it’s amazing that you got something that isn’t bagging French fries,” he encouraged me.

I won’t be making much money in Maryland, and I’ll lose the Medicaid and food stamps I have in Connecticut, so I’m at a point where I actually have an incentive NOT to go and work at the one job I’ve found.

I told my social worker that I thought it would be odd, even perhaps a bit amoral or illegal, to move to a state and immediately apply for benefits. Shouldn’t the state in which you sunk into trouble be the state that helps you up out of it? But I will need benefits in Baltimore – my expected salary won’t be enough to pay a medical insurance premium for me and my kids. And my children – how can I send them off to boarding school without medical insurance? (Talk about being buffeted: my two kids and I will live, during the school year, in three different states. Jeez.)

My social worker told me we’d probably have to go without medical insurance for a while. This scares me. What if something happened?

It becomes a consideration: I could sit on my ass, without a job, and maintain my health insurance and get free groceries and my kids would be guaranteed good financial aid for their various schools and activities (because financial aid is based on need), or I can upheave myself and my kids, spend a fortune to move our stuff in order to make a minimal wage, lose our health insurance, have to pay for all food, and, because of my paltry earnings, perhaps have to pay more for my kids’ schooling.

I’ve seen articles about people looking to change jobs worrying about health insurance, but it’s ludicrous when going from no job to having a job also creates health insurance worries. I imagine rich conservatives arguing, speciously, that NO Medicaid would prevent such a situation, because if there were no Medicaid I wouldn’t have had health insurance to worry about losing. C’mon, I say. Citizens of the good old USA, one of the richest countries in the world, should not have their working hands tied by employer-financed health insurance. Just as we have libraries and police forces and fire engines and road infrastructure and civil injustice and criminal justice and public parks and national parks for everyone, it’s time for Universal Health Care for everyone.

The post Getting a Job Means Losing Medical Insurance appeared first on The Faster Times.

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 names changed to both my name and his name (this was a compromise I made in order to get his cooperation). Although I have been managing them pretty well by myself, I admit they need a loving father.

Per the State of Connecticut’s required class for divorcing parents, you must never say bad things about your ex and you must facilitate a relationship between the kids and your former spouse no matter what. They don’t tell you how to manage visitation with an abusive, financially immoral ex who stole your money and your good credit and left you and one of your children with an internet debt before he went off to prison, provoking phone calls from collection agencies to both you and your child.

So I’m on my own managing the re-entry of their dad into my children’s lives.

My twelve-year-old son, who spends much of his time at choir boarding school in Manhattan, was looking forward to seeing his dad, but my fourteen-year-old daughter was apprehensive. She had grown up in his absence.

Our first planned visit was cancelled because the ex couldn’t leave town due to parole. But that only lasted a month or two (white collar criminals’ lives aren’t scrutinized as closely as, say, former drug addicts’ and/or dealers’). So we made plans for the ex to visit while my son was home on spring vacation.

This is where our stressful financial situation figures in: how to manage ex-husband visiting from many states away. The cost of a hotel room is prohibitive for him and for us (any money he spends on a hotel is money he doesn’t contribute to child support). We are living “temporarily” in a one-bedroom apartment. There are only two rooms, one bathroom. Even the kitchen is open to the living room. What to do with the ex?

Well, I decided to take it day-by-day. The ex arrived and he didn’t get on my nerves. He was in his jolly and considerate mode usually reserved for non-family members. The dour husband of former years was dutifully tucked away.

I allowed him to spend the night in our apartment. So that’s four of us in two rooms – he slept on a mattress on the floor in the bedroom where my daughter has her single bed. My son and I slept in the living room. I reminded myself of hurricane victims, earthquake victims, for whom such a situation would be a luxury.

The ex picked up his underpants and dishes. He even cooked. Thus he earned his way into Acceptable Guest status.

I had gotten into this situation with the ex some years ago before he plead guilty to felony embezzlement. He had lost his house (seized by creditors) and wanted to visit the kids, so I let him stay at our house. At least then he could sleep in another room. I remember being offended when a friend asked, “Are you sleeping with him?”

Ergh!

But, imagine if you will, me sleeping on a fold-out futon in my apartment. My son sleeping on the other side of said futon, because there is nowhere else to sleep and he’s still young enough (just barely) to not mind so much sleeping with mom. Imagine me waking up, not even moving my head but looking down the bed, and my eyes encountering my ex-husband, recently released from prison, sitting on the one chair at the foot of my bed, just six feet from me, working on his laptop.

Yikes!

Actually, I was able to laugh when this happened.

So it turns out that perhaps the most frightening thing about having the ex in such close proximity was the ease with which we managed it. We had lived together for years, we know each other well, and, I remembered, he did have many qualities that I had loved at one point. And we shared a very strong common interest in our children (there aren’t many people who can tolerate you yammering away about your kids for hours, as both of us are wont to do).

And so we managed a five-day visit.

The next challenge was welcoming the ex into my children’s public lives. My son’s choir boarding school has become our social center. There I have many beloved friends with whom I share unique bonds: a love of music, a love for our children, a willingness to sacrifice childhood time with our sons to allow them to board at a very serious choir school, a love of other cultural things like literature, a Christian sort of fellowship and support, and many laughs. Even my daughter has found a “home” with our choir school family, as I call them.

I was reluctant to compromise my relationships with these people by introducing the ex-husband. I jealously guarded my limited time with my son. I would not give up any of this to let my ex-husband have independent time at the school. No, this was my time.

But my son wanted his dad to share his life. So I had to have a sort of faith that doing the right thing by my children and their father by including him wouldn’t mess up the haven I’d created for myself.

I arranged to bring my ex along to a concert my son was in at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan. I invited my ex to Sunday services and Sunday lunch at the school and Sunday dinner and hanging-out – a unique time in the week where the boys, after a hard days’ work, relax and their families can relax with them. I am able to control the involvement of my ex because I am sole custodian – the school will only allow him there if I say he will be there. The ex may not pick up my son without my permission.

These measures of control are a comfort to me. So far I haven’t refused any time the ex wants with his children, because he hasn’t done anything to violate my trust.

Two of my choir school parent friends took me aside the Sunday evening the ex was there and asked me how I was doing. One of them said, “You seem like a couple. Is there a possibility of you getting back together?”

“No!” I said.

So my other friend said that I seemed to be “at peace” with the situation.

Me? At peace?

Both of them said that my including the ex was in the Christian spirit. That I was doing well with it and doing the right thing.

Those of you who read my column know that I’m at best a doubting Christian. But, as Morpheus says in The Matrix, “You have to walk the walk.”

I was very touched by my friends’ observations. I am touched again when I write them here.

But then my sense of caution was roused a few days ago when the ex contacted me asking for my social security number. He said he needed it in order to list me as a beneficiary on his life insurance policy. This is how I became ensnared in the past – too much credulity when faced with seemingly good intentions. I refused to give him my number.

And so I balance my way, tilting on one day towards being open and welcoming, and on another day towards skepticism and self-preservation.

The post Ex-Husband Out of Jail appeared first on The Faster Times.

My kids and me during the seemingly neverending divorce Copyright 2004 Alison Wachstein

The post Measuring Failure: Jobs I Didn’t Get appeared first on The Faster Times.

So, I had to hunt down a social worker here in our new community to help us with that. While I was pursuing the Medicaid reinstatement, I inquired about food stamps.

“Food stamps are harder to get than Medicaid,” said Mr. Bill[1], my gruff, brusque/garrulous (depending on his mood) social worker who I met over the phone. You never actually see any of these people.

He also told me that food stamps were no longer called food stamps, although he constantly referred to them as food stamps. “It’s SNAP now.”

SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

So I applied for SNAP while doing the Medicaid reinstatement – it all went to Mr. Bill. Anything to alleviate the painful hemorrhage of money whenever I went to the grocery store.

In addition to my application form and recent paystubs, Mr. Bill said I had to supply a letter from my landlord verifying my residence and letters (on letterhead) from my various employers saying when I hadn’t worked.

Mr. Bill explained that some people try to abuse the system by just reporting part of their income so they look poorer and thus qualify.

“Can’t you tell my income by my social security number?” I asked.

Mr. Bill said no, they don’t get that information until much later.

In a time of Internet and high-tech databases, I was a little surprised by the antiquated capabilities of the social services office. “We do have a fax machine, but there’s only one for the whole building,” said Mr. Bill. “So have people send letters on their letterhead in the regular mail. Things that get faxed usually get lost.”

Despite his sternness and barely concealed exasperation, Mr. Bill had his charm. I imagined him embattled, one of many Kafkaesque workers in a large but dingy office, surrounded by old dented greenish metal file cabinets, cracked linoleum floors and flickering fluorescent lights.

I was amused by his voicemail greeting: a long message that he no doubt recorded using an old-timey rotary phone. It went something like this:

“This is Mr. Bill at the Department of Social Services. Our hours are 8 AM until 5 PM. If you call outside of those hours, do not leave a message. We’re not here; why would you call? If you do leave a message leave only your name, client ID number and phone number. If you leave a lot of other information I will not return your call. One of the things that takes up most of my time is voicemail messages. Would you rather that I spend time resolving your case or listening to long voicemail messages all day? Please allow at least forty-eight hours to return voicemail messages. And etc.”

I sent letters with SASEs to my landlord and all employers asking them to please send a letter, on their letterhead, verifying my residence and/or lack of employment. (I couldn’t help but think that you could thwart the honor system by not even mentioning an employer, but of course I am so full of integrity I wouldn’t do that.)

The response from Mr. Bill was remarkably swift. My Medicaid cards started working right away.

After a week or so I received an EBT card in the mail. EBT stands for “Electronic Benefits Transfer.” This was my SNAP card. It had over $500 dollars on it.

You’d think I’d be really psyched about this. Part of me was very pleased – free food! And it sure was a lot better than having a bunch of humiliating “stamps” to sort through and give to the grocery store cashier. I wouldn’t have to feel so panicked about my grocery store expenses. But another part of me was bummed. I had sunk to an even lower depth of poverty; I had put a giant pleading hand out for benefits, and when I went to buy things people would know.

I told my daughter about my mixed feelings the first time we went to the grocery store with the EBT card. I was anxious – how would it work?

Turns out that when you buy your groceries, and they have those electronic things where you swipe your credit or debit card, there are two other options: “EBT Food” and “EBT Cash.” I hadn’t ever noticed them before – until now it was meaningless gibberish. But now EBT was me.

I expected the Stop & Shop cashier to treat me with scorn when she discovered my status: poor person. I swiped my EBT card and pushed EBT Food and it paid for most of my groceries. There were some things – I’m thinking shampoo and toilet paper and the like – that weren’t covered. The cashier smiled at me encouragingly and took some time helping me figure out if I could get “EBT Cash” to pay for the rest – I couldn’t. I used my regular credit card.

The cashier actually seemed to get friendlier and more helpful when my EBT status was revealed.

I had the same experience at Whole Foods. I bought a meal for my kids and myself, and after she rang us up and the EBT card was revealed, the cashier kindly advised me to ask, in the future, for them to ring up the transaction as “cold food” rather than “hot food” – cold food was covered by EBT.

You know how when you learn a word you start noticing it everywhere? Now I’ve been noticing references to EBT cards – usually a sneering comment about people using them to buy booze and cigarettes.

I haven’t tried to buy booze or cigarettes with my EBT card (yet), but I’m thinking that the EBT card will probably not work for those kinds of things, especially if it doesn’t pay for toilet paper.

It’s a noble society that provides food for its poor without humiliating them.

Now my job is to notify the Department of Social Services immediately if I move or get a job. In the meantime, I am grateful for the help.

Note: Kathryn A. Higgins’s first book is available on Amazon / Kindle — It’s a memoir entitled How I Quit Sucking My Thumb and Other Tales of Triumph Over Adversity.” It costs $2.99 — a brave new world of publishing!

The post Food Stamps are a SNAP appeared first on The Faster Times.

The moral: If you lose your job, file for unemployment immediately. I had Unemployment mixed up with Welfare in my head in a soup of Armageddon-type options that I would never be pathetic enough to need. I was wrong.

My Actual Stumbling Efforts:

If you’ve been reading my column here for the last couple of years it will probably astonish you that it took me this long to figure out Unemployment. It didn’t occur to me to file for unemployment benefits when I lost my part-time job. I was about to start an intensive class on teaching high-school, after all, and was going to get a job posthaste.

Except that I didn’t get a job.

I had met with Darien social services and then, when I was exiled from my home, with the Hartford-area social services agencies. None of them suggested I apply for unemployment benefits; they said I probably wasn’t eligible, I think. But it might have been Welfare we discussed. It’s all a bit of a haze, now, frankly, what with the foreclosure and the moving and the ex-husband going to jail and enrolling my daughter in a new school with only temporary housing and getting Medicaid and packing and putting everything in storage and sobbing in a ditch.

And, of course, I was about to be employed, any day now.

So sometime around September, when the school year started and I was still unemployed, I went to the Department of Labor to see if I did qualify for unemployment benefits.

Now, just to be clear, Unemployment Benefits are not Welfare. As Wikipedia so eloquently says:

“Benefits may be based on a compulsory para-governmental insurance system. Depending on the jurisdiction and the status of the person, those sums may be small, covering only basic needs (thus a form of basic welfare), or may compensate the lost time proportionally to the previous earned salary. They often are part of a larger social security scheme.

“Unemployment benefits are generally given only to those registering as unemployed, and often on conditions ensuring that they seek work and do not currently have a job.”

In other words: you pay into Unemployment when you pay your taxes, and you are entitled to the insurance if you lose your job.

I knew that even if I did qualify for Unemployment Benefits it wouldn’t be for much, because I had only been working part-time. But I had had the job for a couple of years, while finishing up grad school.

So, last September I waited in line at the Department of Labor, and when I got to speak to a person they told me I had to call on the phone to register for unemployment.

Thus began a series of calling the DOL on my cell phone and waiting, on average, forty-five minutes to initiate my claim and then file updates on my claim. I made an appointment to have a phone interview with someone regarding a retroactive claim, for all the time I had spent unemployed, looking for a job, not finding a job, and sheepishly sponging off my mom and brother and withdrawing money from what was left of my 401k instead of wisely looking into unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile, no money came in. My claim was under investigation because the company I had worked for was in New York, and they had reported the earnings in New York State, and I lived (and worked) in Connecticut.

Then I got a temp job for two weeks and then worked as a substitute teacher a couple of days. This complicated the whole unemployment claim filing process. I had been employed, here and there. Since no money arrived from the DOL, I stopped doing the pointless phone filings. My claim languished and died.

Until a few weeks ago, when I got a letter saying they[1] had successfully investigated my wages and confirmed them. I was indeed eligible for unemployment benefits, but for only a small amount – about $160/week (I’m not complaining!). But still, no money arrived.

I called the DOL again, and talked to a live person who said that my claim was frozen for some reason[2]. He told me to call the next week, when the “freezing” of my account would expire. These are the kinds of bureaucratic hoops that you must be able to doggedly jump through to qualify for Unemployment Benefits.

So I called the next week, and he said the account was unfrozen, and that I would get some benefits, but because of my failure to file after working temp and substituting I would have to have another “hearing” to determine retroactive benefits (now for two different time periods).

So, months of effort and I finally got a Debit card with about $400 on it. Of course, I was thrilled but $400 is not much for a family of three to live on. When my appointment for a phone “hearing” came I waited dutifully at the appointed hour but no one called.

Anyway, I still file for unemployment but haven’t seen anything since that first payday.

On a more psychological level, persistent unemployment is like having a chronic disease. There’s nothing like applying and applying for jobs and never getting one. Going to graduate school to increase your options and still not getting a job and then taking an expensive and intense condensed credential program and still not getting a job. You start to wonder, is it your age? Your gender? Your time off for parenting? Your bad credit due to the ex-husband? Could it be because of the things you write and get published on the Internet? Could there be a typo on the résumé? Why do Web sites report back that you’re “underqualifed” for a job for which you are clearly overqualified? Is there such a thing as being overqualified?

Or, the horror, perhaps you are socially inept. Perhaps you are somehow abrasive or boring. Perhaps you smell.

I sometimes ask my kids (both of whom seem fairly normal and well-adjusted), if they’ve noticed something off about me. Am I too somber? Too full of hilarity? You know how people who are off don’t know they’re off. If you ever smoked pot, way back in the early 1980s, perhaps, and had one of those bad trips, you may know the feeling I’m talking about. One minute you are confident and laughing, and the next minute you are wondering if everyone in the room thinks you’re a lunatic.

My kids answer that I seem normal to them, but how would they know? They’re used to me.

The moral: If you lose your job, file for unemployment immediately and relentlessly.

[2] I never discovered the reason.

The post Unemployment Benefits: What They Are and How to Get Some appeared first on The Faster Times.