Today I Opened My Last Unemployment Check

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/today-i-opened-my-last-unemployment-check/245205/

The temptation was to frame it, since it marks one of those transitions in life that merits being remembered. But I needed the money more than a memento, so I took my last unemployment check to the bank and deposited it -- $367 for some necessities. Food, rent, gas. My last unemployment check was $160 less than my usual weekly benefit, but still a welcome boost to my sagging finances. How I will miss those Tuesday trips to the mailbox and then the bank, one of the few regular events in my upended, irregular life!

I had always thought the unemployed were society's unfortunates, people unlike me lacking in education or training or experience or skills. Then in March of 2009, the Hearst Corporation quit publishing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I suddenly became a labor statistic, one of millions without work in the worst economic implosion since the Depression. I was more fortunate than many unemployed people since the Newspaper Guild negotiated a decent severance that yielded two weeks' pay for every year of employment. Since I had spent more than a quarter century underneath the P-I's landmark globe, my severance was a year's salary, although that lump sum check as I left the building forever had a tax bite from a Great White Shark.

Now my severance is exhausted, as is my unemployment, and I am scrambling every day for work. I had been a columnist, then the book critic for the P-I, enviable newspaper jobs even among my colleagues. Now I seek any writing or editing work that I discover, the latest being a history of a software startup for the four partners who sold their company for more than $100 million. What they're paying me scarcely merits inclusion in their millionaire checkbooks, but I am grateful for this project. It resulted from a longtime friend's recommendation.

[elocs]

1. Well, I went 9 months without any unemployment check.

I would have loved to get $367/week.

People really should consider how bad others may have it before they go to collect tears about how bad they have it.

[Donnachaidh]

3. really don't mean to pry -- but HOW did you do it?

Seriously, I think the stories of how people are surviving without ui needs to be out there. Certainly a posting her on it's own. Because I do believe there are many here and on other boards do not believe this is happening NOW in this country.

elocs -- if you could post about it - would you consider it?

[Warpy]

5. I know how I did it

I've lived in penury my whole life because I never knew when my body would betray me, making me too sick for work while not coming up to the standards conservative governments from both parties set for SDI. I saved instead of living the way most of the people I know lived. I live like a bus boy.

Savings never allowed me to live well, but they did allow me to survive with a roof over my head.

[elocs]

16. Low living expenses, energy assistance, food stamps.

My savior was a bag of junk silver (dimes, quarters, halves) that I bought back in 1999 and forgot about. It cost me around $400 back then and when the price of silver rocketed this summer I remembered I had some. Cashed it in for nearly $4000.

My healthcare is through BadgerCare Plus for income qualifying adults without children. The rub is that if I take any job that offers health insurance, no matter how much it may cost, I lose the BadgerCare and I would never get back on it again.

I pursued and took any and all help that was available to me.

[Warpy]

4. Just because there were homeless people in my area

who'd bang on my door once in a while didn't mean that I didn't have it tough during my last period of poverty. I didn't have much, but I shared what I had. They'd only knock on my door once because they didn't much like what I was eating.

I often tell people to check out just how far the unemployed have fallen. Four hundred bucks a week isn't going to mean much for the family who had Lexuses in the driveway and who will pay all of that to the mortgage, trying to survive on their savings until somebody in the family gets a job, any job, even one of the teenagers selling hamburgers after school, dropping his grades in the process and fouling up his chances to get into the Ivy League on scholarship.

What this country has allowed a few rich men to do to the rest of us sickens me. The fact that some people might have a few more dollars a week in unemployment is largely irrelevant. We're all hurting. We're all desperate or have been desperate recently.

And I don't think many of us are in a forgiving mood.

[MrsBrady]

10. I'm sorry things are so difficult for you.

I don't think that the author of the newspaper article, in my opinion,
was comparing his plight to anyone else's.

As I read it, I think he's trying to point out the plight of the unemployed.
And now it seems he'll be not getting any more
unemployment - something that you experienced.

Were you able to find work?

[elocs]

15. Yes, I have just managed to cobble together 2 part time jobs

that will at least pay the bills. But then it's just me and I've managed to get by. I didn't complain about my plight because I knew there were people out there whose situation was dire compared to mine.

[kelly1mm]

20. That last check was $367, $160 less than the regular check ($527 per week)

I run a low income family law clinic and the vast majority of the people I see weekly don't make 1/2 of that. I am not trying to pile on the author, just that I think some perspective would be nice.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Best wishes to the author of this article. It took me 2 years to land something.

It's still tough as hell out there.

[karnac]

6. did the writer just admit to unemployment insurance fraud?

This known columnist, book author and critic just stated he was getting paid for some work,albiet informal or contract, before he got his last insurance check *today*.

I checked via google and he seems to been quite productive the last couple of years. Even writing for The Atlantic a few times.

I run a small business and have not had to collect unemployment in decades so I don't know all the rules. But it seems to me if you get an income(whatever kind), you don't collect.

[bengalherder]

7. In WA you can have limited PT employment and recieve a limited check

as long as the person involved is straight with the system, it ain't really none of your beeswax, bud.

[jtuck004]

8. The real unemployement fraud is that we let a few take the jobs

away from the many and put the money in their pockets, or send other people's kids to war, or prop up Rodeo Drive instead of the local food bank.

[rsmith6621]

9. As long In Washington State He Claimed Any Income He Earned...

....and the administrator approved it he is fine. Some in Washington state work part time to stretch their benefits out longer.If he made more than his benefits for that wee he gets no check and UE will gap him for weeks he earns less. If you noticed he said the following....."After 30 months of unemployment, 400 applications, and only three in-person interviews,"

[HubertHeaver]

11. You seem to be wrong.

[inna]

14. Huh? :wtf:, for real.

[JustAmused]

23. BS

Think...or research before you speak. As long as it is reported, part time work can certainly be done when on unemployment. Oh yeah, and the fraud accusation thing?? Very right wing. Are you lost??

[grasswire]

12. Just want to make sure that you know about elance.com

There's some work to be found there, if you sort through the proposals.

[inna]

13. OMG. Words simply fail.

Just :hugs:, my heart goes out to you and I really do wish I could do something to help you - and countless others - IRL.

What can I/We do (to stop what's taking place)? I think that is THE single most critical question of our life time.

[truedelphi]

17. I don't know what to say.

This household has been where you are.

I remember the winter of 2006-'07. The hassles of "hoping' we would have a place to live. The hassles of trying to stave off the various wolves.

The nights of staring at the ceiling hearing my heart thumping wildly. Wondering if maybe a heart attack would be the best solution, as long as it was fatal.

One thing I didn't know about - Food Stamp program under Obama is wonderful. You no longer have to even try to look for work - so you don't need to spend an amount almost equivalent to the groceries you get as you would have had to twenty years ago.

Make sure you sign up. Not being hungry helps a lot in order to plan out your life.

If you cannot sign up for FS, due to owning your own home or whatever, get a support group.

Hang in there. Things do change, life does offer unexpected rewards.

[awoke_in_2003]

22. you can't get food stamps...

if you own your home?

[truedelphi]

24. I think that you can, but I have had neighbors not go that route on account

Of the fact that the county can then put a lien on your home!

At least, that is what they tell me.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. wow, I didn't know that...

we are a pathetic country.

[Jefferson23]

18. K&R. n/t

[tcaudilllg]

19. Start a firm.

Find an unemployed accountant, some sympathetic venture capitalists, and go with it. Replace the Intelligencer.

[Juche]

21. Things aren't getting better jobwise

Corporate profits and investments have recovered, but jobs and wages went downhill and stayed there. Now they are talking about a 2nd recession as if it is a big deal. It is a big deal to the wealthy because they will take another hit (that they will recover from) but for us the first one never ended. It just means the decline will be faster now and the recovery even slower. I guess this is the new normal for the next few years.