Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 266 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#51
Sorry to hear about your situation, I have not been in your shoes. If you are able to work a few hours remotely have you considered teaching? Maybe something like https://outschool.com or local kids (post on Facebook, Nextdoor) and help kids get ready for AP computer science or something. I use codehs.com for their curriculum and learning platform, and volunteer with a few kids of friends.

It will take some time to startup snd get reputation on outschool but if you find enrichment with teach kids this could be something to consider.

I don't think it would be enough money to make a career but I'd you need to offset some bills it could be a quick way.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#52

You don't spend money on rent, but are still spending $1500/month? On what?

I'm guessing food, car payment, gas, insurance, it adds up. Also, your comment comes across as really inappropriate.

It's an appropriate question in a forum full of curious people, with no demonstrated animosity.

In the US it's really easy to spend $1500 a month even on medicine alone, not to mention food, electricity, etc.

In other countries, $1500 is minimum wage, and in others it's maximum wage for most people.

Making $1500 a month in Belarus, for example, puts you in the top 1% of everybody.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#53
Been there, still there… Also no idea what to do. I've been just doing my best to learn a buncha open source related skills (Blender modeling, Python scripting, Linux administration, etc) to try my best to keep some relevant skills alive, but the pain has directly affected my sleep, which has directly affected my skills to a severe degree, so it's slow going. Still trying though, because I'm just not able to completely give up for some stupid reason, no matter how hopeless things appear.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#54
Have you considered technical writing? I don't have experience with chronic pain but if you can still comfortably play video games maybe you can also write articles?

I used to do this as a side gig and collected some resources and places that pay here [0]

I have since started a technical publishing company [1] so it's a full time focus and most of our writers work 20h/week or less. Feel free to apply if it sounds interesting.

[0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing

[1] https://ritza.co

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#55
post #31

Although it doesn't help the OP, another option in private LTD. I knew someone who had terrible bad pain that even surgery didn't help and they used their employers LTD and it was easier to get approved along with much higher payments than SSDI. And if structured right, its tax free. So even if running a startup or consulting, you should make sure you have LTD coverage.

Everyone (in America at least) should make sure they have LTD coverage of some sort if they can. The public benefits options just aren’t there. This was a mistake I made.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#56
Have you considered a second or third tier company.

Some small SaaS that is looking for full stack etc.

Consulting and startups are wayyy more stressful than changing a tooltip verbiage in a 2 week sprint (seriously the bar for full stack senior engineer so low you could trip on it at many places).

You could be burned out and physical pain can certainly be a manifestation of mental issues.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#57
Hey there! I was in a similar boat. This might not be a popular solution but what got me, "out of the poverty trap" was going back to school. I have high ACT scores so I can get all my housing, meals, transport, paid for by grants and scholarships and what's left over I can always manage with student loans. I keep a part-time (Wednesday and Thursday) job so I have modest disposable income. I'm still in the thick of it; I won't receive full financial aid until the fall so family's helping out.

Don't lose hope! There are workable solutions to social problems.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#58

chronic pain: Check your sitting posture and blood flow, especially upper neck. It's a modern-day epidemic among screen workers: https://getradiantlife.com/poor-posture-a-modern-day-epidemi...

Have you been chronically depressed before? Paragraph two comes across extremely snobby and out of touch in regards to depressed people.

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#59

I'm not sure what the cause of your chronic pain is, but I would highly recommend reading John Sarno's "The Mindbody Prescription." I've dealt with chronic pain for years and it's the only thing that's had any effect. Please, please , don't write it off until you've read the book. Note that Sarno's work focuses on back pain, but it applies to all types of chronic pain (including migraines, which he discusses in the b…

Good advice. Also check out Rachel Zoffness, who is the #1 scientific source for information about chronic pain:

https://www.zoffness.com/resources

Curable is also a useful resource:

https://www.curablehealth.com/

Re: Ask HN: I'm disabled and out of money. Now what?

#60
I'm 39 and disabled in addition to being politically exposed (that is, a bunch of people whom I've never met know me by my real name and, for reasons so silly it is not worth getting into, utterly hate me) so I have some insight into your situation.

To start: this utterly sucks. If it makes you feel better, it's not as uncommon as people want to believe. It awaits probably half of the people here in middle age (meaning 40s and 50s) due to a mix of random bad luck and work stress. Unfortunately, there's no easy fix. Getting sick invariably damages your life, in our society, more than it should. Money problems are an absolute nightmare that cannot be understood except by people who have experienced them.

It is truly astonishing, in the United States, how quickly your life can turn to shit, and how readily our society will let it happen. If the 99 percent of people who will not inherit high positions in the corporate system realized this--if they realized that they are not protected by their educational paperwork or "professional network" (which will disappear as soon as they need it)--then our entire society would be overthrown (good riddance) in a few nights.

It's good that you have family you can live on, and you shouldn't be ashamed of the fact that you're in this situation, because it's not your fault (shame or guilt will just make it worse). Not everyone has that. I'm not saying that to make you feel bad about people who are worse off; I'm just stating a fact. People have come back from worse.. although the path is difficult and the odds are poor.

What happened with your consulting clients? Did you inform them of your situation, and were they understanding? Would you be able to use them as references? (If they say anything bad about you, you can argue that they're engaging in discriminatory communication and sue their dicks off... but, ideally, things would be in a state where they'd say good things.) Why wouldn't they have been accepting of your scaling down your hours?

The first thing you have to do is focus on your health, like nothing else matters. Easier said than done, I know. If you can improve your situation to the point where you can work 25, then 30, then 35 hours per week... then great. It might take a few years, though; health problems do not resolve quickly, especially later in life, and doubly-especially when bullshit survival pressures do not let up.

I think you and the corporate world are, to be frank about it, probably done. For all the claptrap about corporate "mission", the truth (that everyone knows but cannot speak) is that the work has no real purpose and it's all about the money (and ego and narcissism, but those are connected to the money and the ability to get it). When you become disabled, you're no longer in the running for the executive-level jobs that are the carrots dangled in front of the masses, and everyone knows it. So, the cunts up top will take your inability to work 70+ hours per week as an "attitude" problem rather than a justifiable concession to a hard medical need. You can draw out the process, document everything, and probably collect a better-than-typical severance when they eventually fire you... but I'm guessing this isn't the way you want to live. With or without severance (which is never enough, even if you played the disability endgame like a pro) getting fired every year still fucking sucks.

You could look at government jobs. There are a lot of jobs in the public sector that are "boring"--meaning there's a fair amount of bureaucracy, and you're not going to be flown to Hawaii after a product launch--but that will allow you to work from home, and scale back to part-time if/when you need to do so. (I'm guessing that your disability fluctuates, and there are times when you can work 40+ hours and times when not.) You're not going to make a ton of money, but (let's be honest) that's never going to happen for you (unless your disability spontaneously resolves, which I hope it does, but which can't be bet upon) in the corporate world either. Plus, while some government jobs are bureaucratic waste, there are a good number of them that actually serve useful social purposes, and give you something to think about other than your health.

The best strategy, if you can get it to work, is probably to find a "boring" (boring is good, because income is a utility and having it turned off fucking sucks) job with flexible hours where you can work from home. You'll need one with good medical benefits, too. The era in which you can bet your life on a dodgy startup (it didn't pan out the last time) is over.

Good luck! You are certainly not alone in this. Infirmity happens to all of us; the only variation is in when it comes.

Post reply on HN