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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

#171

Post by alexpotato »

mcv wrote: post #62

> I've been disabled since 2018, and my skills in software as such have largely become outdated. I always find this such a weird claim. Sure, lots has happened in the past 5 years, but there's still tons of software out there that's older than 5 years, most major programming languages are decades old, and anything new can be learned. If you want to be able to make money quickly, it's far more interesting to look at w…

There are certain industries (looking at your finance), that often DON'T adopt the newest technologies on purpose. In fact, some of them have essentially "5 year plans" where they only update their stack every X years. (I put X as even in the same org the values for X may range from 1 to 10).

People familiar with older techs AND have the ability to pick up new things are very valuable.

If you are curious how to find things like this:

- look for talks by hedge funds on the tech they use

- if you see one in which your are knowledgeable, look up some of the recruiters for that firm on LinkedIn and reach out to them pointing out your expertise (bonus points for looking for a connection in common)

- go from there

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

#172

Post by no_wizard »

sandworm101 wrote: post #94
toyg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard thresholds on benefits just suck. They should always, always be progressively tapered, in a way that incentivises work. Otherwise you're just creating a permanent class of people without any incentive to contribute to the society that keeps them alive. I know someone with similar problems in the UK: they are part-time, but working more hours would mean paying more in childcare and lose benefits, ending up with l…

Retired rich people. Whenever a system it setup to help poor people, a harsh system of cutoffs is needed to prevent retired people from qualifying for the benefit by moving money around on paper. The problem is that we have far too many systems to allow relatively well-off people to "zero" their on-paper income, even their personal assets, during retirement. Entire industries exist to facilitate such trickery (see ev…

If we know what they are so much so that they advertise these services on cable news channels, you'd think the government would be able to make carve outs for these things as they come up no?

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

#173

Post by idontpost »

sokoloff wrote: post #13
Madmallard wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time with tutoring as it is because most students (at least where I'm getting them) just want the work done for them and typically come to you last moment.

And you want to earn money for rent. You don’t need to move the needle of academic achievement for a generation. If they come to you with money in hand and are just a little intellectually lazy or have worse time management than you’d like, you can still make a mutually beneficial trade. Only offering tutoring to the most motivated students with the best time management skills is a self-limiting market.

[dead]

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

#174

Post by double0jimb0 »

iosjunkie wrote: post #75
ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't average. https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/416/416-0420.htm > We generally use the amount of your countable income in the second month prior to the current month to determine how much your benefit amount will be for the current month. Earning $5k in a particular month would mean zero benefit in a subsequent month, and keeping that $5k sitting in their account to tide themselves over would put them over the…

I wonder if a 3rd party intermediary entity could be setup to collect the funds from the customer and pay out just the right amount spread over time.

This is correct.

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

#175

Post by skinnymuch »

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…

I can give my story. I’ll try to be succinct. I got my problems while rich at 17. I was kicked out of high school and then community college so that hurt. I was told I had no issues by free clinic people. By 23 I was broke and had not paid any taxes. That excluded me from some help. My anxiety took care of the rest — I had nothing. I did nothing. I sat around in the bubble that is my parent’s upper middle class house worried about everything. I lived below the poverty line until last year. Many years I made nothing.

I believe I was disabled and am still disabled. I found left wing politics and felt more at home. They provided answers to why my life had been so bad. Same politics convinced me I have to start working soon. There’s no excuse. So I began a tech interview bootcamp to break into the industry. I’ve programmed for for years (freelance a bit, partial SaaS attempts, community projects, half done portfolio projects). I am sure I will be fine from here on out.

I don’t think you’re missing anything. I don’t know about cerebral palsy but I’m sure you will always have work. Good job succeeding at life even with cerebral palsy!

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

#176

Post by buildbot »

kanzure wrote: post #160
ROTMetro wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who became a 'jailhouse lawyer' I disagree. Once you understand the basics it's pretty understandable, and it's self documenting with our use of case law. Now, the fact that to read the cases, which are the texts of 'the law' since we use case law and you have to pay a fortune to Lexus Nexus should be illegal. If the text of the cases ARE the law of the land (which the whole case law thing demonstrates is…

... do inmates get free access to LexisNexis?

Maybe? They have an offering for prisons: https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/corrections/default.page

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

#177

Post by skinnymuch »

tarotuser wrote: post #103

From all the comments thus far posted here, I think you'd be best off finding work "under the table", cash only. Yes, this would be defrauding the SSDI system, in the technical sense. But given the significant rise in damned near everything, SSDI is grossly unacceptable in its benefits and requirements. (I mean, this isn't a case of a Scrooge McDuck collecting piles of money into the money bin. You've got both feet s…

One of the best comments here.

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

#178

Post by maerF0x0 »

I'm not certain about the accounting details in the USA, but at least in Canada starting a company is a fantastic way to control your income to keep you subthreshold (you pay yourself at the threshold, and defer excess income to future years)

Perhaps someone more aware of US Law could confirm/correct this line of thinking.

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

#179

Post by jxramos »

reaperducer wrote: post #130
foxyv wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It strikes me as unfair that somebody who is "lawyered up" can find loopholes to protect their income whereas for many disabled people the process of applying for disability is like going to the moon or becoming a Navy Seal. This has been an inherent flaw in our legal system since the inception of our country. We do not have a right to equal representation. The right to have representation at all is barely even a t…

We do not have a right to equal representation. I'm not sure that's the case here. It's a matter of knowledge transfer. Lawyers know things. People with money can afford to get knowledge from lawyers. People without money cannot afford to get knowledge from lawyers. It's not a problem with the "system" that mathematicians know more about math than the general public, and that people who have the money can hire a math…

I think there's an analogue in dealing with customer service as well. Folks who are better communicators and all that often get their interests best protected when dealing with rogue employees at companies that did some unsavory shenanigans that need to be undone by the customer. I've been delegated these customer service call tasks from my family members because they don't have the ability to ask the right questions and drill in and get answers and actions from others as fluently as I.

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

#180

Post by bonsaibilly »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #144
bonsaibilly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes up to a month to approve your request for reinstatement. However, this does not mean that your benefits have been completely restored. While you are receiving temporary benefits, the Social Security office is determining your eligibility to completely reinstate your benefits after the six months of temporary benefits. The Social Security office analyzes your medical condition and updates your medical infor…

Yeah, sorry I didn't read that more carefully. Kind of hard to look at something so broken and not be completely discouraged. Sounds like yet another good argument for basic income policies.

Totally agree, it seems like a messed up system that would be solved by something like that.
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