Louis Shalako
Over the last three years, I have almost doubled my
income. Without being facetious, I can honestly say I’m getting up near the
poverty line. This is by taking a part-time gig and working it, semi-scientifically,
as a business. After so many years on ODSP, this is a remarkable achievement,
as the basic provincial disability pension runs about thirty-five to forty
percent below the poverty line.
In the last year, I have reduced my credit card debt
down to approximately zero. Last year, at about this time, I exceeded my
$1500.00 credit limit by a couple of dollars. Basically, you check the balance
online…see that yesterday’s purchase at the liquor store hasn’t gone through
yet…nip down there and grab another pile of booze while you still can. The same
goes for smokes and gas as well—
Groceries, even, if you’re not getting too many hours
at work. And let’s be honest, that happens sometimes.
There is a $25.00 penalty for that, so that I owed, at that time, about $1,527.00. Now, even on
that debt, at 28 % APR, the monthly interest doesn’t seem too bad. At the time
of the monthly statement, it’s twenty-five, thirty bucks, forty dollars at
most. What’s forty dollars times twelve? Multiply that by twelve months and it
seems a bit more significant.
That’s a half a thousand bucks, real money when you’re lining up at food banks and wearing
God-damned rags all the time.
Now, in order to avoid ‘overpayments’, due to the fact
that on ODSP, one can only earn up to $200.00 per month without penalty, I have
reinvested ‘excess profits’ back into my business.
This is money you cannot
live on, presumably, this is why the ODSP accepts it.
This involves the purchase of anything from new
keyboards, a new monitor, or a reconditioned computer. So, each and every
month, I was jamming some new purchase (hopefully a reasonable one in the sense
of developing a business), onto the credit card.
At the end of the month, I paid as much as I could
scrape up. Even so, somehow, I must have been chipping away at that balance.
Two days before the end of the month, (March), I owe $148.00 on the credit card
balance. The other factor is the fact that I did not buy anything for the
office, for the business, during the months of January, February and March. On
ODSP, the guidelines state that all expenses are to be charged to the month in
which the purchase was made—it’s not a year-end sort of deduction, such as any
other business in Canada might enjoy. A regular human business person could buy a case of toilet paper for the
business, and the revenue people really don’t care in which month the purchase was made.
I actually went a bit over the allowable limit for
those three months, a calculated gamble.
I have a reason for taking that risk—
So, in the course of about one year, I will have taken
my credit card balance down to zero. I will be paying that last bit off Friday
morning, a little after dawn, in other words.
What an interesting feeling it surely is—
To have actual control over one’s finances. To have mastered something. Maybe that’s what
it is.
Okay, the monthly interest on $148.00 is not much, a
couple or three bucks. It’s not going to make a big difference in my life,
however, once the balance is down to zero, I can make a major purchase. I want
a drafting table for the business. The base might cost $184.00 and the top, a
separate item, $132.00. I can make that purchase over two months, use it as an
allowable business deduction, and avoid ‘overpayments’ or charges against my
Ontario Disability Support Program benefits. Which, after all, is still the
major source of my income.
If I pay off one hundred percent of the charge at
the end of any given month, then there is no interest due at all. This is the
ideal, and what every first-time credit-card holder brags about, after all.
So, as things presently stand, clients may earn up to
$200.00 per month, after allowable deductions. The new provincial government
has announced that in future, clients
will be able to earn up to $6,000.00 per year, i.e. $500.00 per month. For
Ontario Works, clients will be able to earn up to $300.00 (OW means welfare), the rate of claw-back after
that will be seventy-five percent. Presumably
the same goes for ODSP. I just haven’t seen that in writing.
I haven’t been
able to find anything as to when that
takes effect.
In terms of business planning, it’s still up in the
air.
Assuming November 1, just as an example, then the
first ten months of the year represents $2,000.00 in allowable income, and the
last two months of the year another $1,000.00 of allowable income. This seems
like a fair way to deal with a transition year, going from one set of
guidelines to another as it were.
I could earn up to three grand, and never have to keep
a receipt, mileage log or anything.
Thank you for reading.
END
