Reply #31: On the surface,

[chervilant]

one can look at my financial situation, and assert that I'm 'doing a lot better than most,' since I have a car (ten years old and paid off) and I'm still in my own living space (a rental). Moreover, I'm still working (14 hours a week at $12 an hour, and 3 hours a week at $9 an hour).

However, as of the middle of December (imagine our highly commercialized Christmas with no income), I will have exhausted my unemployment benefits. My monthly income will drop to about $634.52, and that's only if I am allowed to work the full 17 hours per week I'm given. BUT, since I teach, I am facing three weeks of no income before the first of next year. Therefore, by the end of this year, I will have to move in with friends (not family, sadly, because they're still mired in abuse and addiction issues). Moving in with friends will mean that I have to sacrifice my last 'safety net' and cash in my meager (less than $7000) teacher's retirement account to move to another state.

Most of my retirement funds will go to my landlady (and friend) to catch up on the two and a half months of back rent I owe her. I cannot pay one of my bills this month, so I'm sure that will come out of the rest of those meager resources. Still, I should have enough to get where I'm going, and to 'carry' me for a while.

Some kind and charitable DUers once offered to help me (specifically with regards to two big holes in my teeth), but I could not bring myself to accept help from kind strangers when so many others NEED so much more! I've been an advocate for survivors of relationship violence for better than thirty years now, and I've SEEN abject poverty. Abject poverty hurts my heart! Since I am not in abject poverty, and my math chops should get me a job in the area to which I'm relocating, how can I accept help when there are children going hungry every day, or entire families struggling to survive in cars, or under freeway overpasses?!

However, if and when I DO find myself in abject poverty, I sincerely hope that our more fortunate brethren will continue to offer a hand up. I sincerely hope that those with more will NOT label me (nor others like me) a leech, or "a walking sponge, living off the kindness of strangers." I do believe there may come a time when I need to say, "Yes, please, and thank you so much for your selfless generosity." In short, I am echoing the adjuration of another post hereinabove: please, if you still have a job, if you still have a home, find ways to help our abject poor. BE, on your own individual level, the change we hope to see in this world!

I share my story, because there are very MANY people my age who are on the thin razor's edge of the Abject Poverty Abyss. While I am hopeful that the Occupy movement will result in significant economic reordering, many of us will still have to survive the coming catastrophic economic storm. Please, reach out to our fellow humans living in abject poverty. Please.