ah fuck I just did a generalized experience and not actually any stories so I'll add one here
One time my boyfriend lost his job. I was making full time minimum wage, but even with unemployment, we had to choose between paying rent on time or the other bills (credit card debt) and food. I looked into getting food stamps, but we made too much money for it.
Later, we incorrectly assumed that we wouldn't have to pay taxes for the unemployment because like... that came from our taxes and again, could barely afford to eat. One time I bought a bag of apples, misreading the price being per bag v per pound. The price ended up being like $30 for some apples and I had too much social anxiety to ask the checkout person to put it back. That accidental purchase literally fucked us for weeks. Like literally we could only afford to $5 towards gas each week and were CONSTANTLY running on empty. But thats the kind of anxiety that is normal when you're impoverished.
Anyway since we fucked up our taxes, we got audited. We ended up having to pay the tax man all the money we owned - around 2k. We did a payment plan and paid.... but missed one payment and they called our workplace to garnish our wages.
Anyway I got super lucky and have a decent paying job now and its soooooo fucking night and day what life is like now v back when I was poor (like 5 years ago...)
Oh, and other time during this same period, our kitten died and the vet appt costs like $1000. Our late was rent that month. we explained why. but we still got hit with a late fee.
ah fuck I just did a generalized experience and not actually any stories so I'll add one here
One time my boyfriend lost his job. I was making full time minimum wage, but even with unemployment, we had to choose between paying rent on time or the other bills (credit card debt) and food. I looked into getting food stamps, but we made too much money for it.
Later, we incorrectly assumed that we wouldn't have to pay taxes for the unemployment because like... that came from our taxes and again, could barely afford to eat. One time I bought a bag of apples, misreading the price being per bag v per pound. The price ended up being like $30 for some apples and I had too much social anxiety to ask the checkout person to put it back. That accidental purchase literally fucked us for weeks. Like literally we could only afford to $5 towards gas each week and were CONSTANTLY running on empty. But thats the kind of anxiety that is normal when you're impoverished.
Anyway since we fucked up our taxes, we got audited. We ended up having to pay the tax man all the money we owned - around 2k. We did a payment plan and paid.... but missed one payment and they called our workplace to garnish our wages.
Anyway I got super lucky and have a decent paying job now and its soooooo fucking night and day what life is like now v back when I was poor (like 5 years ago...)
Oh, and other time during this same period, our kitten died and the vet appt costs like $1000. Our late was rent that month. we explained why. but we still got hit with a late fee.