Income Resources
NAME: Lily
STATUS: Wishing, and waiting, and hoping
GLEE: Serious sweater weather
PEEVE: Christmas décor EVERYwhere
I used to be so zen. “Don’t worry,” I’d tell friends. “It’ll all work out.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.”
Did You know?In Middle Tennessee, 31 percent of the people Second Harvest serves are children. source
The vast majority of a low-income family's income comes from earnings (89 percent for a low-income family with at least one full-time, full-year worker). Yet, the median hourly wage for the primary worker in these families is about $9. If these workers see their real wages grow 4 percent per year, it will take 11 years to reach the $14 average hourly wage for middle-income families (income between two and three times the poverty threshold). source
I just couldn’t quite make a connection with the worrywarts and hand-wringers. I mean, I just didn’t GET them. So I wrote them off.
Boy, have THOSE chickens come home to roost.
All of those pithy little sayings seem like so many empty words now that all I DO is worry. It’s pretty easy to be a judgmental zen master when you don’t have any real problems beyond your latest date drama.
Nail-biter of the week: What will happen when I actually do move back out on my own? I mean, if they hang that pink cut-off tag on the door because I didn’t pay the water bill, or if I lose internet access because there isn’t enough money in my account. Or if they cut off the electricity, or if I lose my car, or if I can’t pay the rent because I still don’t have a dang job. What then? Where would I turn?
I am WAY too old to be holding out my hand to my parents.
Try These:
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Pre-Screening Eligibility Tool
Comprehensive Benefits Search for Government Help
Tennessee State Site for Determining Assistance
Aren’t I?
The reality is, although my parents are watching their pennies, too – like most people these days, I guess – they would totally be willing to help me if I were truly in a bind. It’s just that I made a promise to myself when I graduated from school that I would NEVER ask them for money again.(Of course, there’s a fine line between living with your sister & her husband and flat-out asking your parents for some bucks, but it’s a line nonetheless.)
I can’t believe I’m right back in this place.
What do people do when they don’t have families to help? What if I had children to support? There’s only so far you can lean on a friendship before it crumbles under the pressure; family, at least, can’t really leave you.
I think.
So far, anyway.
I see these awful images in the news about tent cities, or people who couch-surf on the edge of homelessness, and it really scares me. Because I never thought this could happen to me.
And they didn’t, either.
There but for the grace of God — and Rosie and Mom and Dad – go I.
Ask our expert, Patrick Johnson of CCSI, your questions and see his resources list here!
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