job search crossroads

I’m breaking up with my partner. This changes the economic landscape I face.

My parents said I can move back in with them. I haven’t seen them in years and living in that household will get to me.

The cost of rent has been rising faster than the minimum wage here, even with the gradual shift to 15 dollars an hour, and it’s no longer viable for me to live anywhere in the city even if I get my job at Starbucks back. Conservatives always say that if the wages rise, so too does the cost of living, but the fact is that the cost of living rises either way, even when wages are stagnant, and these days every working class person is drowning.

Still, there might be somewhere I can survive out here. Some closet for rent in some building that ought to be condemned. If I move back with my parents I’ll have time for studying, if I stay here I’ll have freedom from certain things.

I filled out a fafsa form. It’s a myth that you can live off loans — and it’s also a myth that working poor people get ‘free rides’ through aid. I’ve never made any money and neither have my parents, and I’ve never been eligible for enough to live, except if I took on private loans. So far in my life I’ve avoided taking said loans, because they follow you for life and there’s no guarantee in the end that you end up making more than the minimum wage with a degree anyway. But my chance of getting out of the minimum wage, abusive grind is smaller without one. So I’m considering it, just to have a roof over my head that isn’t with my immediate family and the time to study and gain some amount of mastery.