Walking in the Paperwork Jungle of Poverty and Survival (Ulog no. 17)

It's both expensive and time consuming to be poor.

I spent most of this evening tidying up and organizing my home office... as part of the process of gathering the paperwork and documentation Mrs. Denmarkguy needs for an appointment tomorrow to apply for "Home Energy Assistance."

You see, we're part of a growing demographic here in the US of A, known loosely as "The Working Poor."

Red poppies from this past summer

Our particular "American Dream" of having good ideas, working hard and... "succeeding"... has a lot of tarnish on it, these days. Sometimes we ponder what we're doing wrong... to have joined the ranks of "those people" who apply for public assistance in order to just scrape by.

Food stamps, energy assistance, subsidized medication.

Life started to go somewhat sideways about eight years ago when we were beset by what ruins most middle-American families: Medical expenses.

Mrs. Denmarkguy needed shoulder surgery to have a rotator cuff repair done on her left shoulder. Oh, we had insurance, but even after paying $633.00 monthly premiums, we ended up being $16,000 out-of-pocket. A year later, a similar operation on her right shoulder... again, we still had insurance; this time we were out-of-pocket by some $12,000.

It was the typical type of choice many face: "Here's your choice: Financial ruin, or permanent disability. Pick one!"

At that point we stopped having insurance, and went on "America's OTHER health plan: DON'T GET SICK!"

Getting out from under liens, court ordered payments and a bunch of debt has been pretty crippling... so now we're on Public Assistance. Yup, "welfare mooches..." NOT...

The paperwork is insane.

A busy bee on the lavender

It reminds me a little of some of the insanity that follows self-employment around. I always laugh when I look at the instruction booklets for various IRS forms, when I am preparing our taxes.

"Time needed to complete form: 2 hours. Time needed for information gathering: 4 hours."

Four hours, my arse!

It's funny/ironic how being self-employed and "barely making it" tends to require a bunch of recording, bookkeeping and filing of forms that take so much time and paperwork that you are even more "barely making it," as a result. Maybe I've been "doing it wrong," but for most of my self-employed life, "record keeping" has required 60-90 minutes per day and has probably cost me $5,000-$6,000 per year in lost income... because I could have been working during that time, rather than pushing pencils around.

These days, I have reached a point of just not caring very much... but I am hopeful Mrs. Denmarkguy's visit with the office that gives grants for low income individuals for their electric bills goes well.

Meanwhile, I will be working.

Actually, I will be working at both our Gallery and the adjacent candle and incense store... because the proprietor of the candle store is out getting a cancerous growth removed in an operation she can't afford, meaning she can't be in her store and since she can't afford to hire someone to work there for a week, I volunteered to help out, since our stores share an entrance and I can easily watch what's happening in both places.

It's the American Dream at work!

Well, I'd best be ending this now, as it'll be a long day tomorrow...

Thanks for reading!

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Created at 190109 01:28 PST