Spending Money You Should Be Saving

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Spending Money You Should Be Saving

Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by Brad in Late Breaking News | Twitter: @bradhart |

We all do it and I for one would like to quit. It isn’t that I can actually save anything for very long, but the notion of having a few hundred dollars saved is rather nice. They say they want people to get off of welfare, but I am unsure how they ever plan on people ever being able to do that with the ass backwards way they look at money. If I save a few hundred dollar so I have an emergency fix the car fund they tell me my resources are too high and take away my benefits until I spend the money. Withdrawing the money isn’t good enough either, they want to see a detailed record of where it went. I suppose I could cheat the system like so many others but the costs of getting caught are really too high. Being a married white family we seem to be prime targets of investigation and internal audits already that I don’t see many other people in our county going through. It is almost as if they are saying as married white people there is no way we should need welfare because them good jobs are just waiting for us. Something is very wrong when I get flagged for an audit driving a twenty year old truck with 200k miles on it, the wife working part time and going to grad school full time, but the black woman down the street with no job, four kids dressed in the latest ghetto ware, and driving a tricked out four year old Hummer and has been on welfare since the birth of her thirteen year old has never been audited. We have been audited five times since Katy got hurt at work almost two years ago.

The scary thing is in some respects I am money savvy enough that I sometimes wonder if I really want to get off welfare. Katy had a decent job but no insurance before, but in the two years since she got hurt and lost the job I have had Medicaid’s free prescriptions and no copays or premium payments of my Medicare visits. I have felt better than I have in the last ten years. I no longer dread how much the next doctors visit is going to cost us and if I would be able to feed them reasonable well for that paycheck if I need prescription refills. I am angry too. Knowing I could feel well enough to go to work if I could afford my medical coverage is something that doesn’t sit well with me. Sure as shit though if I would go get a job making minimum wage and twenty hours a week both Katy and I would lose all our assistance and in less than a week I would be back to having excruciating joint pain, regular migraines, and my diabetes would be all out of whack again. Through those on me and a major bipolar swing would be on me for several months. Thanks but no thanks I prefer to be screwed up, rather than screwed over. Here is hoping in two years Katy can find a job with affordable insurance, or I start seeing some serious cash with my writing. The five hundred bucks for selling my first short story is great, but doesn’t go nearly far enough. Thank god one time payments aren’t considered part of our monthly income.

I bought more furniture for the house today and before any of my critics begin, we needed it and it was all thrift store purchased. I walked away with a vintage fifties table and chair set for twenty five bucks. The seats will have to be recovered and if I get the ambition will put new Formica down on the table assuming I can find anything as garish as the original. I also bought and refurbished a desk so Liam has some place to do his homework and can work on the computer where we can keep an eye on him. I am rather sad that he was ready for bed after dinner this evening I had been planning on reading him the first chapter of Mrs. Frisby tonight, another thrift store find. I don’t spend as much time as I would like to with him and I feel guilty about it, but there is only some much of him I can stand before I start yelling at him. I do my best to control my anger but he is a bipolar kid with OCD and I only have so much in the way of patience. I really do try, but I wonder if it is enough sometimes.