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Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

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Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#161

Post by raincom »

thathndude wrote: post #56
nfriedly wrote: post #27

For what it's worth, I used to do work on freelancing sites ~10 years ago and just tended to ignore the race to the bottom. I initially charged $50/hr, and regularly raised my rates so that I was up over $150/hr by the time I stopped doing it. Of course I got passed over for a lot of jobs in favor of cheaper folks. But the jobs I did get were from clients who actually respected me. Also, more than once, a client who…

Lawyer here, but not legal advice: Look into a Special Needs Trust. You may be able to sock the money into the Trust without it becoming income to you, and thus jeopardizing your benefits. It’s usually used to keep assets low enough for benefits, but maybe there’s an income reducing benefit as well. Your state likely has multiple providers —- fees, if any, are typically quite reasonable

Len Tillem in old days on KGO 810 used to give such advices. Follow this method.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#162

Post by skinnymuch »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #131
mcv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once knew a guy who was severely spastic, bound to a motorised wheelchair, could barely move or talk, but inside his head he was really smart and good with computers. Despite his complete disability, he was able to land a programming job with a company willing to accommodate for his disability, and he did very good work there. Then the department where he worked was disbanded and everybody was laid off. All his cow…

I'm not sure if you or your friend are in the US. Here we have SSI (for people so disabled they were never able to work) and SSDI for people who could work and became disabled. I have cerebral palsy and I used to be on SSI. I managed to get a CS degree and get off disability, but in doing so I 'crossed the rubicon' and 'burned the ships' so to speak, on ever going back on disability. It was scary for sure, but it ult…

Cool experience. I always assumed my much less serious problems were too little to get any disability. I worked full time since high school but was not allowed to graduate due to anxiety. I stopped having money by 21 and things lasted that way for over a decade. The only work I did was for a few months.

I would have been screwed and homeless without my parents house for a decade. Luckily that’s not the case any more. I’m doing a tech interview bootcamp hoping to get a solid job and keep it. Don’t have CS degree nor experience for interviews but I would get a basic programing job if I can’t finish the bootcamp. I don’t know what the problem is but whatever it is, it’s crazy.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#163

Post by ceejayoz »

onei wrote: post #151
svieira wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starving the poor to prevent feeding the rich seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

On the one hand yes. But letting your system be abused by those that have no need for it is never a good use of funds.

That's actually not always true; it depends on the rate of fraud, the amount earned, how widespread it is, and the amount of damage you do to good-faith applicants by making the process harder.

For example, Florida required drug testing to receive welfare; that program cost more than it saved taxpayers in benefits. https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-mone...

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#164

Post by rks404 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #114
thathndude wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyer here, but not legal advice: Look into a Special Needs Trust. You may be able to sock the money into the Trust without it becoming income to you, and thus jeopardizing your benefits. It’s usually used to keep assets low enough for benefits, but maybe there’s an income reducing benefit as well. Your state likely has multiple providers —- fees, if any, are typically quite reasonable

It bugs me that almost all the people I know that have gotten on disability have come from upper-class families, frequently the parents are part of the "business class" and work with lawyers on a regular basis. Conversely I've known many people who come from lower class or middle class families that have hit hard times who are seriously mental ill (e.g. addicted to cigarettes but so thought disordered that it takes t…

You are 100% right. In my close family we had a person that developed really oppositional schizoid type behavior (can't see the medical diagnosis due to HIPAA) and it took all of our resources to get her disability set up - luckily we had a nurse and a lawyer in the family who we could draw on to fight the paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles.

I just don't see how a person without family resources (i.e. most mentally ill patients) could ever qualify and I'm sure that's by design.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#165

Post by tptacek »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #129

I'm a software developer with cerebral palsy. I hope you don't take this question the wrong way, but what sort of condition disables you from working as a software developer? I only ask because I worked very hard to get into this career imagining that it would be almost impossible to be disabled enough that I could not write code without some sort of cognitive impairment. Your post suggests I'm missing a risk factor…

This is none of our business.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#166

Post by [deleted] »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #129

I'm a software developer with cerebral palsy. I hope you don't take this question the wrong way, but what sort of condition disables you from working as a software developer? I only ask because I worked very hard to get into this career imagining that it would be almost impossible to be disabled enough that I could not write code without some sort of cognitive impairment. Your post suggests I'm missing a risk factor…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#167

Post by erellsworth »

Madmallard wrote: post #145
erellsworth wrote: post #98

I did about 6 months as a part time TA for a virtual coding bootcamp a while back to earn a little extra cash. The pay wasn't great, but it was easy work and not too many hours. Might be ideal for someone in your situation. On a side note, this is why means testing kinda sucks. Sorry that you have to deal with it.

Means testing?

Means testing is when the government uses your income to determine eligibility for a benefit. It's why you have to worry about making "too much" money to continue qualifying for disability assistance.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#169

Post by ensignavenger »

blowski wrote: post #70
jacknews wrote: post #29

It's hard to take Fiver seriously. For example a quick search for 'Ruby Rails' and one of the top service providers lists a premium service of 'full stack development app' delivered in 3 days, and including a 15 minute consultation, a project plan, and audit, for ... $20.

In my experience, it's a loss leader designed to bleed you dry with never-ending "bug fixes" you have to pay for. 1. Put the cheapest junior they have to install and configure their default platform for you and present it. 2. You see progress, and decide spending another $20 will get you over the finish line. And people remain stuck on #2 forever. The more they spend, the more the sunk costs convince them to keep pay…

As long as each $20 you put in, you get $20 worth of work, it sort of makes sense... not a huge fan of it for software development or the way is is marketed as such, though.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#170

Post by bonestamp2 »

Depending on your disability, you might already be qualified to be an expert consultant on software development to accommodate users with your disability. If not, that's fine too, and you can quickly become knowledgeable in disability consulting for web applications (how to structure html/css so that pages can be read by screen readers). There is a lot of work in this field and when you're really good, you can make that $1200 in one day.

If a particular job requires several days of work, you could ask the client if you can bill them $1200 at a time over several months.

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