long story short, my boyfriend hasn't worked in over a year now (he's disabled and it's really hard for him to find work he can actually do) making $15/hour starting part time (minimum wage where we are is $13/hour.) his parents were helping with the bills and stuff while he wasn't working and i was working part time at goodwill (because i'm also disabled) so we had money for food and to take care of our cats and stuff. (sidenote but fuck goodwill specifically. they're shitty in general, but working there was horrible. But that's it's own thing.) i got burnt out and hurt my knee from working so i ended up quitting.
anyways, so my boyfriends parents kinda just threw all his bills back at him the moment he started working, which is shitty in context and we both got very overwhelmed. the place he is working at isn't even open yet and won't be for another month or so, so he's not even working actual part time hours. so far he's been working 10-15 ish hours a week.
his parents gave us a list of all of his bills and stuff and how much they are because they were trying to be helpful but it really just felt like a spit in the face. i looked over the list and it's all the things like water, power, property taxes, internet, his phone bill, car payments, car insurance, etc. etc. stuff we can't get rid of even if we can't afford it. like it's so long. and they had all the math adding it up for us on there as well and it's like $1800 a month. we cancelled our streaming stuff and anything that wasn't absolute needs, so it went down a little bit (i am still making the new list so i don't know exactly how much it went down, but i can't imagine it's anything less then $1600 a month)
i then did the math on how much he will be making when he's working proper hours. i used a tax calculator and did all the things and it came out to $948 a month. he also has disability which is like $1k a month.
so after bills that leaves us with a whole $150 ish to put towards food and clothes and our cats and gas and copays and anything else we ever need. and there will be no room for fun because we won't even have enough to get all of the needs. and his mom tried telling us to save $50 every check lmaooo.
for the next month or two or until he works actual part time hours, we won't even be able to afford all the bills. and that's absolutely mind numbing to me. that working $2 over minimum wage and we cant even afford our bills, let alone anything else. it blows my mind and, quiet frankly, makes me want to blow my mind . absolutely wild.
the job my boyfriend is doing has a team of 5 or 6 people doing the same job and after a few months they are going to pick one of them to be the team leader, which will get a promotion and full time hours. my boyfriend said that none of his coworkers want to be the team leader, so it seems like there's a good chance he'll get it and when that happens we will actually be able to live comfortably, but until then we are just fucked i guess? this is all so shitty.
especially because, if it weren't for his disability, working full time at $2 more than part time still wouldn't be liveable. i fuckin hate it here.
i would work part time if i could (there's just to many factors that make it so i can't) to help out but this shit is ridiculous either way.
how is anyone supposed to be able to survive in this shit show? it's absolutely insane to me. we shouldn't have to pay for things we need to survive (food, water, shelter, etc.)
i just wanna go live partially off grid and have solar panels for energy and collect and filter rainwater and just exist peacefully on my own area of land and have animals and grow my own food and like. just fuckin exist, y'know? but that's probably illegal in some way lmao.