Disposable Income Scares Me

What do with extra cash when you’re not used to having it?

On Friday, I decided to apply for a store credit card, just to see what would happen. To my surprise, I was approved. It shouldn’t surprise me the way it did. I have great credit, I pay my bills on time and store credit cards seem easier to get than regular cards.

But, money and I have a fascinating relationship. As a person with a disability who recieves Social Security Disability, I’m not really allowed to work. If I were to have a job, I could only work 15 hours and am not allowed to have more than $2,000 in assets (if I were married, that money limit would be the same). These rules make staying out of poverty virtually impossible: no home ownership, no retirement, no college money for future kids. If I break any of these rules, I’m cut off from the services that many disabled folks need to survive.

I’ve always known my family had some issues with money. I can remember utilities being cut off and not understanding why my family couldn’t “just make more money”; my mother worked so I was lost as to why it wasn’t enough. Of course, things got better, at least for a while. My mom occasionally gave my sister and I five dollars and I can remember not just feeling like I had money, but that I was little more like the kids in my class whose families were better off. There was another feeling that accompanied that — fear. I remember feeling like if I didn’t spend that tiny amount of money, someone would take or it would evaporate; it just wouldn’t be there anymore. I felt that I wasn’t “supposed” to have that money, but I couldn’t save it because what if I needed it?

I was a senior in high school before someone told me the rules of social security disability. I was devastated. I’m supposed to be in poverty forever? I’m not allowed to want better? Despite the devastation, I went to college, went to class and earned a psychology degree that cost me nearly $100,000 in scholarships, loans and grants. Each semester, I often had money left over so I loaded my lunch card, bought books and supplies. The end of the semester would come and I would receive a refund check with four numbers on it followed by some zeroes. Until then, I’d never seen that amount of money and because it was money that was for school-related expenses, even if I had some leftover, SSD allowed me to keep this money. However, I still wasn’t allowed to save any. I had no choice, but to spend it because this time the government would take that and a whole lot of other things. The school-related exception allowed me to acquire two jobs that gave me stipends –note taker and peer mentor. Though neither of those gigs netted big amounts, the anxiety of that money adding up and earning interest actually made my heart race.

In my senior year of college, I had a panic attack and texted a friend, telling her I was afraid of going broke and ending up “in the gutter” because how was I supposed to survive and abide by horrendously outdated rules from the government?

“Angel, that’s not gonna happen to you,” she told me. The fall after graduation was the first time I made money from an essay. It was a small enough amount that SSD had no issues and that was the first time I realized it just might not happen to me, it’d still be almost impossible to make “big money” from writing, but it would somehow be okay. I wouldn’t always feel the pressure and panic about spending and saving money at the same time, but that there’d be a shift of some kind. Almost a year later, I was told I could have my loans dismissed because the government knew I couldn’t and didn’t acquire enough money to pay them off, but there was one giant catch: I have to remain in poverty for the next three years. For some reason, my heart doesn’t race about race about that.

Angel Powell is a writer who loves sleep more than people. You can find her on Twitter @angelbrittanyxo

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