For all that he is homeless himself, The Boyo tries to help other homeless people. For this reason, he has a whole cadre of people who live at The Park he visits. He often takes them food or scrap lumber from his remodeling project to use as firewood. And from these people, he learned the concept of Crazy Money.
Crazy Money refers to the lump sum payment you get after you persist in your claims of disability and are awarded Social Security Disability Income. One reason it’s known as Crazy Money is that most of those folks get it for disabilities having to do with mental illness, in other words, they are getting paid for being crazy.
A further insanity having to do with these lump sum payments is that the process of applying for SSDI is so cumbersome, and takes so long, that the back pay you get comes in huge sums for someone who has been living in abject poverty, or depleting their savings for three or four years. For instance, I think I ended up with close to $50,000. That’s a lot of money in my part of the world.
Because they get these huge payments, people tend to go crazy with it. I know I did. I had wondered why all these shiny, new cars had disabled plates on them. After I got my payment, I realized that a lot of people took their lump sums and bought new cars outright. I thought about buying a vehicle, but realized there is no parking around my building and that with gas, insurance, license tabs and maintenance, a car would be a money pit for me. It was the one good decision I made with my crazy money.
So I bought a computer with it, a fancy new one to take the place of the second-hand one I had that had quit a few weeks before. And a desk for it, and about 75 peripherals, and software, and only goddess knows what. I took several trips, a couple to see my Dad, and one with The Boyo just for fun. I got a new recliner, and a new bed with a decent mattress. I saved some of the money, but eventually pissed it all away.
The SSDI system is insane in itself. You have to be “totally disabled” to qualify. And the way they run it, you don’t qualify unless you are in a persistent vegetative state. The way the law reads, if there is any job you could possibly do, you don’t qualify, even if these jobs are now non-existent. So, since I had had a job in a call center, it was deemed that I could work in a call center, despite the fact that most of the jobs in call centers had moved to India by that time. So, you apply and are denied, appeal, and are denied, and then it goes to an administrative law judge, who usually approves you, because they know if you’ve lasted this long, probably you’ll never be able to work again. And then, with all the paperwork that comes with your award, the system sends you a Ticket To Work. Yes, now that you’ve spent four years proving you can’t work, they send you a Ticket To Work. But that is a post for another day.
June 6, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I know two people who made it onto SSDI. Both of them got sizable checks as part of their qualifying for SSI/SSD.
Neither of them got anything sizable as you did. Probably because of how they got there: Both were able to sign up and prove disability pretty quickly (one was a stroke, the other was at 600 lbs when she qualified.
June 6, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Yeah, it took me four years, so that is four years worth of money they didn’t pay me. It’s a stupid system.
July 2, 2008 at 8:24 am
[...] to circulate air unless you leave your door open. Not an option. Luckily I spent some of my crazy money on an air conditioner a couple of years ago. Very necessary because the pain from my fibromyalgia [...]
August 5, 2008 at 8:23 pm
[...] people, like me, have a great deal of computer equipment or other nice things we bought with our crazy money. We are worried about our [...]
August 6, 2008 at 10:02 am
Interesting. Annie has had to negotiate the perilous path to SSDI on behalf of her first/late husband. As a foreigner I’m a bit ignorant of the process and don’t understand why it has to be so hard to get assistance when you really do need it. I guess that lack of understanding comes from living in a “socialist paradise”, reviled and loathed by all good Americans.
August 6, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I don’t revile your socialist paradise, I wish I had moved there 15 years ago after my divorce while I could qualify for emigration.
SSDI wasn’t always to adversarial. That is a legacy from the Reagan years. The Boyo, whose father had early onset heart disease and had been on SSDI for some time, was nearly killed with the retesting that Reagan required. Even now, the regulations are so restrictive that they say if there is any job you can do, you are not eligible, even if those jobs don’t exist. The way it works is that you are denied twice, then get a lawyer and go before an administrative law judge. Unless your claim is really laughable, by this time, you usually win. In many cases they take the cumulative effect of all your disabilities. My verdict said that I would probably not be able to work because of my great age. What? That’s like saying a woman having her first baby at >35y.o. is an elderly primipara. But there you go.
Personally, I think they could pay ten people SSDI for what they pay one administrative law judge, not to mention all the paper pushers who are paid to reject our claims.
I would like to see them go from a system of needing to be totally disable to get on the system, to something like the VA uses which pays you by how much you are disabled. And of course, we first need a nice socialist health care system. That would solve a lot of problems right there. I would work a few hours here and there for money if it wouldn’t crap up getting my Medicare. If I had to pay out of pocket, my meds would cost about 25% of my check. And most of my meds are generic. Scary, huh.