#me to help with household costs this month because she spent a lot on household/food | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stitch-n-time · 3 years

Note

Can you explain how the US housing laws work? You have me interested

Short answer: they don’t.

Longer answer (because I have to work tonight and truly don’t have like 8 hours to write the thesis, because you bet your ass I could):

There is actually an internal structure that the low income housing system has been built around that makes it nearly impossible to navigate, difficult to get into, and specifically works against the people that it was supposedly built to help.

I’m actually not quite sure where to start with this, so it’s going to be all over the place and bouncing back and forth, but that’s also kind of on brand for the low income housing system.

The system as we know it is very much a post WWII thing, so the info here will be from after that point. A lot of this will be in kind of broad, sweeping terms. But since the US is like 60 different states in a trenchcoat trying to sneak into an R-rated movie, very little of it actually covers the entirety of the country. There are also state and city levels of bullshit that people have to wade through. Most people don’t make it.

I’m going to use my own experiences as an example. But know that my experiences are NOT typical. When I started down this rabbit hole, I was a 30-ish year old white woman, a part time student, presented as a professional female on a daily basis, had a fairly stable income from a job I had held for years, and a vehicle (though making payments). All of this put together meant I had it pretty easy.

Some of that caused problems, though. The vehicle was a problem. It was a newer model gently used vehicle. According to the dealership, the previous owner had traded it in because it was a manual transmission and they wanted an automatic. When I bought it, it had less than 60k miles on it and was in excellent condition. In the eyes of the people who approve the paperwork and rubber stamp applicants for low income housing, I could get rid of that vehicle, and the moneys spent on the payments and insurance could go toward housing. Which would be reasonable, except most of the US doesn’t have public transportation at all. What public transport does exist is sketchy, rarely runs on schedule, and often does not go into residential areas. I COULD have gotten rid of the car, but that would have meant a 2 mile hike to the nearest bus station, 4 hours on a bus to get to class and 5 hours on the return trip twice a week, then a 2 mile hike home OR a 2 mile hike to the nearest bus station, 4.5 hours on a bus, another 2 mile hike to get to work, and the same on the return. At that point, I would have been spending more time on the bus than either at work or school, and might as well just live on the damned thing, since all I would have time to do at home is shower and MAYBE eat a sandwich?

But that’s also typical. Part of the laws as they are written specifically state that a person or household can not own physical properties that are over a certain value, because those properties could be sold in order to elevate the person/family’s lifestyle. That also makes household absolutely reliant on public transportation, which is simply not available in many poor areas.

Which goes into redlining, and systemic racism, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

The fact that I was a student also worked against me. If a person can afford to go to school, they can afford housing. So why would you want/need help from the government? I’m just thankful that I was a part time student when the need for low income housing arose… If you’re a full time student, you are automatically denied on any application for low income housing. There are different legal designations for “low income housing” and “student housing”. They can not exist in the same housing complex for legal reasons. So if I had been taking one more class that semester, I would have been denied, and would have been homeless.

That in itself doesn’t sound terrible. And there’s reasons for the legal differences. But think about it… What if I had been in the last semester of school and something had happened? What about the people who are both enrolled in school and are working, trying to make ends meet, trying to be able to do something better, and either their lease is up or they get evicted or… I don’t know… their house burns down or a tornado hits or suddenly medical bills? If a person fills out that paperwork while still a student, even if they say “I’m graduating next month and want to move in the month after that” they still count as a full time student and would get denied. Which means leaving school and being spit out into the post graduate world probably without a job, while being denied help with keeping a roof over their head, when it’s absolutely necessary to have a physical address while searching for a job.

Which goes into the anti-homeless way of thinking, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

I’m going to lump the “fairly stable income from a job I had held for years” and “presented as a professional female on a daily basis” into one, because they are directly related. I had worked my way through a trade school, and had been working in the medical field for nearly 4 years. The practice was open 4 days a week. I was there 2 days, the male counterpoint was there the other 2 days. If a client preferred one of us over the other, either they scheduled appropriately, or the doctor asked us to come in for that client’s appointment time. Because a large portion of the clientele were middle aged and older, as well as conservative, the dress code reflected accordingly. Since I actually REALLY liked the job, and the doctor and his family were pretty awesome people, I dressed and styled accordingly, on a daily basis. But because the number of hours on the clock varied with the number of clients scheduled for therapy appointments, there were times when those paychecks got mighty thin. There were absolutely trends of busy seasons and light seasons. Sometimes during that light season there were days when I would go to work for a couple of hours, go home until about 3PM, then go back for 2 or 3 hours. It was hard to pin that down.

Having to explain that I could not pinpoint an amount of annual income with any accuracy while filling out the application worked against me. And just about anybody who works in retail, food service, etc. - all the jobs that people with low incomes tend to have – will tell you that they suffer the same thing. Go into work, put in a couple of hours, and have the manager come tell you to go home because it’s not busy enough to justify having people on the clock. But without having an accurate estimation of annual income (that could be verified by their calling your employer) means that the application is denied. The general consensus is that if you can’t pinpoint your annual income, then you’re lieing on the application, which means you’re untrustworthy, and therefore don’t deserve to get the help you need to keep a roof over your head.

That conservative professional look helped me here, though. I went into the office dressed well, in khakis and a nice blouse, to fill out the application and speak to the people. While I was there, another lady came in to fill out an application. This is somebody who I happened to know personally. She was also a professional, who was arguably in a slightly better place than I was because her income did not fluctuate (though it was low, as she was recovering from a divorce and most of the family income had come from her ex husband), but she was “dressed down” in shorts and a t shirt. We made the same arguments. I ended up in an apartment, and she did not.

Honestly, I was actually lucky to get into an apartment. A lot of people don’t realize it, but even with things being classified as low income housing, it takes a LOT of money to get into places. Just like every other rental in the US, before you move in, you have to pay the first month’s rent. And a deposit. And if you have pets, another deposit. And the cost of having the electricity and water turned on. And depending on the specific details of the contract you have to sign, possibly trash pickup. And if you want internet, either you pay for that and get a modem through the ISP, or you pay extra on signing the lease. And if you want to do your laundry in your home (if there’s even a hookup), there’s an extra rental fee for a washer and dryer, unless you bring your own.

I got lucky. When I applied and was approved, this particular housing development was running a “special” - if you sign a lease, you get one month rent free to use within 12 months of signing. I had to use it immediately. With all the extra fees and everything else, I could either pay for the rent OR the deposit, but not both – so I paid the deposit and laughingly told them I’d like to use that free month on the first month, immediately, right now, please and thank you, now where’s my key? They almost turned me away at that point.

I honestly believe that if it hadn’t been for my professional clothing and the fact that I could point to a couple of scabs on my face, that I would have been denied at that point. (The scabs were from a dog. I had been renting a room from a “friend” who is no longer a friend. Her dog bit my face, and instead of punishing the dog, she decided I needed to move out that weekend. Note: this is literally the ONLY time I’ve had a dog bite me, despite having been around them most of my life, and this particular dog had snapped at multiple people before.)

Which goes into classism, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

Now the thing that has been on my last nerve for a few years now is a good one. The laws state that if your household changes in any way, you have to fill out the application again. Doesn’t matter if you literally got approved the day before: you fill it out again. Because there have been household changes. It doesn’t sound terrible at all, but I know somebody who got evicted from low income housing and ended up homeless because his wife left. Suddenly the household size was smaller, but had the same income, and it was over the limit for the household size. Sorry not sorry you have to go. I know somebody who was evicted for “falsified paperwork” because she had a baby and was in the hospital for 2 weeks, so didn’t get the paperwork in on time. They ended up in a homeless shelter (in this city, homeless shelters are more expensive than a lot of low income housing). Now she’s in debt that she’ll probably never get out of, due to that.

What’s more is that the eligibility requirements to be able to pass those income thresholds change constantly. Out of curiosity, I tracked the changes over the course of a year. Just checking on the first of the month. In a single year, the income requirements changed 10 times. It’s not easy to keep track of, and there’s not much reason to track it unless it’s literally part of your job, in order to keep in compliance with the laws.

My own personal gripe is much less severe than that. I can’t get married. Technically, my fiance can’t live with me. On paper, he lives with his parents, miles away. But he spends most of his time in my apartment, which is under my name only, because I’m disabled (but ineligible for disability) and need his help. We’ve been together for a decade. We’ve been engaged for over 5 years. But if we get married, then the household changes, and we have to fill out the paperwork and get approved again. The thing is: if we put together our incomes into one “household” income, we would never be eligible for low income housing. Which means we would have to move out.

Moving out comes with it’s own difficulties. Because of the paperwork you have to sign to lease low income housing – and depending on where you are because 60 states in a trenchcoat – there are hoops to jump through. The lease in this particular development, you get a choice. If you break the lease you either a) pay the full amount of rent on the apartment through the end of the lease term or b) pay two months’ rent on the apartment after termination of the lease. So not only would we have to find other housing that we could afford (with all of the move in fees, deposits, transfer of service fees for utilities, bla bla bla), we would also have to pay 2 months’ rent on top of everything else. Which means either borrowing literally thousands of dollars from an individual – banks won’t do loans for this – or having to decide which bills get paid and which don’t while surviving off of ramen noodles for months at a time. Which… uh… would not work well with the man-thing’s diabetes.

Which all goes into respectability politics, and deciding whether or not poor people deserve to have stability and emotional fulfillment, which is a huge part of this, but is a whole ‘nother essay.

Now this may sound like a whole lot of personal whining. And it kind of is. But I can’t speak for anybody else. This is my personal interactions with these people and with the laws behind their behavior. But it’s the laws themselves that are written to be exclusive of the people that need help the most.

Homeless people can not apply, because they don’t have a current address.

Unemployed people can not apply, because they don’t have an income.

Full time students can not apply, because of the legal definitions of the different types of housing.

People with “disposable” property (such as cars) are often denied because they could turn those assets into monies.

People who rely on that “disposable” property for work are unable to take advantage of low income housing due to the above.

People of color who have been relegated to specific neighborhoods where public transportation is not available due to the redlining of the last century are unable to take advantage of low income housing due to the above.

People who do not have thousands of dollars readily available are denied because they can not pay both the deposit and rent.

People who face employment discrimination (even though it’s illegal) are denied because they can not provide proof of steady income.

People who have bounced from employer to employer are often denied for the same reason.

People who have successfully gained low income housing are often unable to change anything about their household.

People who have successfully gained low income housing are often unable to get out of it if their situation improves.

All of it is written into the laws surrounding the housing itself.

So…. Yeah. It doesn’t work. But if you want me to actually get into the nitty gritty, I can start actually researching. But somebody’s gotta pay me for it.

#long post is long #hey nonny nonny #what was that?

57 notes · View notes

winchester-purgatory · 3 years

Text

Giving back

Summary: Claire sign up to the Secret Santa program at the foster center she comes from

Written For: @spnchristmasbingo

Square Field: Secret Santa

Pairing: Claire Novak x Kaia Nieves

Word Count: 1771

Warnings: None needed

Every year, for Christmas, Jody encouraged the girls to give back to the less fortunate. It could be volunteering, helping out at a food bank, wrapping presents for gifts for low-income households, spending time with elderlies who no longer have families at the local retirement home, etc.

This year, Alex chose to entertain the sick kids at the children hospital on the weekends while Claire gave her name to the local foster center and signed up to their Secret Santa program. Although the foster center hadn't helped her while she was there, she always found it difficult to watch the younger kids receive presents on Christmas day and see the older ones be forgotten and skipped on. Teenagers deserve presents too.

Kaia Nieves, the paper read.

According to the brief information sheet the office lady had given her, Kaia was orphaned since a young age and had traveled from foster families to foster families but never found the right one - or so they said. She arrived at Sioux Falls' foster center two months ago.

Claire frowned, having already reached the end of the notes. ''There's barely anything written. How do I know what to get her?''

The lady shrugged, not really caring. ''Would you like to pick a younger child? They're easier to shop for-''

''No,'' Claire cut. ‘’I’ll figure it out.’’ She grabbed the paper and left the foster center.

What to get someone you know almost nothing about or never seen for Christmas?

Claire had been racking her brain for ideas, but it wasn't so easy. She could go with an easy pick and get a blanket, knowing the ones procured by the foster center were shitty at keeping you warm, but that was too basic. Kaia deserved better. Claire wanted to give her something with more thoughts into it, something the foster care teenager would genuinely appreciate.

If only the foster center had been more helpful and asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas. She could pick one item from the list and she'd be done.

Grabbing her laptop, Claire decided to look her recipient up online. There were slim chances to find anything, having no access to wifi at the foster center, but it cost nothing to try.

As expected, there wasn't much. The first Kaia Nieves she managed to find was too old to be in foster care and the second one lived in another state, miles away far from Sioux Falls.

Claire let out a frustrated sigh, pushing her fringe out of her face.

The front door opened and Jody came home from work, bringing along a pizza box. ‘’I brought dinner!’’

‘’Pizza is your favorite. I thought you’d be more ecstatic…’’

‘’Yes, thanks for the pizza, Jody.’’

Jody put down the pizza box and glanced at Claire, sensing something was on her mind. ‘’What are you doing?’’

‘’Searching up my Secret Santa recipient online. So far, nothing came up.’’

The raven haired woman chuckled, removing her sheriff jacket and hanging it on the coat hanger. ‘’I doubt kids are on social media, honey.’’

‘’My recipient isn’t a kid. I picked someone my age. In foster care, Christmas is mainly for younger kids. We, older ones, are always skipped on and forgotten during Christmas and I wanted to make someone feel less alone and not invisible. I know how it feels to watch others receive dolls and hot wheels and not receive anything yourself.''

Jody smiled, proud of her daughter. ‘’That's very sweet of you. I knew there was a kind heart under that tough exterior.’’

''I'm still rebellious, I'm not gonna become soft. Don't worry. I'm still gonna get in trouble at school for talking back at teachers or skipping on Fridays.'' She pulled a mischievous grin and Jody rolled her eyes, expecting no less. ''If I can make one less kid feel alone this Christmas, I'll feel great.''

‘’I’ll see what I can do.’’

In January, a new girl arrived at school. She had dark, curly hair, brown skin and always wore the same grey hoodie. According to Alex, her name was Kaia.

‘’Do you think it’s her?’’ Claire asked her sister, blue eyes set on the new girl sitting alone a few tables from her.

The Secret Santas weren’t allowed to see pictures of their recipient so Claire had no idea what Kaia looked like. All she knew was that she was around her age and liked to draw.

Alex shrugged, taking a bite of her sandwich. ‘’It could be. Kaia isn’t a very popular name around here.’’

‘’Should I go talk to her? She doesn’t seem to have friends.’’

‘’She just got here two days ago. You didn't have friends either when you arrived here,’’ Alex pointed out.

‘’I didn't want friends, that’s the difference.’’

‘’You think she wants friends? She seems to keep to herself and enjoy her own company, but do whatever you want.''

''Should I tell her who I am? That I was her Secret Santa?''

''No. You'll make her uncomfortable.''

''I could offer to mentor her at school. Show her around and stuff. New students need mentors, right? You did it for me.''

''Because Jody asked me to,’’ Alex reminded her. ‘’And, you told me to fuck off before the first bell. How nice of you...’’

Claire grinned and stole a cookie from Alex’s lunch. She had some in her lunch box too, but it always tasted better when stolen from someone else’s.

The sisters spent the rest of the hours talking about chores exchanges and bargainings for the week. Alex wanted Claire to tell Jody she was sleeping over at Angela's so she could go to Chris' party this weekend and Claire didn't want to clean the bathroom. It could've been a simple bargain, but Alex refused to clean the bathroom, having done it the last two times.

''Ah, I guess you're gonna stay home this weekend,'' Claire teased her sister.

Alex glared. ''It's unfair. You know I would lie for you if the situation was reversed.''

''I don't need you to cover for me when I want to go to a party. I've mastered the art of lying and covering my tracks.''

The blonde's attention drifted as Kaia pulled out a set of coloring pencils from her backpack, resembling a lot to the ones Claire got for her Secret Santa recipient. It's her.

Those coloring pencils were the last push Claire needed to get up and walk up to the new girl’s table.

''Hey! We aren't finished. Where are you going-''

Claire ignored Alex and took a seat at Kaia’s table.

Kaia saw a shadow casted before her and raised an eyebrow, pausing her drawing. ''Can I help you?''

''Did you like your pencils?'' Claire asked boldly. Kaia gave her a confused look, waiting for the blonde to continue. ''I'm Claire.''

It didn't take the brunette long to put two and two together. She froze for a minute, a bit panicked. How did she know it was her? Was she going to bully her? Some kids weren’t nice to the ones who were in group homes.

Claire smiled and a weight was lifted off Kaia’s shoulder. ''How did you know I liked to draw?''

''A wild guess.'' The brunette gave her a look and Claire sighed, telling the truth. ''I may or may not have asked Jody to go to the foster center and ask about you...''

''So, you stalked me?''

''It was for a good cause!'' Claire explained, justifying herself. ‘’If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have received those cool pencil.’’

Kaia accepted the justification. ''You're forgiven. And, thank you, for the pencils.''

Claire smiled. ‘’Your welcome.’’ She looked down at the paper Kaia was drawing on, seeing a creature with horns and a creepy face. ''What are you drawing?''

''Last night's monster. I like to draw my dreams...more like nightmares. It's weird, I know-''

''I think it's cool. I can't draw for shit.''

‘’I can show you, if you want.’’

‘’What’s that?’’ Claire asked as Kaia’s backpack spilled and a red envelope had fallen out.

The girls had become very close friends during the following month and Kaia was now spending most of her time with Claire at her house. They’d have horror movie marathons and sleep over on the weekends, or do homeworks on weekdays.

Jody had rapidly grown fond of the brunette. She was happy to see Claire was making friends and had started loosing her moody attitude.

Kaia bent down and picked it up from the floor, bringing it on Claire’s bed. ‘’The letter I got from you,’’ she replied, biting back a smile and feeling her cheeks heat up.

‘’You kept it?’’ She seemed surprised, but also flattered.

Kaia hummed. ‘’Being at the foster center isn’t always a joy, as you know. Every time I felt down, I would read your letter. It gave me hope that one day, things will get better.’’

Hey, Kaia

My name is Claire and I’m 17. You’re wondering why a teenager signed up to this Secret Santa program. Well, I used to be in foster care at this very foster center. I’m not gonna brag about how happy I was while there, because it’s not the truth.

The truth is, my mom took off when I was eight and dropped me off at my grandma’s. I lived with her for a couple years, but she died from cancer. Wow. I’m off to a depressing start... I'm sorry. As for my father...he's away. I still see him sometimes, but his work schedule doesn't allow him to have me in his care.

When my grandma died, I was brought to the foster center by the child protection services and caused a lot of trouble. I met the wrong people and got arrested a couple times for shoplifting, trespassing and running away. I was very close to being transferred to a juvenile detention center when Jody, the local sheriff, was put in my path. She took me in, saying a home and a family was what I needed, not a stay in juvie.

What I want to say is, I don’t know anything about you or what you’ve been through, but I know some days are tough - and lonely. Watching the younger kids getting picked by families over you. You feel like no one will ever pick you, but, truth is, you never know. I used to think like that too, but Jody came and proved me wrong.

It’ll get better, one day. I promise.

xx Claire

‘’Did it? Get better?’’

A smile formed on Kaia’s lips and she looked up at Claire. ‘’Maybe…’’

#spnchristmasbingo #claire novak x kaia nieves #claire novak #kaia nieves

3 notes · View notes

ohtheseboysilove · 5 years

Text

Sexy panties to dirty nappies II/? [ Ben Hardy x F!Reader ]

Words : 3,300 K +

Warnings : language, pregnancy, fluff, nervous futur parents, cute dog

Summary : Reader is eight months pregnant. The only problem ? She just find out. Yep, pregancy denial. Now they only got a month to be ready for the baby. Ready…steady…go !

Note : here is part 2 ! I’m really having fun with this cute fic, reader and ben start to realise that the baby is coming really soon, a bit of panick and fluff moments

Masterlist & Requests

@/ none of these gifs are mine xx

The first next three days you and Ben stayed at home. You didn’t do a lot, couldn’t sleep or thought about something else than the elephant in the room. You were on maternity leave, yeah your boss was for the least surprised. Ben had few weeks of break but he called his agent and announced the...unexpected new. At first he thought he was doing that to earn few more weeks for sunny holidays but when the blond almost had an panick attack during the phone call he believed him. His planning was lighter than before, he will not have new castings but he still did have obligations, pregnancy surprise or not. But it could be worse.

You spent these days eating and watching t.v, kicking Ben’s ass at video games, pretending nothing was going on in your belly. But on the fourth day you couldn’t ignore it, you were, to say at least, plump.

“Are you sure you not excepting twins (Y/N) ?” Ben was sitting next to you in bed, looking terrified by your swollen tummy. You did change a bit during these past days but this night...you reached your fully eight-months look. It was fucking strange. You went to sleep with a cute little belly to waking up with a round and imposing belly.

“I am not, Benjamin” You scoffed. “The doctor said it was only one baby and that more than enough” He pinched his lips and you both jumped when the baby started moving. Their movements clearly visible on your bare skin, both of your gazes following every of their gestures, eyes wide opened.

The baby did move these last day but never that much. It was pretty scary.

“It look like an alien about to rip off your stomach to get out of here” Commented the blond, his Adam’s apple bobbing roughly in his throat.

“I know” You whined. “I want this baby out of me” You complained with a groan as they kicked harshly than before.

“I’m sorry babe” Ben grabbed your hand and pressed it gently, his face was very pale. “What we are gonna do ? We have a billion things to buy before this kid is coming and I need to call my mom, holy shit, that wasn’t the plan at all” He scratched his unshaven chin, it did happen when he was home for few weeks, he was lazier about his appearance and you didn’t mind it but these days was just because he was incapable of doing anything else than staring at your growing belly.

“We should do a list” You looked around the room, it was messy and really need a good cleaning. You thought about the pile of dirty laundry waiting in the bathroom. And the other one of greasy dishes in the sink. The small bag of weed and rolling paper on the coffee table. The household products under the sink, easy to grab. So many changes were required. In a such short amount of time.

Ben came back in bed with a little notebook and a pen, sighing deeply.

“Okay baby, what do we need to buy in first ?” He wrote To buy urgently!!! on the top of the page and underlined it multiple times.

“We need nappies, wipes, baby clothes” You enumerated the first things that crossed your mind when you thought about a baby. Ben nodded and quickly wrote all your ideas. “Fuck, we need a bed for this baby and...a fucking stroller ?” You grimaced and gently massaging your temples. “Can you grab my laptop, we gonna order everything we can online. I’m not in state to wondering around for hours in all these baby shops”

The blond picked your laptop from the end of the bed and switched it on. He tapped few words on the keyboard and the screen quickly filled with a sparkling big tittle Baby Paradise, rainbows and teddy bears all around. You both swallowed sickly at this view.

“Alright, nappies...jesus these so many different sorts of” Ben scrolled through the page, biting nervously his lips. Few days ago you were scrolling to find a nice travel destination for your week of holiday in two months, well it seemed rather compromised now. “This one ? No. 1 Newborn nappy with features specially designed for the comfort and protection of newborns, up to 12 hours protection, perfect for day and night usage...Sound good ?”

“I guess...” You shrugged and rested your head on his bare shoulder, he added five box of these nappies to the basket. “Good, one thing done. Only a billion more to do” You joked...but not really.

Your boyfriend chuckled, putting a kiss on your hairs as a big ad invaded the screen. Nappy Rash Cream.

“The fuck is that now ?” He clicked on it and apparently you couldn’t not buying some of it. For soft and non-irritating baby bottom. “This shit is fucking expensive” He mumbled but put it in the basket anyway.

“It’s because you pick a bio label, Benny” You snorted and he rolled his eyes.

“Like I would let my kid have some shitty cream because it’s cheaper, no way” The way he said my kid warmed your heart a bit. The idea of Ben with a baby in his arm was less scarier. But only a tad. “Thanks god we have good salaries because this child gonna cost us an arm and a leg”

“I think your right” You sighed and checked the list. “We need wipes to clean the little bum of this baby”

After an hour of shopping about every essential baby stuffs like bottles feeding, newborn bath products, an easy-to-use thermometer, a little bath tub exclusively for baby and other things that you didn’t even know you needed like a freaking baby nails trimmer or a dozen of pack of water bottles because – you just learnt it but it did make sense – babies didn’t drink water from the tap as they were fragile tiny person, only clean and proper water. You checked on your phone and the baby wasn’t supposed to drink water before six months at least as he was going to drink your milk. But Ben insisted. It’s done, we can keep it in the empty closet in the kitchen.

It took you the entire morning, deciding between this label and this one, if you should pick the bottle feeding with bees on it or bunnies...yes that an argument you didn’t imagine having with Ben but life was full of surprise. You put your childish behaviour on your pregnancy hormones. At the end Ben added a pack of bees bottles and bunnies’.

“I really need to pee” You pouted and Ben closed the laptop with a dramatic grimace.

“It’s only the forty times this morning” He teased and made his way to you, getting up and walking was still a bit weird for you. In only few days you had to adapt to a massive weight, pulling you down, it was so strange. He helped you reach the bathroom, his arms supporting you protectively.

“M’ gonna cook I’m starving, fancy something special baby ?...and my other baby, of course” He winked playfully, glancing at your swollen belly.

You giggled a bit and carefully rubbed your bump, your breath hitched in your throat as you felt the baby immediately reacting to your tender gesture. You barely interact with this little human since you learnt about it, it wasn’t fair for this baby but it was so scary...You promised yourself to make more effort, to bound with this upcoming child.

“Can you make me your tomatoes and pesto sandwich ?” You asked as you slowly took your pyjama pants off and sat on the toilet seat. Ben always offered you his help but you wanted to do the most you could by yourself.

“Only a sandwich ? Baby, this little alien need more than that” The mother hen was back and you cheekily smiled.

“Well, I wasn’t finish Benny boy. I’m gonna eat this sandwich, meanwhile you, pretty boy, gonna cook your delicious pasta, the one with marinara sauce. Please ?”

“Gimme fifteen minutes” He winked at you and left for the kitchen.

You were laying on the sofa, stuffing food in your mouth like you didn’t eat for a week. You immediately felt better but you were still hungry, waiting patiently for the pasta.

“Alright, here the pasta for the two babies” He put a giant pasta plate in front of you, fuming and smelling incredibly good. You slowly sat up correctly and grabbed the dish, drooling at this perfect sight. “I also bring the doctor envelope, thought that it would be easier to buy baby clothes if we knew the sex, no ?”

You nodded as an answer, your mouth to busy munching your meal to reply vocally. Ben took a deep breath and opened the envelope, his face a little tense.

“Girl” He cleared his voice and repeated louder. “It’s a girl, you...we’re expecting a baby girl” He smiled nervously as you quickly swallowed your bite.

“That’s...great” It sounded more like a question but the whole situation was still feeling like a prank sometimes. “Are you happy ? Or you wanted a boy ?”

You stared at each other for few seconds before both of you bursted in laugh at your last words. Neither of you wanted a girl or a boy. The closest thing to a baby that you could have wanted was another puppy but even that you had decide to wait, a dog was already a lot of work to take care of. You were so relieved you didn’t take another dog.

“I...to be honest, I never think about that. Kids in the future yes, but the sex...it doesn’t really matter ya know ?” He shrugged as his cheeks were a bit flushed. “I guess, a girl, it’s good. Easier than a boy, right ? Calmer”

You snorted, very amused by his naivety.

“Ben, baby. Maybe in films, the cute little girl with pretty blue eyes and braided blond hairs love playing with her doll, eat all her vegetables and said I love you to her parents every night but in real life, it doesn’t last longer than ten minutes” You pinched your lips, repressing a laugh at his wide and scared eyes. “When I was little, I was a monster, terrorising all the boys in my school”

“What are you telling me that ? Do you really want me to cry or what ? Because I will if you keep going doing this” He whined, shoving a fork full of pasta in his mouth. “But at least I’m not going to have this horrible conversation about these awkward hard-on you can get anywhere and anytime. I’m still traumatising by my dad’s conversation.”

“More traumatising than the day you get hard when you saw your older cousin in bikini ?” You teased with a cocky smile, you knew it was one of the most embarrassing moment of his life. Comprehensible. “Because you know your granny still remembered”

“I was thirteen years old, jesus ! Stacy can’t still not look me in the eyes”

“You’re such a drama queen Benny” You pressed a light kiss on his cheek before digging back in your plate.

“We will see who’s gonna be the drama queen when the kid gonna start bleeding” He chatted back with a smirk.

You dropped your fork and felt a wave of panic crashed through your body.

“Oh my god, you’re right !” You put the plate away and hid your face in your hands, tears sliding freely on your cheeks. “No, I want to change ! I want a boy Ben !”

The blond frowned and reached for your face, surprised and worried of your sudden change of mood.

“Babe, I was just kidding, a girl is awesome !” He tried to cheer you up, a bit guilty for you state.

“But you were right ! I was so scared when I get my first period and fuck, this is so painful ! I’m not ready to explain her that...and what about her first time ? I’m gonna need to talk to her about sex with boys...or girls ! Shit I don’t know–”

Ben stopped your rambling, grabbing softly your face and wiping away your tears with his thumb.

“(Y/N), my love, breath okay ? You’re not alone in all of this, I’m here. I will do whatever I can to help you raising our little girl” You sniffled a bit and slowly calmed down. “Plus, I think we have few more years before worrying about all that, right ?” A noise between a laugh and a sob escaped your throat as you shook your head, he was right. “Can you stop crying now, baby ? You know I hate seeing you like that”

“I can’t, I swear Ben I’m trying to stop but look...” You rubbed your eyes and immediately tears came back, rolling down your face. “I don’t have anymore control on my own body” You complained but still smiled through the tears. “Fucking pregnancy hormones”

“Sound rather annoying” Ben said softly, his lips lingering during few seconds on your forehead.

“It is” You hiccuped loudly and your boyfriend laughed a bit.

“Would you want more pasta baby ? Would it make you stop crying ?”

“Maybe” You sniffled and gave him your empty plate and he winked at you.

You were so glad that your emotional support was back on the track. You couldn’t do it without this marvellous man. You saw Frankie stood up from her little bed to follow Ben and you called her, always craving for a cuddle with his dog. She looked at you hesitantly but entered the kitchen anyway. You sighed, since the last two days Frankie wouldn’t come closer to you, probably feeling your weird surprise pregnancy vibes that suddenly started emanating from your body.

“There, baby” You smiled softly at the blond and took the plate from his hand. He put two bottle of beer on the table and opened them, taking a big sip right after. “Want a beer babe ?” He pushed the drink toward you, his eyes glued on his phone as he scrolled furiously on the screen.

“Ben” You giggled quietly and pushed back the beer to him. “I can’t”

He glanced toward you with a frown then immediately cursed loudly.

“Shit, I’m sorry baby, I didn’t even think...we always drink beers on saturday lunch” He pressed a sloppy kiss on your cheekbone. “M’ sorry (Y/N), only four weeks and you could drink again, yeah !” He grinned at you and raised his beer playfully before drinking another sip.

“Ben, you’re being rude right now” You complained with a grimace. “I’m not allowed to drink as long as breast-feed the baby”

He almost chocked on his beer and coughed roughly. “Fucking hell, that’s make sense. That’s really unfair, though.” He bit the inside of his cheek to not laugh and you rolled your eyes, he was such a dork.

Frankie jumped on Ben’s lap and cuddled against him, but still keeping an eye on you.

“Frankie still doesn’t let me pet her” You whined and sadly watched the cute beagle nuzzling under her owner’s hand. “She act like she is the only one scared by the little alien. I’m as surprise as you Frank’ !” She raised her head when she heard her name but didn’t make a move toward you.

“I guess she just need time babe” Ben shrugged and scratched her furry head. “Your belly is rather...impressive, still a whole thing to process, ya know ?”

“That why you never touched it ?” You snapped rougher than attended and his smile fell as soon as he heard your words. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound rude, I know you need time, it’s okay” You gave him a shy smile and looked at your half-empty plate, you weren’t hungry anymore.

The truth was that you were hurt by the fact that Ben never touched your bump during the past four days. Not even once. You get it, this belly was terrifying but still, the baby was here and well alive, he couldn’t just keep ignored it.

Ben grabbed the plate from your hands and put on the coffee table before sliding his fingers under you chin, turning it toward his gaze.

“I’m sorry (Y/N), I’m truly am, I never mean to hurt you. It’s just...if I touch it...her...she gonna be so fucking real” He mumbled ashamed, his lower lip pinched between his teeth, eyes travelling between your bump and your eyes.

“But she is already real Ben. And she is coming to be out in less than a month, you...we need to create bond with her. We have eight months to catch up and I don’t want our kid to hate us because we were scared” You raised your pyjama top and exposed your swollen belly, placing a gentle hand on it. “She’s awake Ben, please come and meet your daughter”

The blond sniffled quietly and you tenderly kissed away the only tear which escaped his beautiful green eyes. He nodded timidly and put a shaky hand on your bare stomach, licking his suddenly dry lips nervously. You moved your own hand on his and slowly slid them to where the tiny foot of your daughter were pushing your belly. Ben gasped surprisingly when he felt her kicking against his palm, an amazed smile on his features.

“Hi baby” You moved your hand away and softly caressed Ben’s hairs, watching the first interaction between your daughter and her dad, eyes inevitably watering at this sight. “I’m sorry I didn’t say hi sooner...I was so scared but not of you my sweet girl. More about my questioning abilities to be a father...but I will do my best, me and your mom, we will do everything for you to be happy” Now you were sobbing quietly and not only because of the pregnancy hormones. He pressed a soft kiss on your parted mouth then on the top of your round tummy, murmuring sweet nothings to the baby.

You hissed when she kicked harder and Ben immediately backed up.

“Did I hurt you ?”

“No, n– ouch, no, Benny, you didn’t do anything” You smiled through your grimace. “I think she just a bit excited to finally meet you, she’s kicking me everywhere, evil little creature” You joked and rubbed your belly, trying to calm her. It felt pretty natural to do it, probably your maternal instinct finally waking up. It was about damn time.

“Oh.” He gave another kiss to your belly then focused on your lips. Sweet but deep one, showing his infinite love and affection for you. You smiled widely through the kiss, Ben and you could do everything as long as you were together.

Your eyes opened surprisingly when you felt something wet brushing against your stomach. You broke the kiss and lower your gaze to see Frankie, her cute little nose pressed against your belly, sniffing and rubbing it carefully.

“Oh good girl Frankie. Can you feel the baby Frank’ ? Can you feel your little sister ?” Ben – and you even if you won’t admit it – always took this stupid baby voice when he spoke to his dog and you were pretty sure it gonna be the same with your daughter. His excited voice combined with a rubbing on your stomach were enough to drive the beagle wild, not afraid anymore of the little alien. Her tail was wiggling strongly and happy barks were echoing into the flat, she was licking your tummy but stayed incredibly careful, she knew without a doubt another tiny life was inside here and she didn’t want to hurt it. Probably one of the cutest thing you ever witnessed.

“I guess she’s ready to be a big sister” You sighed happily, scratching her lower back exactly the way you knew she loved.

#ben hardy x reader #ben hardy x you #ben hardy #queen #bohemian rhapsody #borhap

154 notes · View notes

villlaneve · 5 years

Text

Life Update (I need help)

Hey, everyone. I’m sorry I haven’t really been active on here for quite a while. I want to explain myself. Just making this post has taken me lots of time and courage to get myself to do it but here I am.I feel hesitant to share this, as I don’t want this to seem like a pity party and feel like I should have higher standards for myself and should be able to do this on my own. My therapist and others have told me to be kinder to myself and cut me some slack once in a while so here I am.

I felt guilty reblogging posts on Tumblr after not having the energy to do so in a while and I wasn’t caught up with the shows so I punished myself by saying I shouldn’t be able to reblog anything. I will try to stop this way of thinking and am happy to go back to my usual reblogging after this!

What’s the problem?

I’ve been suicidal and struggling with depression since I was 16. I am 23 now and feel like I haven’t really accomplished all that much even though my therapist tells me that fighting for mental health and the way I am doing it is progress as well. I can’t really work up any energy to get up out of bed everyday and when I do I feel empty and can’t get myself to do things I enjoy. I can’t remember the last time I was able to read a book. My attention span and concentration is basically non existent so I cannot even watch the few things I can’t get excited about. TV shows such as Killing Eve, Supergirl and other female centric shows are the few things I DO get excited over and can find the energy to enjoy. I follow the posts on tumblr about Supergirl but the last time I watched an episode was about 6 months ago so sometimes not even that excitement makes me able to focus and watch what I love. Focusing on anything feels nearly impossible.

You can imagine that applying this to every day situations it gets even worse. I’ve lost my job around October and have so much anxiety and fear about applying somewhere else. Trying to get into new hobbies that could motivate me to do anything like photography or making videos on youtube is impossible without the money and right equipment. I grew up and still live in a household where if something I do isn’t perfect then it’s bad and doesn’t matter at all. I apply it to every action I take and am trying to actively unlearn it but so far it isn’t working. When a task or opportunity appears all I think about is the possibility of failing and not being good enough so I end up scared and freezing up. I do nothing. I can’t apply for a job or a university/apprenticeship because of that fear and have been stuck in the past few years of my life.

Why don’t you get a job/degree?

I want to address my university education. University in Germany is quite different than in the US. You choose a major once you start university and that’s what you’re stuck with. I got scared after already taking a gap year right after high school and started studying something that ultimately I realized was not right for me. I convinced myself that I should just finish it and work hard and that it could be right for me. otherwise I would be a failure once again. I froze up and stayed in this path. Except eventually I stopped going to classes all together and became more and more depressed and desperate as I did not know what to do next. I don’t know who to ask for help and am scared to do it to begin with.

I finally worked up the courage to apply to a different major earlier this year. That opportunity fell through/I did not get the spot and now I am back to not knowing what to do. Starting another path and applying for spots even if I decide what to do is going to lead me to more freezing up and thus more complications. On top of all this there is another factor that’s weighing on me.

I am in a long distance relationship and have been since I was 18. This relationship gives me a lot of strength to go on and try fighting but at the same time it is another pressure and weight on top of everything. As my girlfriend lives in the US and her plan is for me to move there, originally I was supposed to be finished with my degree at this point.

Now I am still basically at 0 and cannot move to the US in the foreseeable future. I’ll have to finish a degree here for 3-4 years, find a way to see if my career path is even transferrable to the US. Speech therapy is an apprenticeship here; a german system that includes school and work experience at the same time and lets you start a career after finishing it; its an alternative to a university degree in a way. I feel like the pressure of tests, writing papers and failing at a university is too much for me too handle with my mental health anyway and the only universities that offer speech therapy as a university degree are private and cost money that I cannot afford!

We try to make things work and see eachother as often as possible but financially making a transatlantic flight work and having to pay for food, transportations etc everytime I am visiting her 1-2 times a year is getting way too much for me to pay for. Especially now that I do not have a job. Only having to do this for another year or two would have been fine but now it will be another few years before we can even think about me going there. Safe to say this is a hard situation and is putting a big strain on our relationship, financially and emotionally on both sides. Having to spend so many more years apart and not knowing how to afford to see eachother. My mental health is blocking me from finding a job to start alleviating the financial side of this at least and I am frozen in panic and fear.

Why don’t you get help? You can go to a hospital or clinic to treat this

I would like to add that on top of all this most of the friends I did have here are on a semester abroad or have moved out of the country all together. Despite that I am glad to have my family and the 1-2 people I see about once a month to give me comfort. It gives me a bit of levity and strength and I tried checking myself into a clinic to face my fears and mental health problems head on. However, they completely isolated me from any cellphone usage there and going outside at any time. Visitors were only allowed on weekends. I had no way of communicating with anyone aside over a landline and only in very limited time slots (that landline was broken for several days when I got there mind you). I had to scramble to somehow find a way to talk to my partner with her buying a skype international landline and even then most of our calls were spent with us trying to find a way of when we could talk the next time and being frustrated when things would not work on some days because of commitments. If there was a change of plans there was no way for me to call her and let her know something was up. Only she could call and it was anxiety inducing for both of us having no way to reach out to eachother. The people there all had their own issues and as a person who already worries about triggering other people being around very emotionally vulenrable people only and upsetting them (they told me all the things I had done wrong during a group therapy session) launched me into the worst panic attack of my life. No one checked up on me after in the clinic and I no longer felt it was the right or safe place for me and had to leave. Moreover, having a 1 days notice on when I’d get into the clinic They gave me no time to prepare for these new and extreme conditions (they called me and said I have to decide on the spot if I wanted to come in tomorrow, otherwise I couldnt come into the clinic until March next year).

I am thankful to be back in the little safety net of therapy, being in the city I love with cafes and parks that can somewhat relax me and calm me down and my cousin and aunts to support me. Unfortunately, my parents put me under pressure to “contribute” more in the household. I never know what “enough” is. Everday I get home and do chores I live in fear that it is not enough and will result in them yelling at me again claiming arbitrarily that what I did was not enough in their opinion. Things are tense to say the least. They want me to start something and get better with my mental health but never really offer to help me themselves and I feel lost and alone. Because of this treatment I always feel that nothing I do is good enough and I can’t/shouldn’t even try in the first place. I am never sure if the standards they set for me are too high or if I am just being whiny and weak or not good enough objectively?

What part of this is my mental health? am I just being lazy? are they right?

Here is the part I feel especially guilty about: Asking for help.

I wanted to accurately explain why and how I am struggling. I hope at least some of you can empathize and understand why this seemingly easy situation is so hard for me because of my family history and mental health.

Money doesn’t buy happiness but it does help alleviate certain financial problems. Being currently unable to get myself to get stable income I feel even more stuck and am struck with panic about how to visit my girlfriend at all.

What will you do when you have money? How will you spend it?

I am commited to fixing my mental health and will do weekly updates on what progress I’ve made. Therapy, looking into speech therapy paths, finding deals and dates for the cheapest possible flights to the US, hobbies like photography or making videos. Having people looking and validating the process makes me feel like I can do this and gives me a project to focus on. I just hope for your kindness to spare any money you have to contribute to bettering my current situation. If you want me to write anything for you, I am happy to just tell me which pairing and the general plot idea and if you want any specific things included. I’ll sincerely do my best.

Moreover, the money would truly be spent on what I need to get better and stabilize i.e. medication, plane tickets to see my girlfriend, equipment for filming/photography, semester fees and occasional mental health treats like going out to a warm cozy cafe to relax and not be faced with the constant stress and pressure at home (max. 15€ a week). I am happy to document these spendings for you.

As soon as my life has stablized enough and therapy or others around me have helped me to get back on my feet, get a stable income, etc you don’t need to feel an obligation to donate and I can take my posts down if necessary.

My PayPal is https://www.paypal.me/ninin96 and I am truly grateful for anything you are willing to give me or comission me.

Thank you for your time.

#personal #I am happy to add receipts/pictures etc of me being in a clinic #plane tickets etc #and ofc I would do this when planning all the updates and the thing on spendings #anything helps #this would literally save me so much stress/anxiety and help me work on myself #like I said I am happy to do comissions #I realize my writing in this is not up to par but it was because its basically my life story #and something that is still so raw and confusing to me

9 notes · View notes

brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

Quote

Thousands of us have picked up a surprise savings habit in lockdown, a Money Mail survey reveals today. The coronavirus crisis has inflicted job losses and pay cuts – and still threatens to kill off many struggling businesses. But despite the doom and gloom, many Mail readers have found they are saving hundreds of pounds thanks to lockdown, and becoming more financially secure as a result. Spending cuts: Despite the doom and gloom, many readers have found themselves saving hundreds of pounds thanks to lockdown and becoming more financially secure as a result Large expenses such as holidays, commuting costs and entertainment have vanished following unprecedented social-distancing restrictions – giving households the chance to set aside money during an economically uncertain time. Exclusive research for Money Mail by Consumer Intelligence today suggests 16 per cent of people now feel financially better off. Almost half are spending less since social-distancing restrictions were introduced, with 38 per cent saving more. Nearly four in five families say they have more money to spend since lockdown, with a quarter having between £200 and £500 more in disposable income each month. The findings come as figures from the Bank of England yesterday showed the nation saved £16.2 billion in April. In the six months to February households saved an average of £5 billion every month. What is more, households cleared an astonishing £5 billion of credit-card debt, which was more than double the previous record of £2.4 billion paid off in March. In a standard month the nation would usually clear £300 million of credit-card debt. Becky O’Connor, personal finance specialist at insurer Royal London, says: ‘A financial divide has opened up during lockdown. ‘While some are really struggling on reduced incomes, there’s another group whose experience has been almost the exact opposite. ‘If you are in a position to do so, there might never be a better time to ‘build back better’ and save.’ Here, Money Mail meets some of the nation’s new ‘accidental savers’. At last, I’ve managed to build a little nest egg By HENRY DEEDES All my life I’ve been a spender rather than a saver. Whatever I’ve earned during my career, my bank account has always puffed and wheezed its way through to pay day. I’ve tried to be sensible. I’ve opened saving accounts, dabbled in Isas. I even bought Premium Bonds once. Much good it’s done me. You see, any disposable cash I’ve ever had has this annoying habit of winking at me through the computer glass, urging me to go out and enjoy it. Terrible, I know, but there’s something innately therapeutic about rewarding yourself after a busy week with a little something. A case of wine, something new to hang in the flat. Perhaps another ill-advised addition to the summer wardrobe from a tempting online emporium. Invariably, no sooner have I clicked the purchase button and the boiler will suddenly crank to halt and there’ll be nothing in the cookie jar to pay for a repair. I never learn. Lockdown has changed all that. Like a lot of people, I imagine, being trapped inside an apartment for the best part of three months has brought about a vast reduction in expenses. No need now for expensive Travelcards, pricey gym memberships or all those overpriced cups of coffee every day. And that’s before you’ve taken into account what I used to spend going out to see friends. Remember socialising? Drinks rounds, restaurant bills. I dread to think how much I used to splurge on late-night Uber journeys during normal times. But it was a lot. And so with all these weighty charges lifted from my balance sheet, I’ve started to experience a novelty. When I check my balance at the end of the month, there’s now actually something left in the kitty. In the past I’d have been tempted to do something extravagant. ‘Why not?’ would have been my attitude. But in these times of enforced isolation, that thinking has been replaced with what’s the point? Instead, I’ve been putting it in an online investment Isa with savings app Moneybox. I pay a set amount in each month, as well as any additional funds I might have left over. It also has a nifty feature which rounds up all my debit card transactions to the nearest pound and automatically squirrels away the extra cash. H ow satisfying it has been, how oddly empowering. Each time I check to see how my savings are accruing I now get that same whoosh of excitement I used to get when an Amazon parcel would plonk through my letterbox. It would be nice to think that when this is all over, when the High Street tills begin to ring again and when the beer pumps start flowing, I will be able to maintain this spirit of restraint. If nothing else, this pandemic has taught us how quickly life can go south. In bleak times it pays to be prudent. Doubtless this is the last thing Chancellor Rishi Sunak wants to hear. As we re-emerge from lockdown, he needs as many idiots like me as possible flashing their plastic around with reckless abandon to get our ravaged economy moving. But if this crisis does make some a little more financially responsible, surely that’s no bad thing in the long term. I have cleared my credit card Olivia McCulla, who works in PR, has saved by moving back in with her parents By moving back in with her parents, Olivia McCulla, who works in PR, has saved enough to pay off her £1,000 credit card debt. She still pays £775 a month in rent for her flat in North-West London but gets £100 back that would usually go on bills because she isn’t there. Her £120-a-month travel costs and £150-a-week work lunch habit have also disappeared while she works from her parents’ home near Leeds. She has also saved thousands after the two hen-dos and four weddings she was supposed to attend this summer were postponed. However, she now has eight weddings in the diary next year to budget for. Olivia, 29, who wants to buy a property in the next few years, has opened a new savings account. She says: ‘It feels more important than ever to have a rainy-day fund with things being so uncertain. ‘In London I was paying £9.50 for a gin and tonic and through the nose for a very small flat I dread going back to. ‘Lockdown has made me question if I even want to buy in London.’ Before the coronavirus crisis, Olivia was saving about £100 a month. Her father Bernard, 65, and his wife Susan, 66, have seen their household costs rise slightly since their daughter moved home but are also saving money each month. They previously spent £100 eating out each week, so their bank balance is boosted by £400 a month. And instead of paying a tradesman £2,000 to replace his patio with a flower garden, Bernard did it himself and slashed the cost in half. Before social-distancing regulations were relaxed, Bernard was also saving £180 a month on his golf and walking-football memberships. He says: ‘We are very fortunate. Lockdown has made me think we should live more for today and enjoy our pensions more.’ I feel guilty I’m better off Quids in: Ashleigh Meale is saving between £500 and £700 a month Ashleigh Meale says her ‘stripped-back life’ means she is now saving between £500 and £700 a month. This is despite her grocery bill doubling to £400 a month and signing up to a TV and film- streaming service costing £60 a year. Before lockdown, the 27-year-old recruitment consultant, who is currently working from home, was putting away between £250 and £500 but would spend hundreds of pounds a month socialising with friends at expensive bars and restaurants. Now, she and her boyfriend Rob, 38, cook their meals from scratch at home. Ashleigh, who lives in Sheffield, is also saving £70 a month by working from home and not having to pay to commute by bus. She has also been unable to spend money on holidays since the Government warned against non-essential travel. Ashleigh admits that, while she is not a natural saver, she has now realised how much she spends unnecessarily and hopes to remain mindful about what expenses she reintroduces when restrictions are finally lifted. She says: ‘Feeling better off financially during this time is a strange position to be in and it does make me feel guilty when so many people are struggling. But it has given me time to re-evaluate things, and I have no intention of blowing what I’ve saved. ‘I don’t need to be out all the time spending money on eating out and drinks when I could be just as happy with a barbecue in someone’s garden. What I have missed the most is my friends — not the expensive socialising.’ Pay cut but £400-a-month saving Sally Walsh is saving an extra £400 a month on top of £200 she was already setting aside in a help-to-buy Isa Sally Walsh was worried when she was told she would have to take a 10 per cent pay cut in March. But despite the shock announcement, the 24-year-old engineer has found her finances have improved during lockdown. She is now saving an extra £400 a month on top of £200 she was already setting aside in a help-to-buy Isa. Since working from home, Sally has saved around £200 a month by not having to commute to central London, and a further £200 by not eating or drinking out after work. The only bill to go up is her food cost now she cooks almost every meal at home. Sally, who has lived with her parents in Bromley, South-East London since graduating, is determined to continue saving even after lockdown lifts. She says: ‘My goal is to move out as soon as possible. I feel like I am closer to it now. ‘I don’t have to spend so much on going out. I hope I will soon be able to have people over and cook for them.’ Childcare cut by thousands Claire Jarrett and her partner Jon Howell are saving £50 a day in train fares alone Claire Jarrett and her partner Jon Howell have saved enough since lockdown to pay for renovations on their home. The couple need to fix the roof on their house in West Malling, Kent, and want to make the garden more child-friendly for their one-year-old daughter, Eleanor, to play. Claire, 31, had only been back at work for two days after returning from maternity leave before staff were told they had to work from home. With Jon, also 31, working from home too, they are saving £50 a day in train fares alone by not having to commute to the insurance firm where they both work in Bromley, South-East London. They are also saving around £5 a day on lunches at work, £80 a month on petrol and £200 a month by not eating out. But their biggest saving has been on childcare. It usually costs £800 a month to send Eleanor to nursery — but the couple have not had to pay since March. It has helped the couple to replenish their savings after Claire’s maternity leave and move their renovation plans a bit further forward. However Claire says their financial gain is likely to be short-lived. She says: ‘Lockdown has made us realise we do not need to go out as much but lots of the costs will be re-introduced when life goes back to normal, unfortunately.’ Not relying on investments Retired Gerry Short is making savings by not playing golf, employing a cleaner or taking weekend theatre trips Retired Gerry Short has seen such a drop in his spending that he has decided to stop withdrawing income from his investments for the next couple of years. Gerry, 61, a former college principal, has two pensions that pay £20,000 a year. He gets a further £16,000 a year from investments. After the pandemic hit the stock market, his investments plummeted. While they have recovered slightly, he wants to give them time to recover. His reduced outgoings mean he can do this as he is making savings on weekend theatre trips which can cost up to £100 a time. He was refunded £60 of his golf-club membership. He also stopped spending £20 on drinks three or four times a week after games. The father-of-one, who lives in Leicestershire, also no longer employs a cleaner, which cost £100 a month. He says: ‘I was aware I was spending a lot as a distraction after my wife died and knew it couldn’t continue. Lockdown has given me time to plan further in the future.’ Windfall from lost holiday Dannielle Phillips has had to put expensive holiday plans on halt Dannielle Phillips, 32, spends most of her spare cash on trips away. But since lockdown kicked in, expensive holiday plans have ground to a halt. She has already got an £870 refund for a trip to Mexico that was supposed to take place in April. And she has received a £500 voucher she can use to re-book her holiday to Portugal in June for next year. Dannielle, a senior marketing consultant, had always put £250 a month into Premium Bonds, but has since increased this to £750 a month. Since lockdown began, she has saved around £2,500 in total, which she says would have been impossible for her before. She has always checked her banking apps frequently, but is definitely more aware of incoming and outgoing transactions now. Dannielle, who lives in Croydon, South London, says she also feels very lucky it worked out like this because she had originally handed in her notice in February and was planning to leave after finishing a project six weeks later. But the new job she had been offered fell through so her company agreed to rehire her. Dannielle says: ‘I am looking forward to lockdown ending but also dreading it because I will need to rebalance old habits. ‘I’m going to try to budget more at the weekends because I want to keep saving to buy a house. ‘Building up my savings has become more important to me because the future feels so uncertain.’ [email protected] Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence. The post UK’s accidental savers: Poll shows many are better off in lockdown appeared first on Sansaar Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/06/uks-accidental-savers-poll-shows-many.html

#SEO #Local SEO training #daily news paper #daily news india #daily news newspaper #technology news a

1 note · View note

jmariko-blog1 · 4 years

Text

you live the life you settle with

1. emotional obstacle

During my time in high school, I have only dealt with two major emotional obstacles. The first occurred during my freshman year, when I got into a huge fight with my former best friend, [A], and she no longer wanted to be friends with me. Although I knew the transition from middle school to high school would be difficult, I never expected to lose my best friend in the process. We had been inseparable throughout middle school and I had always considered her my closest friend. However, upon entering high school, I joined cross country and became friends with [L] who she did not like. After growing closer to [L], [A] started cutting me off and stopped talking to me. Although I was hurt, I refused to apologize to her when I felt I had done nothing wrong. I missed talking to her, but I thought our friendship was stronger and we could move past this. However, she never came around. She began talking badly about me to my friends and blocked me on all social media. I was extremely hurt and decided to talk to her. I sent her a long message explaining my side of the story and admitting the things I did wrong. However, she ignored the text, which hurt a lot. I could not understand how we went from being best friends to this. Although we are still on bad terms, looking back, I am thankful she is no longer in my life. She was a very negative person and I have grown a lot from that experience. It helped me find my group of friends who I love and I know care deeply about me.

Secondly, a couple years later, I experienced my second emotional obstacle. My grandfather had passed away. He was my only grandparent who was alive during my lifetime, and the most positive, easy-going person I have ever known. He was ninety-five years old and got sick the summer before my junior year. A couple days after feeling unwell, he was sent to the hospital and later passed away. It was the first death of a family member I experienced, and I had found out from looking at my mom’s phone. I was getting ready to go to my SAT class and I was pulling up the directions on my mom’s phone. I saw a notification from one of her close friends saying, “I’m so sorry. How are you going to tell Jenna?” and I instantly knew. I broke down and started to think of all of the fond memories I had of him and everything he would not be able to experience with me. However, with time I realized how lucky he was to have lived such a long, happy life. He had experienced so much during his time on Earth and he could finally reunite with his wife. In addition, I appreciate all he had done for my family and I. Although he hated traveling, he would always try to come down from San Jose to stay with us for a couple weeks over the summer. We would go on walks, watch Judge Judy and eat lots of Japanese food. He had a big impact on who I am today. From the things we like to our happy-go-lucky personality, we got along very well.

2. past actions

Throughout my two years in cross country, I grew very close to four of my teammates: [L], [O], [E] and [M]. They quickly became my best friends and we did everything together. From waking up at four in the morning for races to dying on eight mile runs, we found ways to make the most miserable experiences fun. However, during our sophomore year, [M] started dating a boy who [L] was close to. After seeing the two together, [L] started getting jealous and ended up kissing [M]’s boyfriend. [M] felt betrayed by [L] and no longer wanted to associate with her at all. She avoided her at all costs and purposely left her out of the rest of the group. [O], [E] and I did not know what to do. We felt bad for [M] and knew what [L] did was wrong, but none of us wanted to abandon [L] when everyone else started turning on her. I did not know how to be there both of them, especially when we were all together during practices and meets. I continued to hang out with both of them separately, letting [M] rant when she needed to and offering [L] advice and support. Although it was rough and tense for a couple weeks, [M] eventually moved on and realized that their friendship was more important than a boy. Our group dynamic slowly began to return to the way it was and [M] ended up being thankful for [L] for helping her realize who he truly was.

It was extremely difficult for me to figure out how to treat this situation at first because I wanted to be able to be there for both of them but did not know how. However, a couple years later, I now know I treated the situation appropriately and the importance of nurturing both friendships during a dispute.

3. current inactions

Being a senior in high school, I feel pressed for time. In a matter of months, my childhood friends and I will be going our separate ways. From going to different colleges and moving to different states to exploring new interests and meeting new people, I do not know where we all will be in the upcoming year. I want to make the most of the time we have left, but with school, work and my horrible procrastination habits, I feel like I never have time. I want to go on spontaneous adventures with my friends and meet new people, but with homework and no car, it is hard to get out of the house. In addition, I feel dependent and trapped without a car. I do not want to have to rely on my parents and friends to drive me everywhere, which often leads to me spending my weekends at home on youtube and tiktok. However, I plan to be more spontaneous and social during second semester. Instead of focusing all of my energy on school, like I have been for the past three years, I understand that I need to balance my school and social life. One bad grade is not going to kill me and it is okay to have fun, even if it is on a weekday.

4. legacy (best friend)

My best friend is [E]. We met in fifth grade in Mrs. [K]’s class and instantly became friends. From middle school orchestra to high school cross country and track, we have spent countless hours together, and surprisingly, are not sick of each other yet.

If I were to pass away tomorrow, [E] would probably remember me for my sense of humor, work ethic and our relationship. We had the ability to make light of any situation, and we could always make each other laugh - which wasn’t always ideal. From getting kicked out of eighth grade english class for laughing too much and too loud to doing the same in ninth grade history, we probably should have paid a little more attention to the class’ lesson. In addition, [E] would probably commend me on my work ethic. From persevering through difficult, steep cross country races to countless hours of studying and working on homework, I have always been very motivated to do well. Lastly, she would probably describe my legacy through our relationship. We have grown so close in the past seven years and our friendship is irreplaceable. We are so comfortable around each other and we are the only people we can completely open up to.

5. legacy (family)

To be honest, I am not sure what my parents or brother would say about me if I were to pass away tomorrow. Growing up in an Asian household, praise was very rare. Excelling in academics and extracurriculars were expected and hardly acknowledged. However, I think my mom would commend me for my strong, independent nature, which she often complimented me on. Being a girl in our current society, she thought it was very important for me to be able to take care of myself and instilled these values in me growing up. In addition, my mom would probably mention my Gold Award as part of my legacy. She had always wanted me to complete it, and being the only girl in my troop to do so, she was extremely proud.

Similarly, my dad would commend me on my work ethic and good grades. Although he was usually pushing me to enroll in harder classes and explore more activities at our school, he was proud of me for always excelling in school. He said he had never had to worry about me or my grades, which was a stressful burden with my brother.

6. epitaph + reflection

“in” - Jack Lemmon

I like Lemmon’s epitaph because it is short, simple and comedical. After passing away, your family is mourning for you and remembering everything you accomplished, and I think it was kind of him to make his friends and family laugh during this difficult time. In addition, I think it is important and unique to be remembered solely by one’s words and sense of humor instead of the time when you were alive.

“Damn, it’s dark down here.” - Thatcher

Similarly, I like Thatcher’s epitaph because he chose a way to spread happiness and smiles even after his death. Instead of having a serious, standard epitaph, he chose to make light of the situation. He made a little, light joke to bring his loved ones some happiness while they mourned his death.

7. epitaph creation

“[J M]. [Month Day, Year]. Mother, Wife, Occupational Therapist. ‘She saw the world and worked to changed it too.’”Ever since I was young, I have always wanted the stereotypical happily ever after story I grew up watching. I want to find happiness through experiences, people, food and music. I want to get married to someone I love and can spend my life with. I want to have a family with a couple of kids and a dog. I enjoy taking care of children and cannot wait to have some of my own. I want a fulfilling job as a school-based occupational therapist, where I can help kids with special needs and learning disabilities. I want to travel the world and make a difference in it. Instead of wasting my potential like many of the characters we learned about, I want to help those around me, along with making sure I maintain my happiness.

1 note · View note

daily-kit · 5 years

Text

The Daily Kit Project, Day 1

Life has taken a massively bad turn for me. If I were the only one affected, I wouldn't really care much. However, I have these three cats, and they deserve a place to live.

What am I talking about? Let me explain...

Through a series of events, most of which have nothing to do with my own choices (though I will admit to my choices being a contributing factor in the eventual outcome), my finances have been hit to the point where even though I’m earning twice the federal minimum wage in the “gross income” column, my actual net income is somewhere below the poverty line. The accounting mechanics of that are not the subject of this post, however, and I won’t bore you with those details.

I had finally managed to secure some extra money (thanks mom!) that wouldn’t be much but would, at the very least, help, as well as gotten the promise of a roommate/possible-future-life-partner for early April, when I got the notice about 10 days before the end of February that I had to pay off an entire $1.7k (Yes, that’s thousand) past due bill to my apartment complex or be out by the end of the month. There was no way I was going to be able to come up with that money, so I’ve spent the last two weeks frantically securing a place to go and a place to put my stuff and a place for my cats.

Yes, I'm homeless. I'm currently "couch surfing," and nearly all my earthly belongings are in a storage unit.

Thanks to “cat shelters” being fundamentally different beasts from “human shelters,” if I take my cats to a facility that would be able to house and shelter them, they’d be sold or put to sleep before I could get a new apartment and retrieve them.

Why “put to sleep”?

Let’s start with the Great Fat Cat Ronnie:

Ronnie is missing an ear and is very overweight. She’s also very sensitive to her specific environment. When I got her from the shelter, they were worried about her eating because she was refusing to eat most of the food they offered and was getting rail thin, and wasn’t especially personable. “Well,” thought I, “This looks like a good cat that needs lovin’!” When Ronnie passed the Munchkin Test (would she tolerate my daughter), I took her home and proceeded to do the Cat Lovin’ thing that Cat Lovers do. My daughter only visits me on the weekends, so what happened really slowly for me was blatantly obvious to her, Ronnie was getting FAT. In other words, her physical health was fine it was her mental health that was causing her weight loss at the shelter. Why?

She was a returned rescue. That’s right, The Great White Pudge had been rescued once, then returned to the shelter she’d been rescued from. That does things to a cat, none of them good.

Between the three cats, she’s reacting the best to the sudden change, but she’s still damn clingy and insists on sitting in my lap whenever possible to reassure herself that I’m not going anywhere.

Then there’s the Street Queen Murphy:

This poor kitty I picked up off the street, literally, back in Nov. 2016. She was so close to death her digestive system was starting to shut down. It took two weeks before she could eat anything without throwing it back up, and a few months before she could reliably use the litter without creating a mess everywhere. She acts tough, but she’s got neuroses and mental issues like crazy (heh). She has problems taking care of herself (she somehow doesn’t know how to sharpen her claws, which at one point led to an infected ingrown claw that I had to break off with a pair of pliers to get out of her pad) and will literally caterwaul if she wakes up and doesn’t see a familiar face. She seems anti-social, because she gets nervous if she’s been held for too long, but she only really turns on the purr if you can get her to sit still in your arms for five minutes while rubbing her belly.

Speaking of, she can’t seem to retract her claws. I used to get my hands scratched to all hell because I didn’t know how to disentangle my hand from her death grip on it because she loved the belly skritches so much she didn’t ever want me to stop.

Then there’s the Liquid Ninja Josie:

Back in early 2016 when I got Ronnie, it was a big deal for my daughter, who’s high-functioning autistic and loves animals.

Naturally, my ex-wife had to get a cat, too. 😒 I have no idea if this was intentionally done by her as a means of “one-upping” me as a parent, but I’ve heard this can happen, even subconsciously. Again, neither here nor there.

Josie was the result of the very expensive adoption process. (Seriously, my entire sunk-cost into getting Ronnie was about $200, and that’s including adoption fees, food, cat furniture, toys, litter, etc.) Josie’s adoption fees alone were more than $200. I’m not saying Josie wasn’t worth the money...OK, getting into weeds that are best left for a later post.

So Josie was adopted into a family that historically was predominantly dog owners.She didn’t appreciate being treated like a dog. The members of the household all wondered why she would scratch and bite. Gee, I wonder.

Anyway, around last Thanksgiving, I found out that they were planning on giving Josie back to the shelter. Having just recently taken in a shelter re-rescue and knowing what that would do to the poor thing, I volunteered to take a third cat.

Around early December, Josie started losing her ability to walk. At first it was just little things like struggling to get up on the shelf I had put her food bowl on, but when I realized she was having health problems was when I found her laying in a puddle of her own urine. The vet wanted to run all sorts of tests, including x-ray and toxicology, but this was around the time my finances were starting to get hammered, so I couldn’t afford it. This was also the seed of my mom’s willingness to help with the money, as she offered to cover some of the costs of the tests, but it would take a few weeks before she could do so.

Before my mom could send the first money, though, Josie’s condition started to improve and she’s now to the point where she can walk around to where she needs to be and use the litter unassisted.

So all three are “issue” cats that are unlikely to be adopted out again, and both Murphy and Josie have health issues that would require lots of TLC and probably appreciable vet bills. They are not good adoption material, and that’s not even considering the fact that all three are “bonded” to my daughter, and she’d be devastated if I had to give them away.

All three of these cats do deserve a loving home, and they’ve finally gotten to the point where they are a loving family of cats. Josie and Ronnie help Murphy stay groomed and Murphy is protective of Josie and will put up with Josie’s kitten-ish behavior.

So yes, in order to keep these three in a good, comfortable, stable home, I need assistance from my fellow cat lovers on the Internet. I’ll be posting an update every day, probably focusing on one of the three cats each day.

I do have a personal Ko-fi account, as well as a Patreon, but those aren’t specific to the cats. If you would like to provide immediate support, you can certainly use one of these:

Patreon

Ko-fi

I am interested in how you would like to support me, though. Let me know in replies and reblogs what service you’d be most comfortable sending money through.

#cat #cats #catlover #catlovers #homeless #homelesscat #homelesspets

1 note · View note

newstfionline · 6 years

Text

‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’

By Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, Aug. 21, 2018

It’s easier than ever to buy things online. It’s so easy that Ryan Cassata sometimes does it in his sleep. Cassata, a 24-year-old singer/songwriter and actor from Los Angeles, recently got a notification from Amazon that a package had been shipped to his apartment, but he didn’t remember buying anything. When he logged onto his account and saw that a fanny pack and some socks were on the way, he remembered: A few nights back, he had woken up in the middle of the night to browse--and apparently shop on--Amazon.

He shops when he’s awake, too, buying little gadgets like an onion chopper, discounted staples like a 240-pack of gum, and decorations like a Himalayan salt lamp. The other day, he almost bought a pizza pool float, until he remembered that he doesn’t have a pool. “I don’t really need most of the stuff,” he tells me.

Thanks to a perfect storm of factors, Americans are amassing a lot of stuff. Before the advent of the internet, we had to set aside time to go browse the aisles of a physical store, which was only open a certain number of hours a day. Now, we can shop from anywhere, anytime--while we’re at work, or exercising, or even sleeping. We can tell Alexa we need new underwear, and in a few days, it will arrive on our doorstep. And because of the globalization of manufacturing, that underwear is cheaper than ever before--so cheap that we add it to our online shopping carts without a second thought. “There’s no reason not to shop--because clothing is so cheap, you feel like, ‘why not?’ There’s nothing lost in terms of the hit on your bank account,” Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, told me.

Shopping online also feels good. Humans get a dopamine hit from buying stuff, according to research by Ann-Christine Duhaime, a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. “As a general rule, your brain tweaks you to want more, more, more--indeed, more than those around you--both of ‘stuff’ and of stimulation and novelty,” Duhaime wrote in a Harvard Business Review essay last year. Online shopping allows us to get that dopamine hit, and then also experience delayed gratification when the order arrives a few days later, which may make it more physiologically rewarding than shopping in stores.

Sites like Amazon have made it especially easy to shop. In 1999, the Seattle retailer patented a one-click buying process, which allows customers to purchase something without entering their shipping address or credit card info. It launched its Prime program in 2005, and now more than 100 million people have signed on to pay $119 a year for “free” two-day shipping. As a result, most other major retailers offer free shipping too. Returning stuff is a little more difficult--shoppers usually have to print a label and then go to the post office or a UPS or FedEx site to return packages. Many wait too long, or decide the hassle isn’t worth it because the stuff was cheap anyway. A recent NPR/Marist poll found that nine in 10 consumers rarely or never return stuff they’ve bought online.

Justine Montoya, a caregiver in Los Angeles, buys all sorts of stuff online--baby formula, clothes, household goods. She estimates that she shops online twice a week. “It’s just so easy--you click a button, and it’s on its way,” she told me.

In the last few months alone, I bought an $18 smart watch from Wish.com that I will probably never use, a second Kindle because it was on sale and I am worried my first Kindle is going to die soon, an electric space heater I no longer need, and a pair of wireless earbuds that I had hoped would allow me to charge my iPhone and listen to music at the same time, but that instead just fall out of my ears whenever I put them on. I also bought, on Amazon, a (used) book about hiking in the Sierras for $1.99, only to find the exact same book in a box of my stuff in my parents’ basement. I didn’t return any of it.

In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion--twice as much as they’d spent in 2002--on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and telephones and related communication equipment, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which adjusted those numbers for inflation. Over that time, the population grew just 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That’s 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000.

All told, “we are all accumulating mountains of things,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. “Americans have become a society of hoarders,” Cohen said. Montoya said she has more stuff now that she has started shopping online: “It’s easier to accumulate more, and it’s easier to spend more.”

At the same time we are amassing all this stuff, Americans are taking up more space. Last year, the average size of a single-family house in America was 2,426 square feet, a 23 percent increase in size from two decades ago, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The number of self-storage units is rapidly increasing too: There are around 52,000 such facilities nationally; two decades ago, there were half that number.

Of course, not everyone is a part of this hoarding revolution. There are people who can’t or don’t shop online, because they don’t have credit cards or because they are barely making ends meet. Only about 29 percent of households with incomes under $25,000 are members of Amazon Prime, according to Kantar Consulting. Some people are embracing the zero waste movement, or have followed the example of the author Ann Patchett, who published a widely-circulated op-ed in The New York Times about how she resolved to stop shopping for a year. When she ceased buying things like lip gloss and lotion and hair products, she started finding half-used versions of them under the sink, and realized she hadn’t needed new things after all. “The things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass,” she wrote. “We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details.”

But most Americans are not curtailing their shopping habits. And as consumers demand cheaper clothing, electronics, and other goods, manufacturers are spending less to make them, which sometimes means they fall apart more quickly. The share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within five years grew to 13 percent in 2013, up from seven percent in 2004. Cheap clothes might lose their shape after a wash or two, or get holes after a few tumbles in the dryer; electronics become obsolete quickly and need to be replaced. While some of this stuff can be recycled or resold, often, it ends up in landfills. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, Americans put 16 million tons of textiles in the municipal waste stream, a 68 percent increased from 2000. We tossed 34.5 million tons of plastics, a 35 percent increase from 2000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Over that same time period, the population grew just 14 percent.

“Sometimes, people sit down and cry when they see the amount of garbage we produce in a day,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, which handles recycling for West Coast cities like San Francisco. Centered in America’s tech capital, Recology has seen an increase in discarded electronics, including products with lithium batteries, Reed told me. In 2016, a lithium battery fire burnt down a waste management facility in San Mateo.

The 16,000 students who live in dorms at Michigan State University left behind 147,946 pounds of goods like clothing, towels, and appliances when they moved out this year, a 40 percent increase from 2016, according to Kat Cooper, a spokeswoman. The university packs up these goods and donates to them to its surplus store, so that incoming students can buy used, rather than new, stuff. In recent years, dorm cleaners have been finding so many packages of unopened food and toiletries that the university started a program to get students to donate leftover food and toiletries to local organizations like food banks when they move out. This year, it collected 900 pounds of personal care items and 4,000 pounds of nonperishable food items to donate. Pomona College has seen the volume of packages delivered grow by 325 percent in the last 12 years, according to Patricia Vest, a spokeswoman; it, too, asks students to donate unused goods to a resale program. This year, it diverted 42 tons of clothes, furniture, and office supplies.

The Internet has also made it easier to recycle some of the stuff Americans buy and no longer want. Online consignment shops like thredUP and Poshmark help people buy and sell clothes from their closets. Secondhand stores like Goodwill have moved online, too, selling the growing pile of goods they get on the Internet.

But the ability to easily get rid of stuff may be making people feel a little better about buying things they don’t need, and motivating them to buy even more. On a recent weekday, I stopped by the massive warehouse where workers from Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin sort donations to Bay Area stores. Some of the stuff that’s been donated has never been used. Near the front of the warehouse stands a rack of clothes with their original tags on--a $245 blue Nicole Miller cocktail dress, $88 Kit and Ace pants, a pale green J. Jill blouse. “We are seeing items that have been barely used or not used, because when people shop online, it’s a lot of work to return it,” William Rogers, the president of the Goodwill, told me. Rogers himself is guilty--when we met at the warehouse, he dropped off four wall sconces he’d bought a year ago on Amazon. He had tried to put them up, decided they didn’t look good, and brought them to donate.

Secondhand shops can’t resell all of the donations they get. Cline estimates that 85 percent of the clothing that is donated to secondhand stores ends up in landfills every year. Just nine percent of plastic that ends up in the municipal waste stream gets recycled, according to the EPA, and only 15 percent of textiles get recycled. It can be difficult to take apart clothes and re-use the fabrics, Cline said, so lots of clothing in the waste stream gets sent to the developing world, used for rags, or sent to a landfill.

Fifty years ago, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick coined a phrase for these “useless objects” that accumulate in a house: “kipple.” In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner, he theorized that “the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization.” Kipple reproduced, Dick wrote, when nobody was around. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the ease of online shopping have made Dick’s prediction come true, with one small tweak: Our kipple does not just multiply on its own, every time we turn away. We grow it ourselves, buying more and more of it, because we can.

#consumerism #shopping #shopping online #online shopping

1 note · View note

gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

Text

Hospitals, Insurers Invest Big Dollars to Tackle Patients’ Social Needs

PHILADELPHIA — When doctors at a primary care clinic here noticed many of its poorest patients were failing to show up for appointments, they hoped giving out free rides would help.

But the one-time complimentary ride didn’t reduce these patients’ 36% no-show rate at the University of Pennsylvania Health System clinics.

“I was super surprised it did not have any effect,” said Dr. Krisda Chaiyachati, the Penn researcher who led the 2018 study of 786 Medicaid patients.

Many of the patients did not take advantage of the ride because they were either saving it for a more important medical appointment or preferred their regular travel method, such as catching a ride from a friend, a subsequent study found.

It was not the first time that efforts by a health care provider to address patients’ social needs — such as food, housing and transportation — failed to work.

In the past decade, dozens of studies funded by state and federal governments, private hospitals, insurers and philanthropic organizations have looked into whether addressing patients’ social needs improves health and lowers medical costs.

But so far it’s unclear which of these strategies, focused on so-called social determinants of health, are most effective or feasible, according to several recent academic reports by experts at Columbia, Duke and the University of California-San Francisco that evaluated existing research.

And even when such interventions show promising results, they usually serve only a small number of patients. Another challenge is that several studies did not go on long enough to detect an impact, or they did not evaluate health outcomes or health costs.

“We are probably at a peak of inflated expectations, and it is incumbent on us to find the innovations that really work,” said Dr. Laura Gottlieb, director of the UCSF Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network. “Yes, there’s a lot of hype, and not all of these interventions will have staying power.”

With health care providers and insurers eager to find ways to lower costs, the limited success of social-need interventions has done little to slow the surge of pilot programs — fueled by billions of private and government dollars.

Paying for Health, Not Just Health Care

Across the country, both public and private health insurance programs are launching large initiatives aimed at improving health by helping patients with unmet social needs. One of the biggest efforts kicks off next year in North Carolina, which is spending $650 million over five years to test the effect of giving Medicaid enrollees assistance with housing, food and transportation.

California is redesigning its Medicaid program, which covers nearly 14 million residents, to dramatically increase social services to enrollees.

These moves mark a major turning point for Medicaid, which, since its inception in 1965, largely has prohibited government spending on most nonmedical services. To get around this, states have in recent years sought waivers from the federal government and pushed private Medicaid health plans to address enrollees’ social needs.

The move to address social needs is gaining steam nationally because, after nearly a dozen years focused on expanding insurance under the Affordable Care Act, many experts and policymakers agree that simply increasing access to health care is not nearly enough to improve patients’ health.

That’s because people don’t just need access to doctors, hospitals and drugs to be healthy, they also need healthy homes, healthy food, adequate transportation and education, a steady income, safe neighborhoods and a home life free from domestic violence — things hospitals and doctors can’t provide, but that in the long run are as meaningful as an antibiotic or an annual physical.

Researchers have known for decades that social problems such as unstable housing and lack of access to healthy foods can significantly affect a patient’s health, but efforts by the health industry to take on these challenges didn’t really take off until 2010 with the passage of the ACA. The law spurred changes in how insurers pay health providers — moving them away from receiving a set fee for each service to payments based on value and patient outcomes.

As a result, hospitals now have a financial incentive to help patients with nonclinical problems — such as housing and food insecurity — that can affect health.

Temple University Health System in Philadelphia launched a two-year program last year to help 25 homeless Medicaid patients who frequently use its emergency room and other ERs in the city by providing them free housing, and caseworkers to help them access other health and social services. It helps them furnish their apartments, connects them to healthy delivered meals and assists with applications for income assistance such as Social Security.

To qualify, participants had to have used the ER at least four times in the previous year and had at least $10,000 in medical claims that year.

Temple has seen promising results when comparing patients’ experiences before the study to the first five months they were all housed. In that time, the participants’ average number of monthly ER visits fell 75% and inpatient hospital admissions dropped 79%.

At the same time, their use of outpatient services jumped by 50% — an indication that patients are seeking more appropriate and lower-cost settings for care.

Living Life as ‘Normal People Do’

One participant is Rita Stewart, 53, who now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, home to many college students and young families.

“Everyone knows everyone,” Stewart said excitedly from her second-floor walk-up. It’s “a very calm area, clean environment. And I really like it.”

Before joining the Temple program in July and getting housing assistance, Stewart was living in a substance abuse recovery home. She had spent a few years bouncing among friends’ homes and other recovery centers. Once she slept in the city bus terminal.

In 2019, Stewart had visited the Temple ER four times for various health concerns, including anxiety, a heart condition and flu.

Stewart meets with her caseworkers at least once a week for help scheduling doctor appointments, arranging group counseling sessions and managing household needs.

“It’s a blessing,” she said from her apartment with its small kitchen and comfy couch.

“I have peace of mind that I am able to walk into my own place, leave when I want to, sleep when I want to,” Stewart said. “I love my privacy. I just look around and just wow. I am grateful.”

Stewart has sometimes worked as a nursing assistant and has gotten her health care through Medicaid for years. She still deals with depression, she said, but having her own home has improved her mood. And the program has helped keep her out of the hospital.

“This is a chance for me to take care of myself better,” she said.

Her housing assistance help is set to end next year when the Temple program ends, but administrators said they hope to find all the participants permanent housing and jobs.

“Hopefully that will work out and I can just live my life like normal people do and take care of my priorities and take care of my bills and things that a normal person would do,” Stewart said.

“Housing is the second-most impactful social determinant of health after food security,” said Steven Carson, a senior vice president at Temple University Health System. “Our goal is to help them bring meaningful and lasting health improvement to their lives.”

Success Doesn’t Come Cheap

Temple is helping pay for the program; other funding comes from two Medicaid health plans, a state grant and a Pittsburgh-based foundation. A nonprofit human services organization helps operate the program.

Program organizers hope the positive results will attract additional financing so they can expand to help many more homeless patients.

The effort is expensive. The “Housing Smart” program cost $700,000 to help 25 people for one year, or $28,000 per person. To put this in perspective, a single ER visit can cost a couple of thousands of dollars. And “frequent flyer” patients can tally up many times that in ER visits and follow-up care.

If Temple wants to help dozens more patients with housing, it will need tens of millions of dollars more per year.

Still, Temple officials said they expect the effort will save money over the long run by reducing expensive hospital visits — but they don’t yet have the data to prove that.

The Temple program was partly inspired by a similar housing effort started at two Duke University clinics in Durham, North Carolina. That program, launched in 2016, has served 45 patients with unstable housing and has reduced their ER use. But it’s been unable to grow because housing funding remains limited. And without data showing the intervention saves on health care costs, the organizers have been unable to attract more financing.

Often there is a need to demonstrate an overall reduction in health care spending to attract Medicaid funding.

“We know homelessness is bad for your health, but we are in the early stages of knowing how to address it,” said Dr. Seth Berkowitz, a researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Results Remain to Be Seen

“We need to pay for health not just health care,” said Elena Marks, CEO of the Houston-based Episcopal Health Foundation, which provides grants to community clinics and organizations to help address the social needs of vulnerable populations.

The nationwide push to spend more on social services is driven first by the recognition that social and economic forces have a greater impact on health than do clinical services like doctor visits, Marks said. A second factor is that the U.S. spends far less on social services per capita compared with other large, industrialized nations.

“This is a new and emerging field,” Marks said when reviewing the evaluations of the many social determinants of health studies. “The evidence is weak for some, mixed for some, and strong for a few areas.”

But despite incomplete evidence, Marks said, the status quo isn’t working either: Americans generally have poorer health than their counterparts in other industrialized countries with more robust social services.

“At some point we keep paying you more and more, Mr. Hospital, and people keep getting less and less. So, let’s go look for some other solutions” Marks said.

The covid-19 pandemic has shined further light on the inequities in access to health services and sparked interest in Medicaid programs to address social issues. Over half of states are implementing or expanding Medicaid programs that address social needs, according to a KFF study in October 2020. (The KHN newsroom is an editorially independent program of KFF.)

The Medicaid interventions are not intense in many states: Often they involve simply screening patients for social needs problems or referring them to another agency for help. Only two states — Arizona and Oregon — require their Medicaid health plans to directly invest money into pilot programs to address the social problems that screening reveals, according to a survey by consulting firm Manatt.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is funding a growing number of efforts to help Medicaid patients with social needs, said it “remains committed” to helping states meet enrollees’ social challenges including education, employment and housing.

On Jan. 7, CMS officials under the Trump administration sent guidance to states to accelerate these interventions. In May, under President Joe Biden, a CMS spokesperson told KHN: “Evidence indicates that some social interventions targeted at Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries can result in improved health outcomes and significant savings to the health care sector.”

The agency cited a 2017 survey of 17 state Medicaid directors in which most reported they recognized the importance of social determinants of health. The directors also noted barriers to address them, such as cost and sustainability.

In Philadelphia, Temple officials now face the challenge of finding new financing to keep their housing program going.

“We are trying to find the magic sauce to keep this program running,” said Patrick Vulgamore, project manager for Temple’s Center for Population Health.

Sojourner Ahebee, health equity fellow at WHYY’s health and science show, “The Pulse,” contributed to this report.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and KHN.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Hospitals, Insurers Invest Big Dollars to Tackle Patients’ Social Needs published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

0 notes

stephenmccull · 3 years