It’s a remarkable thing when something that seems like yesterday is a thirty year old event. The MTV I remember actually played videos, one after the next, just like a radio station. Unfortunately, those days are gone, so it’s a bit of ‘happy birthday’ mixed with a bit of ‘rest in peace’ as this cable channel has transmogrified into a reality TV channel.
This is the second post in an 8 part series on being homeless, by a guest author who goes by the name Dreamscaper. It’s my honor to share his story with my readers.
Going a few days without food isn’t hard for most people. So, before you hear the rumbling of your empty belly, a new threat happens. Buildings are closing. Night is approaching and you are officially homeless for the first time in your life. Maybe you were smart enough to sleep during your first day so you can roam the streets at night. You probably have a couple options:
1. Breaking and entering
2. Finding a safe spot you won’t be bothered.
When I was homeless I chose number one. At night I would try every single door handle on campus. The janitors were usually cleaning and could find something. I’d prefer buildings I could have an excuse to be in and lock like an outdoor bathroom. If questioned, I could say I had to use the restroom while up and about and this was open. If questioned, I could say I locked the bathroom because it was the middle of the night and I was scared. As a final precaution, I usually preferred to sleep on the toilet with my pants on my ankles. I always wanted an excuse to be where ever I was. If I heard the janitor coming in I had my excuses, pulled up my pants, flushed the toilet, and nobody would be none the wiser. Luckily I was never caught. Plenty of times someone checked if the door was unlocked.
(The above image was taken by JoeTaxpayer in 1994 on his honeymoon in Paris)
Next best building was a building with a 24 hour computer lab. I slept in computer labs plenty of times where the lab monitor just told me to close the door behind me when I left. He thought I was a student. But typically a building with a computer lab if I had access to the first door (wasn’t locked) I could safely roam the entire building.
Other buildings that were opened I was thankful the cleaning crew listened to music. I just had to be on the opposite side of where the music was coming from and look for the cleanest rooms. They would have cleaned that room already and had no reason to be back if I was quiet. Once found, I’d look for parts in the room that was hidden from the door. Closets were good. Hallway bathrooms weren’t as good because I couldn’t lock them and had no excuse of being in them if the janitor needed to use it.
When no doors were accessible I started to check windows. I think one night I found a window. I had to crawl under tables to find a door to a hallway then was safe. I didn’t want to be spotted outside. One night I found a frozen burrito in the teachers’ lounge. I didn’t dare use the microwave. I ate it a few hours later when I thought it would be less frozen. It wasn’t. One night I fell asleep pretending to read a book. I got woken up by the janitor and a cop. They looked at my “stay awake” pills, ran my ID to see if I had a record, and told me to try to stay awake next time.
When nothing else was available I found myself on the streets, looking for a locked dumpster or anything else that would provide a couple hours of safety. This happened every single night I was homeless. Luckily, during the day time I found a spot I felt safe. During the weekends, though, even that wasn’t safe as buildings were closed.
Next Week – Safety From What?
I’m writing this roundup as I listen to the best *cough* and the brightest *cough* we have to offer, our distinguished senators, trying to discuss the debt ceiling in what is now the proverbial eleventh hour. To any non-US reader, Yes, we’re all embarrassed, but your money is safe, this is all showmanship. Nothing more.
Let’s start this week with Neal Frankle’s Do High Unemployment Rates Spell Stock Market disaster? An interesting discussion with a surprising answer.
Next, Ashley makes a compelling Argument for Privatizing Social Security. I’ll be blunt here, When I look at the 13% per year put in to Social Security (half from my employer, which they’d otherwise put into my pension) and add to that the near 20% my wife and I try to save each year, we’re pushing 1/3 of our income as savings. We should have been able to retire long ago. Crazy that when planning retirement, I can’t take our Social Security payments to be guaranteed. Privatize? How about just cutting me loose? Keep my deposits, but set me free to keep my 13% till we retire.
At Darwin’s Money, the question – Pre-Paying your Mortgage, Obsessive or Responsible? All finance issues are a trade off, no? A dollar spent on a magazine can’t buy a soda. One can put extra funds toward a mortgage, or pay so much to the mortgage that it’s impacting the rest of your budget. That’s where Darwin’s friend goes overboard, nice article.
Hank Coleman discussed The Pros and Cons of a Roth IRA Conversion. Too many unknowns to make the conversion decision black and white. Hank walks you through the decision process.
At Stupid Cents, Briana wrote a very clever Personal Finance Lessons From Harry Potter. One important lesson from each of the Harry Potter novels. I’m feeling the urge to write my own “Finance Lessons from Star Trek,” perhaps starting with “Don’t invest all your money in a single solar system, you never know when its sun with go supernova.” Something like that.
And last this week, Kristina at Dinks Finance wrote Money Dilemma or moral Dilemma, a post alluding to the recent Rupert Murdoch scandal and asking her readers how far they would go in pursuit of money.
“Use it or lose it” is a provision of the Flexible Spending Account (FSA). The FSA is an account that permits you to use pretax dollars to pay for unreimbursed medical expenses. This can include copays for doctor visits, dental procedures, eye care, and prescribed medicine to name a few. With many employers allowing you to put as much as $5000 into the account over the course of the year, the tax savings can be substantial, $1250 if you are in the 25% bracket. Worth the bit of effort to request the funds be withheld and then fill out the paperwork for reimbursement. But as I started this article, stating that whatever you don’t spend by year end, you lose, many people avoid the FSA for just that reason. Trying to plan this type of spending isn’t easy.
Now, our friends in the Senate (when they are trying to get a bill I like passed, they are ‘friends,’ and I am their fair-weather friend) have introduced the Medical Flexible Spending Account Improvement Act, S. 1404 which would allow plan participants to withdraw their unused money at year end and pay the tax on it.
I like the idea of getting rid of the “lose it” part of the FSA, but the text of this bill leaves me a bit concerned. When an employee leaves, either voluntarily or is fired, and he had spent more from his FSA than he deposited, he is not liable to pay back the difference. My understanding was that the employers weren’t seeing a windfall from leftover money as their were those who spent more than they deposited before leaving. Note, you tell your employer in October/November how much you want to put in during the upcoming year, and are eligible for the entire annual amount as soon as you incur the medical bills regardless of how little you deposited by then.
Unless the bill addresses this feature of reimbursing before collecting, I can see a crazy “unintended consequence” brewing. Employers who decide to lower the FSA limits even lower than the upcoming $2500 limit congress has authorized.
How will this impact you? Do you have access to an FSA, and take advantage of it? Will this bill help you use it more than you did before?
