Ask HN: Who needs help this holidays?

Update: Response has been overwhelming, requests for food, medical costs, and other life critical needs are being prioritized. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Final update: We’ve been able to gift ~$10k this year, and are working through the requests for those who have not yet heard back. Happy holidays.

I am requesting $298 related to food expenses.

You can learn how to survive these situations when I am situated.

I faced two periods of street homelessness this year and documented it. Soon, I will publish how to survive homelessness (end result: 9.5% BF DEXA; 50 RHR).

Here is what delayed this guide after I published how to use the virtual XR setup.

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A shelter promised me funding, but didn't provide it after a subordinate social worker assaulted me for turning off the TV at night (as rules indicated).

The head social worker made the decision to alert me during the middle of my 12-hour shift at work that I was kicked out. I contacted police with a video — showing how the worker assaulted me — which made the social workers give my stuff back directly after my 12-hour shift.

The workers left me in front of a motel with my stuff on the ground and promised to reimburse me, but never did.

I recovered from that situation and am almost situated.

So help me out. You won't regret it.

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Payment Methods: https://switchupcb.com/donate

Sent. Wishing you well.

Thank you dearly for keeping the candle of goodwill kindling.

I don't think I'll actually request (I'm not in NA so I don't know if it'd be trickier or something), but I'd take off of my chest the plight this year nonetheless if that's ok.

In today's exchange rate, I receive around net USD1200 a month, and have around USD1150 of mandatory expenses. 440 (rent) + 75 (electricity) + 250 (mother's health insurance) + 250 (my part in monthly food expenses) + 70 (therapy) + 70 (gas). I can survive, but I can't do much, and more importantly, I need nothing bad to happen, else this can snowball.

It was a rather cruel year. I spent around USD1500 over the last year on my elder dog's health issues. He had 3 surgeries, and while he survived those he ultimately deteriorated quickly over a week and passed away in early November. I still can't last a day without breaking down - he was, is, a brother to me. Part of the sum I mentioned was for his cremation service.

During the year, I also had a HDD fail in a small time window where some of the projects I had the most emotional investment in were, without backups. I had to pay another USD500 to actually recover the data. Two tires flattened out in the span of 2 weeks, another USD330.

Of course, things snowballed. Every month I need to pay one or two bills on credit to split it over the next year just so I don't get a loan. I think if I can make it to May, where I'll get around an extra salary, I can make do, but life is pretty miserable.

And I had planned to get married early next year, so that's slipping off the table too. My fiancée supports me where she can emotionally, but she's unemployed too, trying to start a doc degree in Biology next year. While I need to support my mother, who gets next to nothing as retirement, at least her family's got her back while she lives with them.

I hope everyone is, or gets to be, doing better than summarizing their year like this. It's hard to find days where I can try and study to hopefully better provide here. Be well, folks.

The world has been feeling a little (ok, a lot) bleak and this thread made me smile and feel pretty emotional.

Thanks for doing this. Thank you u/atdrummond for starting this.

I dont need any direct help, but pointers for finding a job would be good. I'm dev with 10y of experience in swe, devops and sre, lost job 6m ago, got kid, wife almost died etc. Now I ran out of money but still no job. I'm grinding leetcode but keep getting medium/hard questions on interviews and just cant get through. Any idea where to find $35-50/h B2B remote jobs without leetcoding?

I don't have a quick solution but search this query and read what others have done:

site:reddit.com how i landed job offers

thank you

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42297424

its leetcode all the way down..

The horrors persists but so do we.

I could use a mentor that is a generalist software engineer and well established in his career or startup.

Given my rough upbringing, I had to learn and do everything on my own from a young age as everyone around me was crazily ignorant except for the teachers at school.

Because of it, I unknowingly made a few critical career mistakes:

1. I did 2 bachelors and 2 masters. When I started job hunting this has been perceived as 1 bachelor and 1 master. I believed back then that multiple degrees would be seen as more knowledge and therefore as valuable as job experience. This hasn’t been true.

2. After graduating my last degree, I took a 1.5 year long sabbatical. This cycled me out of all the graduate positions. I didn’t know. I felt that after 8 years of studying that I deserved a break.

3. I mistook taking advice from the US as being applicable to advice from where I live (The Netherlands). Ironically, I will immigrate to the US due to marriage.

Because of this: my career is ragged and never felt like I had a good start. In part this was also because I was crazy ambitious (wanting to work at Google back then etc) and because I really wanted my generalist skills to also be a part of my software engineering role.

The net result is that in my 7 year career, I have been jobless for 3. I ironically taught a coding bootcamp and most students are much further in their career than I am. And it hurts because from a young age I have always done my utmost best in school and to this day suspect to have way more general experience in computers and programming than any of my students (given I studied it and always had side jobs in the industry or side projects).

My self-esteem is quite low. I recently took a job as a data analyst because (1) I think I will like the job but (2) because I need the money. The thing is: it feels like a reactionary move and I can’t get my bearings in that sense to start actually working on my career as I don’t have a good framework for it.

I have a ton of motivation to switch this around.

—-

With that said, I also have something to offer. In my early 20s, I could’ve written this post about dating as well but I figured out how to do well at that despite my issues being very neurodivergent (in part due to my rough upbringing). So if anyone needs dating advice I might be able to help you if you have a ton of motivation. I have helped friends in the past and they got the results in line with the amount of motivation they had. All I can do is supply a framework.

—-

My email is in my profile.

(I reached out to you through email, but received a 'Message Blocked' email, so I'm posting my message here)

I'm Pakistani-Canadian; 22 years old. I got stuck in Pakistan during covid and had to attend university here because I didn't have enough support to return to Canada.

Unfortunately, things aren't safe here for me because I'm a queer person undergoing HRT. I've experienced harassment and want to leave as soon as possible, but my parents' monetary support re: airplane fare is contingent upon me getting accepted into a Canadian pharmacy school (I'm a P2 PharmD Candidate currently).

Whilst I can organise tuition loans and such, I can't afford application fees because I have no disposable income and the currency conversion from PKR is not in my favour. I tried, but could not find any application fee waiver either. We are also highly discouraged from holding jobs while attending school over here. There's no policy against it, but life can be made difficult in other ways.

I am applying to three universities, which are the University of Saskatchewan ($125CAD or $88USD), University of Waterloo ($215CAD), and University of Toronto ($250CAD).

I would appreciate any help I can get. My intention is to get into USask, as that seems my best bet at the moment. I'm willing to provide any verification required, as well.

If needed, payment info: https://www.paypal.me/rahistan

Hey man! Appreciate everything you are doing, it's so nice seeing people helping people in need.

I got myself into some trouble. Don't wanna keep it long. My brother had a legal case against a lawyer that ripped him off. This case not only took all the cash we had saved, but also put me in debt around 30k$. I live alone with my grandma to take care of her, seperated from my brother. Now, I'm struggling to even buy food for my grandma and I (and our animals, we have 2 dogs and 4 cats). I also can't afford my medication which I unfortunately depend on (severe depression episodes and generalized anxiety disorder). (if wanted I can provide proof and bills for anything, but they'll be in my native language) I don't wanna request any amount, anything you could spare would be highly appreciated. Thank you and best holidays to you and everyone here! Donation link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=GNKFW7KSR8FZ...

I am not in any urgent need of help, I still have a few thousand dollars in savings, but I am out of work for more than a year and those savings won't last much longer. When I do run out, I'll have to move back to my home country that I left 20 years ago where I can get financial aid if not a local job.

The reason I don't want to do that is because my children did not grow up there and don't speak the local language well enough to go to school there without taking language classes first.

On top of that a few months ago my laptop, passports, as well as money have been stolen from me, causing damage of more than $4000.

What I really need is remote work, ideally part-time, that pays about $2000-$3000 a month. I am a generalist web developer and Linux Sysadmin with many years of experience, but I am not an expert in any particular tech, and so far I had no luck with the whoishiring threads or any other job applications as I am competing against others who have more specific experience the employers are looking for. (It seems most demand is for react and go. I'd love to learn both of those to improve my employability, but I am open to work with any other languages or tools)

With some income I could afford to buy a new laptop so that I don't have to fight with the kids over theirs, and I would be able to stay where I am for now.

This isn't an easy message to compose, let alone to post for all to see. I'm a young academic and US expat teaching Sanskrit as an adjunct in Germany and mostly taking on English language teaching side gigs to get by. The holiday season is always particularly tough because the main English teaching jobs I depend on end in November and don't start up again until February or March. Sanskrit teaching is my passion. It doesn't pay very much, but it's important to me to keep the tradition of Sanskrit scholarship in the west alive in an environment where most Indology/South Asian studies programs across Europe, the UK, and the US are downsizing if not shutting down completely. I probably don't need to go over the precarious lives of adjunct teachers, HN readers will be familiar with the topic from the many articles dealing with it which have appeared on here over the years. $200 for food to carry me over to February would be an immense help. Any questions can be directed at idkwh0 at proton dot me.

I feel I'm gonna puke writing this message. Me and my mother both have no income except some government welfare which is subject to many variables (previous month 220 euro, this month 500 euro). My mother has been put on a list to get eye surgery so she can hopefully regain sight in her left eye after many years. The surgery is paid by the State but she will have to go to another city which is far away. We don' know when she will be called so we can't pre-plan the travel to get better deals. 300euro may help us cover the bus and one night at the hotel.

Any help would go a long way https://paypal.me/oghionna

I sent you 20eur. It's not much but what I can spare right now

That's very generous, thank you so much

Sent 35 euro, my grandma was in a similar position

Thank you for the help, I really appreciate it. I wish for you to find the mentorship you're looking for

This is awesome. My wish is to one day be in a position to do things like this and help people in need.

I believe in you.

Thank you.

I am requesting $500 to cover various family expenses such as food, gifts, and other holiday-related needs. Any contribution will go a long way in helping me make this time of year brighter.

If you'd like to know more about my personal story, I'd like you to read my blog posts in my personal blog at https://rxjourney.com.ng

It shouldn't take much of your time to read.

If you wish to send assistance, you can do so via my buy me coffee link : https://buymeacoffee.com/chistev12

Thanks in advance.

Confirming receipt of your request via email. There has been an overwhelming response to this post. Thank you for your patience.

Thumbs up

I don't really need money but I guess I could use some sort of assistance, or personal advice, or free therapy, or a friend. Or something along those lines. I don't know for sure. I'm struggling with a lot of worrying. I'm also fairly lonely, even though I don't live alone.

Well, it's a halfway throwaway account. I don't know if this will get me anywhere, but it's worth a shot.

I appreciate the initiative, I hope to be able to return the favor at some point in the future when my waters become a bit calmer.

I want to offer help. How can we connect?

Let me know how we can connect. My discord id is in my profile.

I appreciate everyone offering to help. Since I can no longer remove the comment, I removed my email address from my profile.

May you also have help available when needed.

I need help getting web development work as a self-taught Django developer without a degree. To make things worse, I'm from a developing country with an unfavorable time-zone.

Check my profile for details and let me know if I can be of help or if you know anyone who would like to work with someone like me.

I wanted to buy gifts for my parents but struggling with the finance as every year. I just found it through my friend and I believe that it would help me. Appreciate it alot for doing such good things for people who are in need.

I believe you send crytpo as well: Etherum ( ERC20 ): 0xBd41795def27c74870364e2e1Ed9aC7A4166A68A

Someone has reached out to me seeking housing assistance for 7-10 days in the Davis, California area. If you are in the area, or know someone who can facilitate providing temporary housing assistance for a student, please reach out via email I posted. Thank you.

I really need help for accomadation. Am currently perching with my junior brother and his wife and four children. This is my email address if you may, thanks

Massive massive respect for your generosity.

Are you limited by country to help . Mind sharing your email?

hoarder dot edition0u at icloud dot com

Just sent an email. Thanks so much for this initiative.

Really need a FT job, have been working on swift side project and applying on LinkedIn but am in desperate need of a role.

https://linkedin.com/in/philipbroadway https://github.com/philipbroadway

Good luck to everyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42297424

asdas

I have a hard working friend who is starting from scratch. A year ago, He tried to open a food table on the street and sell french crepes but didn't succeed so he had to go back to a relative's house to sell online. The demand is so low and he believes he could make it if he could just get enough to buy a bicycle or motorcycle to offer free delivery. He still couldn't get enough due to his sick parents' treatment and even his little sister got sick, his parents are jobless and his big brother is the only provider, they barely reach enough to spend on food.

It will be sick if I can help him get enough to buy a bicycle or used motorcycle so he can boost his food sales.

If you would love to help, leave me how to contact you in the reference and I'll keep you posted: https://wise.com/pay/me/ameurk1