Ask HN: Asking for help | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Asking for help

30 pointsMichelangelo116 comments

I’m very hesitant to post something like this, but I’m finding myself in a difficult personal situation and asking for help here is one of the few options I have right now.

I’ve posted in Alexander Drummond’s recent thread offering help for the holidays (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492378), but it was on a green account and 4 days after the thread was posted (because I was so hesitant to ask for help) and I got no response. As things haven’t improved for me in the meantime, I thought I would make this post as a more visible ask for help.

Ever since I got laid off in August, I haven’t been able to find IT work and have been living off of savings, which are about to run out. I recently signed up for part-time work on a farm in exchange for room and board, hoping this would let me cut back om expenses while leaving me a decent amount of free time to try and rebuild an income stream through remote freelance work, but that didn’t pan out — a week after I arrived, the farm let me go because they were running out of money themselves.

My next step now is looking for a hospitality job in a nearby big city to get back on my feet and put my finances in the black again, after which I’m going to resume my search for IT jobs. The good thing is that hospitality jobs are relatively easy to come by here in Germany, which means my job search hopefully won’t take too long. The only real issue is that, right now, I can’t fully cover food and housing in the period before I get my first paycheck, and this is what I would like to ask for help with. Around $300 would enable me to stay in a hostel and cover my food expenses in that period, and that’s all I really need — anything more would be welcome and helpful to pay off outstanding bills, but that amount would be enough to let me get back on my feet.

Thanks for reading so far. If you can help with any amount at all, it would be appreciated tremendously. My email is in my about field, and if there’s any additional information you’d like to know, I’m an open book. Feel free to ask.

I did some research and hopefully this will help you.

"Contact the people at the town's Sozialamt (Google the name of the town you are in plus the keywords Wohnungslosigkeit or Obdachlosigkeit.) It's their statutory duty to set you up with temporary shelter. Also ask them to refer you to a social worker who can direct you to applying for ALG2 or (if you are unable to work) Sozialhilfe."

"Social assistance All German residents, including non-nationals, are eligible for social assistance benefits. These benefits can supplement earnings, pensions, or unemployment benefits.

Housing benefit This government subsidy provides financial relief to families with low incomes. Applicants must meet a minimum income requirement, but it doesn't exceed the upper income limit.

Citizen's benefit This state welfare benefit is paid to people who have no income or don't earn enough to support themselves and their dependents.

Unemployment benefits These benefits pay 60–67% of your previous salary, plus health insurance.

Employee benefits These include health insurance, pension plans, long-term care, unemployment insurance, and more.

Also please visit: https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/en/financial-support/citizens-...

https://www.anerkennung-in-deutschland.de/html/en/financial-...

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

How long have you been employed before you got laid off? If you've been an employee for more than 12 months (less in certain special cases), you can get "ALG 1" (Arbeitslosengeld 1) for a while which results in 60% of your previous salary. There are also quite a few of options for support in further training and education.

The steps you need to take for all these things can all be very formalistic, very bureaucratic, very German and very dehumanizing. They also can add up to a lot of cognitive and emotional load - in hard situations with (often) no mental capacity for such work. I'm certainly no expert but I have some experience in dealing with "the system" with/for people who just can't deal with that kind of mental/formal gymnastics for whatever reason. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you feel that I can help in any way.

edit: Another person mentioned ALG 2 (Arbeitslosengeld 2 / Bürgergeld). That's the alternative to go for in case you haven't been employed long enough to get ALG 1. Of course it's less than ALG 1 but it covers the basics - especially basics such as shelter, food and health insurance.

Germany in particular has good social security I think?

No disrespect, but count yourself lucky you don't have kids, or are in a developing country where there's no social security and casual work pays just a few $/day, and even 'local' dev jobs not that much more, or have been without any substantial work for over a year, or just missed rent, and are already in debt ... or anything of that sort.

Even then, there would be people much worse off than you.

BTW if anyone has any ruby/rails or even general programming (eg C, basic JS, bit of python, bash, lua/fennel/janet, embedded, 6502 assembler (lol), whatever) or tech work, that could be done remotely across timezones, and doesn't require 6 rounds of interview, or accomplished profiles on the freelancer sites (how is anyone new to those sites possibly supposed to get their first contract?), I have a friend ...

Can you ask friends or family for financial assistance? Not trying to be disrespectful of your situation, but I'm not sure this is the place to ask for handouts. There's virtually no way for me to figure out if you're telling the truth, regardless of how much I sympathize with your dilemma.

If it is just $300, perhaps short term bank loans / small credit are the way to go. These kind of instruments are processed quickly.

Are you a German or other EU citizen? Do you have a car? Are you paying rent? Are you willing to travel?

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