this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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How's the state pension over there? Here in the UK its pretty good, if you have paid off your house anyway. I would be richer than I am now from working if I had a pension but no mortgage.
If you also had to pay housing then it could be kinda rough, but I have lived alright on less.
You get a pension in retirement (called Social Security), but you need to be of retirement age and have had a job in the past. You get full benefits if you were employed for at least 10 years.
You can also get disability payments if there is something preventing you from working.
State pension, in the US? A laughable concept. Best anon could hope for is Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a program for people who are disabled, are unable to work, and have never worked. There's a lengthy application process involving clinical records of the disabling condition, not everyone who applies is approved, and the maximum benefit is about $950/month, relegating you to extreme poverty forever
It's also worth mentioning that you have to reapply for disability benefits regularly, justifying yourself with several page paper forms every time. Even people with permanent disabilities have to reapply, as if the nerve damage from an accident or the congenital condition they were born with might suddenly go away. My girlfriend can't write more than a few lines before the pain from her disability makes it too difficult, and they expect her to fill out what is practically a small pamphlet by hand every couple years. If it were at least a digital form, she could use speech-to-text to help her get through it, but as it stands she needs somebody else (last time it was me) to hand-write her answers.
The hoops the government puts out for disabled people to redeem benefits are straight-up cruel. They really want people to just give up, not apply at all, and... I dunno, just die, I guess?
I'm sorry your girlfriend is having to go through that. I gotta be honest, I've never heard of someone having to reapply for benefits unless their benefits were turned off, either due to incarceration or failure to utilize their money so it piled up in an account until they had too many assets and were disqualified from the program. Also, all the correspondence for this benefit is typed and printed, I've never heard of anyone having to hand write anything. This is in reference to SSI (Supplemental Security Income).
The government totally puts up all kinds of blocks to obtaining SSI though, most people genuinely cannot do it themselves due to the complexity of the process
The forms state you must reapply every year and do so promptly or risk not getting benefits. No matter who you are or what your disability is (except maybe the terminally ill?). At every turn they remind you not being prompt enough may result in a delay or outright rejection of your application.
All of the handwriting together probably amounts to a 1-1.5 page paper/essay equivalent with freeform questions about the disability, background, what you can/can't do, a detailed description of what you do day-to-day, doctor contact information, etc, and they'll just call you for it again later when you already detailed everything in the application itself. And yeah, this is all mailed to you after the online application process that can take a couple hours.
It's pretty awful, even considering how bad bureaucratic process can be.
Are you able to figure out exactly what benefit this is for? I'd be interested to hear. It's def not SSI
It is, SSI for disability
I might be confusing the yearly reapply with medicaid, but there are regular hoops to jump through, once you've already been accepted, to maintain disability benefits. Iirc terminal illness and the elderly are excluded, but not permanent disability. Like you have to keep telling them you're missing a leg or some nonsense
£700/month without a mortgage to pay would be great. Its comparable to what I was earning from an apprenticeship when I first moved out once adjusted for inflation...
Sorry, you're going to have to pay for housing too lol.
Oh, and if you work just a little, your benefit is decreased by the amount you earn, and if you earn more than $2500 in a year, the benefit is totally taken away.
So there is no incentive to get a part time job? Lol, what a dumb system.
It's not dumb, it's intentionally designed to hurt people
It also goes away if you marry someone