Dear readers. Please understand that what follows is not a solicitation of any kind. We hate nothing more than bloggers who beg for money. Sometimes, though, you just have to vent. That’s all this is: a chance to shake our tiny fist at the universe and claim we’ve been wronged.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
As our loyal readers know, she lost her job a little over a year ago, and has been scraping by on unemployment since. She qualifies for the max unemployment: $860 every two weeks. This was…enough. Just barely. We had made some adjustments: I combined her car insurance with mine (brought both of ours down) and we juggled some payments back and forth, but we were scraping by. But times were changing…
My boss was becoming increasingly abusive. I had to get out. Had to. Eventually, I just quit, betting on the come that the interview I had had would come through. Which it did. So we picked up and moved to New York. In a lot of ways, this was good. Our rent dropped from $2100/mo to $1000/mo. My insurance dropped from $180/mo to $95/mo – I stopped having to pay $424/mo for health insurance. All things considered, my costs dropped about $1700/mo. But my take-home pay dropped about $2200/mo. Well…that’s a pretty serious shortfall.
But the State of California had more in store. Mina made a mistake when we moved, filling out her time card for the time when we drove across the country. When she filed the change of address, EDD (Employment Development Division) called. As she explained why our address changed, they asked if we had driven or flown. She said we had driven. So, was that time available for work? Guess not. Oh, well we need to correct your form…did you go househunting? We should take that week off, too.
Well, shit. That was two weeks pay ($860). Kind of a bummer – but we will survive it. Sure – I scored a $1300 medical bill from my daughter taking an ambulance ride to the hospital. But we’ll deal. Little did we know that California was only just starting to dust off it’s strap-on. Next came a letter announcing that California had determined she had lied on her form. The letter said four times that she had lied. Therefore, she was now ineligible to collect unemployment. Suddenly the stream was turned off. So she called EDD.
Really – if you’ve never called EDD, read this link. There is no lesser way to capture the Kafkaesque journey.
After the usual multi-day ordeal of not getting through, she found out that she was not kicked off. They would reinstate her, after a penalty of 5 weeks pay. So, there is another $2,150. Starting to get painful now, but luckily I managed to get a tax refund that helped bail us out of it. But we are down to the bone.
And California comes back for more. There is now a $600 penalty for lying. So, they decided to hack her next three checks nearly in half – which we are trying to survive today. So the total amount lost is now a total of $3610. Over what is (generously) a $860 mistake. We have penalized 4.5 times what it cost. While I am all for requiring people to be honest – this level of penalty is far past vindictive. Moreover, these are penalties on someone who is unemployed – and really, already on the edge financially. It seems California is determined to push us into bankruptcy.
Which we are now considering. Very strongly.
I know it seems impossible right now but I say hang on. By that imean don’t give in to that tempting means of erasing debt for the long slow pain of no credit or credit at such a high cost you lose more.
When I was faced with that in the past I assessed what do I have to pay. Mortgage or rent, cars, insurance, etc. No credit cards were considered. Then if it was manageable on that, the next step took some effort.
We called the credit card companies and tried to negotiate directly. If they agreed it kept the credit report cleaner without hassle. With some we argued, debated, then completely ignored. I told them, go ahead report on my credit rating. In 3 months you’ll sell the debt, then in 3 months they’ll sell the loan, And eventually in a year I will settle witha collection company for .25 or .10 on the dollar.
They refused to acquiesce so I stopped paying on a large credit card bill. Yes it was annoying. But we use cell phones and google talk. Our land line is a convenience for conference calls. So they can call and call and call. Four months later they called and left a polite message. They agreed to MY terms and now the late payments are in good standing.
I tell you this because you can survive without bankruptcy. And who knows maybe someones will send you a little something to get back on top.
Wow…sorry to hear all that came down. I saw some of it on Twitter but the full story is heart wrenching. I always thought CA was more forgiving than most other states. Seems I was misinformed. I’m sure you two will come to the best decision available.
Sending good karma,
Gary a/k/a
@Bookwyrm69
Your pain and frustration are evident. I’m sorry this is happening to you and can definitely commiserate with you. Having very recently gone through bankruptcy, even the humiliation of doing the deed isn’t enough. While some things are dead and gone, new monsters rear their heads at very inopportune times. It was necessary and I don’t regret it but it is still hard to deal with.
I can offer you both (((hugs)))
My husband was wrongfully fired, then the azzhat-boss LIED to our version of EDD and he was denied unemployment. On top of lying to EDD, he black-listed him. It was a rough time and I ended up taking an evening shift at a local walmart.
I empathize, and am sorry you’re having to deal with these trials. You’re not alone (which I’m sure is NOT a surprise). We’re still dealing with repercussions and that was five or six years ago–but we’ve also had economic roller coasters in our area that have impacted our own recovery.
May things start looking up VERY soon!!
I have nothing helpful that I can say but I want to show my support and send you lots of love during this hellacious stressful time. I wish there was some advice I could offer but my Canadian laws won’t do much for you over there and I haven’t the first clue how USA works :-(
The byzantine unemployment system. I send my most heartfelt condolences for the aggravation.
Hang on, once you gt over this, you will be able to get things on track.