(Img is a bilibili thumbnail I came across lmfao)

My mother and I are disabled with severe chronic illnesses, so for my entire life we’ve been living off of SSI. This traps you in poverty and leaves you very little space to grow money. Several years ago, before I was an adult, when we first got class action lawsuit settlement checks, we both sort of decided that it would be smarter to spend it within the 10-day limit before it affects SSI. We’ve been able to have a decent car, nice tech, etc., but we’ve always struggled with food and certainly have been living beyond our means, especially lately.

My mother’s husband passed early this year, so we’ve been living on that inheritance money, and around the time that he passed, I lost my SSI. We’re currently renting two apartments as my mother’s husband had moved into the upstairs unit only about a month before he passed. We’re in the process of moving from the bottom unit to the upstairs unit, but it’s been an ongoing, slow process since he passed. While we’re mostly living in the upstairs unit, most of our stuff is still downstairs.

I’ve decided to try and get back on SSI rather than try and make an income myself because I do not have the consistency necessary to make a dependable income. The only way I could make an income involves starting a business, and that takes a risk that I don’t think is worthwhile. I am essentially completely materially satiated now. I have all the tech, tools, and equipment I could ever want or need for as long as they’ll work, so I don’t see a reason to take on that risk if I don’t have anything I’m reaching for. It’s just about managing our recurring expenditures in America’s rapidly deteriorating economy and having as big of a safety net as we can possibly get within the regulations of SSI now.

That’s why I’m wondering if anyone here has suggestions on how to live cheaper. I have an assembled homelab that I yet to setup, so that could let me cancel most of my media subscriptions. I have multiple computers that are capable of running fairly large LLM’s locally. I got an air fryer recently as well as a rice cooker, and I also got a 3D printer. We plan on selling a lot on eBay and other platforms since we have a lot of old shit we don’t need anymore and are tired of living in a pile of boxes and old junk.

I’m not too worried about it since we have a lot of unnecessary expenditures that can be cut, but I’m still wondering if y’all have any ideas. Also, we live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in the California-Cascadian mountains, so shopping cheaply requires a 2-hour drive.

I hope this may be useful to other comrades as well