Oh and also I'm not in as dire shape as I sound. My grocery money is on its way, but in the way of such things is currently in the "payment processing" ether
Don't know the context, since you deleted, but my credit union got cyberattacked this week; I went to do online billpaying July 3rd and it told me that was down, and the cash machine wouldn't give me cash either.
But I had enough for the farmer's market, and my credit cards don't go through the CU.
Complaining about colleagues trying to get me to do free work for them but I returned to it hours later and realized it came off way meaner than I had intended (this is happening a lot lately because my baseline is much angrier than it used to be) and deleted. But also, part of my ambient anxiety
Also I'm not a total snob but I'm not going to take a job "training AI" for General Atomics or whatever or apply somewhere I have to do a writing test to even be considered. I'm a grizzled old industry veteran now and these job listings seem curated to suck out a maximum amount of my soul
"We're General Atomics! We make robots to kill people, so we hire Actual Underpaid Humans to train our AI instead of just feeding it stolen copyrighted work and commercially valuable NFTs! Come work for us and make the world more dangerous!"
I keep getting those too. I get special messages wanting me to help train AI in whatever it is that I know and write about.
And maddeningly there's no way to respond and tell them to please take themselves and shove themselves somewhere.
i deactivated my linkedin for a bit (not like it was helping), but my daily/weekly monster emails devolved into “graphic designer - build submarines dot com” type shit and it’s like. great. cool. wonderful. i’d rather work for uline.
I wanted remote work so bad after losing my job last September. I wanted to have more freedom to work on my own writing and take care of family and household things. The few legitimate positions I saw wanted a masters in forensic accounting (not joking) or crypto/AI scams to launder money.
Like when rich people tell me that money won't solve all my problems I just laugh. It's shocking how many exhausting and thorny problems just plain vanish when you toss money at them. They don't know shit
To be able to cover a car repair, get an appliance without having to worry is quite a relief. Having been on both sides of that situation having money is the obvious solution.
I mean, they have money and it does not make them happy. Not realising how lucky and safe their money makes them. I have a friend that has money (not money money) and he still does a startled jaw drop when I say how I can't afford something, he does not understant.
Yeah, all the studies of UBI keep saying they work, which is why they keep funding more studies hoping they'll get the opposite answer and can wave it around at everybody.
i have never felt wealthier than when i got to stop crying when i had to buy paper towels. i can just... buy them? and have them when i need them? holy shit.
Having money in the bank so I could quite my job, retire and still have health care would give me lots of happiness reduce my anxiety about how I can survive if I get too sick to work.
I went from bankruptcy after cancer treatment and losing my home to inheriting enough that I didn't have to worry about paying the bills and anyone who thinks that doesn't change things is highly misinformed. Happiness? No. But radical improvement in social determinants of health? You bet.
I recall years ago hearing a study found money buys happiness up to like 300k a year, that was the point where more money did make you happier and if you adjust for inflation then like... yeah we're all miserable.
In fact, I’m almost certain that aphorism is propaganda for the rich to insult the poor. Money buys almost everything required to be capable of pursuing happiness. The few things money can’t directly buy are made a fuck-ton more accessible via money and those things money does buy.
Money doesn't buy happiness but poverty doesn't buy shit.
Also not enough people know how expensive being poor is. So many people could have markedly better lives with a $500 Costco voucher that would allow them to buy things in bulk at a much lower unit cost. 1/2
This would require them to budget out money to buy the next one, which is its own skill and made harder by the stress poverty causes but only having the cash on hand to buy the 4 pack of toilet paper is double the per unit cost of the case at Costco.
And this is triply true for expenses like dental care
Crowns are incredibly expensive (even WITH insurance)
But not having the money to care for your teeth over the years imposes horrible costs later in life
Very true. And it broadens out to societal costs. Cops are expensive but are easier to sell than the boring long term investment of education and a social safety net.
It's almost like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Sam Vimes' Boots.
I think I read somewhere that up to an income of $75K US (slightly more than what I make), happiness goes up, but above that it doesn't, and I suspect it's definitely when you're comfortable enough that minor emergencies are more annoyances than disasters, that contributes
Also being able to pay for insurance - I sure learned that this summer when that tree came down, having homeowner's insurance meant I could get it all sorted out without having to take out a loan from my mom (or from a bank) to get all the repairs effected in a timely fashion
AND having enough money to scrape together the cost of getting the rest of the dead tree removed, I can now rest easy in our fall windstorms that I won't lose power/cable/maybe roof
