{"id":961,"date":"2009-07-06T16:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/07\/06\/money-for-nothing\/"},"modified":"2009-07-06T16:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T23:21:00","slug":"money-for-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/07\/06\/money-for-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Money for Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>D recently received a mysterious $250 direct deposit from the VA into her bank account.  Upon further investigation, she determined that it was an &#8220;economic recovery payment&#8221; to eligible Veterans, implemented as part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.va.gov\/recovery\/Implementing_the_Recovery_Act.asp\">ARRA<\/a>.  It&#8217;s apparently also tax-free, and separate from the disability settlement she received a few years ago (long story).  So, hooray for free money!<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re living off our savings right now, and it feels weird to fill out surveys and list our annual income as &#8220;less than $15,000,&#8221; but it&#8217;s technically true.  Our only actual income is from bank interest and investments; the bulk of that comes from the index fund, which is still paying about $1,000 in dividends every quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Including the bank interest, our total income this year will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.  (Which, incidentally, is how much Ed Helms&#8217; character in <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">The Hangover<\/span> had in savings&#8211;and he was supposed to be the most stable of the four protagonists.  D was quite appalled.  But that&#8217;s another story.)<\/p>\n<p>I also made about $300 back in May for three days&#8217; work as an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snout.org\/hotsheet\/2009\/05\/twitterage.html\">extra on <i>Leverage<\/i><\/a>.  It was literally a minimum wage gig, and I didn&#8217;t do it for the money; I had fun being on set and rubbing elbows (sometimes literally) with the cast, crew, and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitpic.com\/52ura\">director<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So far, no actual money made from writing, but I&#8217;m hoping that&#8217;ll change soon.<\/p>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>D recently received a mysterious $250 direct deposit from the VA into her bank account. Upon further investigation, she determined that it was an &#8220;economic recovery payment&#8221; to eligible Veterans, implemented as part of ARRA. It&#8217;s apparently also tax-free, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[13,25,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-politics","category-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}