Bills & Rent

Post Reply New Topic

How do people pay for their rent & bills if they don’t work?

With money.

Savings.
Retired/Pension.
Inheritance.
Trust fund.
Welfare.
Disability.
Employment insurance.
Investment income.
Alimony.
Insurance settlements.
Lottery winnings.
Theft/fraud.
Credit.
Drug money.

Or not with money.

Bartering labour or goods/services.
Sex work.
Squatting in an empty home or on crown land.

You forgot extortion, co-dependency, and using other people for a free ride.

I am on disability so I usually use some and/or most of that to pay rent and other then that I have gotten part time work while remaining on disability as that is a thing you can do. Though they will reduce your disability payment based on how much money you make.

I also live with my boyfriend who pays half the rent, but if I didn't live with him I'd probably be in subsidized housing, where the state or whatever pays some of the cost and you just pay like 30% of your disability money or something like that. I was approved for the subsidized housing but it was just around the time things got serious with my boyfriend and we wanted to move in together so I did that instead. Don't think he would have been able to live with me if I got the subsidized housing since it is specifically for like disabled people to have help paying rent, so I couldn't have just had my non disabled boyfriend move in at least not legally.

I am in the U.S of course, so obviously this does not necessarily apply elsewhere.

I am in USA too. What is subsidized housing?

I live with my parents.They cover the expenses because i have not found good job yet.

My girlfriend had subsidized housing for a year & then got approved for the Section 8 housing assistance voucher which helps out with the rent for various private & public assistance apartments. I think your bf might woulda been allowed to move in with you depending on his income. They woulda looked at the combined income of both you & him & that woulda had to be under their limit for a two person place. A way around that would be to have him considered your live-in-aid/caretaker like if you can not handle living alone cuz of your issues. You would need a doc &/or psych to sign off on that though. There's bureaucracy paperwork & stuff. That's what me & Cass did but she had Section 8 by that point. She lived alone for a year & was too depressed to do most anything when her family was not there visiting her or she was not visiting them. My income is not factored in with rent, her food-stamps(SNAP), or her other benefits. Food-stamps has a thing where they would give a live-in-aid a stipend or something but the aid can not be disabled & collecting benefits. I'm on Social Security Disability so I cant collect that. She would have a hard time with me being gone all day if I were to get a job that had me working long hours so it seems kinda screwy to me that I cant collect that little extra. Oh Well, I'm lucky to be getting anything. The only benefits I ever had other than some accommodations when I was in school was SSI & Medicaid & it was a huge hasstle for me to get those two & the docs & psychs would not even accept Medicaid cuz it did not pay them enough, & I now luckily have Social Security Disability, & Medicare, & Medicaid extra help, & the health center here actually accepts those insruances. Me & mom looked into trying to get me housing after I became an adult & we kept getting the runaround with things. I didn't have the rite diagnoses or specific 1s were not sever enough(like my vision is pretty bad but not quite enough to be considered legally blind) & some programs said I would of needed to be living on my own in order to receive assistance with things but I could not get my own place to be living on my own without those things already in place so it's kinda a catch 22 situation. Some things said I woulda had to currently be homeless in order to receive help with getting housing cuz I did not need the help if I was not currently homeless even if I was gonna be kicked out soon, I woulda had to wait till I was homeless on the street before I woulda been allowed to apply & then I'd have to be living on the street for however long it woulda taken them before they had a place available & I'd bet that getting arrested & serving jail time cuz of no other options woulda got me kicked off the waiting lists. I'm dumbfounded that Cass & various members on this forum could get housing assistance without spending a decade on a wait list or being homeless 1st. Guess I was extremely lucky to be born in the wrong state to receive any help with housing

Ways to live without working:
- Savings. Usually it's people who have had good jobs at some point that have enough savings to live off of.
- Investments. Some people make enough of investments that they don't need to work to get by, but that invested sum had to come from somewhere, so they have likely worked before.
- Parents pay. Sometimes this applies even if one no longer lives with their parents.
- Their partner pays for stuff, either because one is temporarily jobless or they've made a deal that one will stay home to look after kids or something for a certain time and during that time, the other pays.
- Loans. Living with loaned money is pretty common when one goes to university, and it's by no means unheard of to need a loan to live during lower studies than that. Many people have to work and take a student loan.
- Retirement money. For older people retiring, it tends to be self earned by working a lot, and then there's disability retirement money paid by taxpayers that is for those who can't work due to health reasons despite not being old enough to retire from old age.
- And of course, benefits. Different kinds, like unemployment benefits, disability benefits etc.

I worked and saved when I was younger, and made money with investments (real estate). I made sure that my job offered long term disability insurance in case I became ill, and a pension provision for retirement. I ended up claiming disability after working 20+ years and contributing to the fund. I can retire next year or postpone it because disability actually pays more than retirement. In the meantime I continue to make investments for the future.

Another key idea is to have your credit cards and debts / mortgage insured for critical illness and disability. That way if you suddenly can't work / pay, your debts will be forgiven. Unfortunately for me my stroke happened just a couple of weeks after I cancelled my mortgage insurance. My house would have been paid off instantly. Frown. Lesson learned.