How long would it take for you to be homeless?

It doesn’t take much. The foreclosure rates in the US have been high over the last few years. Unemployment in the US is over 10%. Even affluent people are losing their homes.
All it takes is a series of unfortunate events and it could easily happen to any of us in a remarkably short period of time.

At least a greater amount then 3 years, 18.. I say this because Obama is just ruining stuff, leaving me with a bunch of bill’s when I’m on my own… Joy

If I was homeless I would, make shelter… homeless people are often very annoyed and embarrassed when in homeless shelters, though it would be for the best.

@Resistka :: You missed out on Reagan. He is the one that did the damage. Bush 1 helped too.

Really, I’d never be homeless. My wife’s parents would always take us in. Plus, I’m not the only income earner. We could live off my wife’s income, but not in the manner I am accustomed to. If we both lost our jobs, 1 month. Yikes! That’s scary.

I don’t know. I live with my parents. Oh the joys of being 22 and in college….

@nayeight my parents live with me, Ha

Without my parents, boyfriend, and friends as a support system, about a month. Man, that’s scary.

I wouldn’t really have to worry too much. I guess the perks of being an only child is the fact that your parents probably didn’t go broke raising you. That being said – I probably won’t ever go homeless. Yay for inheritance in 30+ years.. hah! (terrible joke, I know)

@pinkparaluies :: Unless you are monitoring you parents financial obligations you might be in for a rude awakening. My dad was making about 300K (1985 dollars) a year running his own mechanical engineering firm. My parents filed bankruptcy. Don’t be so sure that you are covered.

Sometime between now and never…

Hmmm.. we have money coming in from a few different sources so it’s a bit hard to pin it down… I’d give us 3–6 months depending on market values.

I think I have way too much shit to be homeless, seriously, Id have to tie at least 20–30 shopping carts together.

I think Pete passed out on the keyboard again.

I’m unemployed, living with my parents. If both my parents lost their jobs they would be able to hang in there for a while, but they’d be spending retirement money while doing so. I think they have been spending more than they make for the past few years. That is bad enough in itself.

We live in a rather expensive area, so if my parents sold the house and moved to a less expensive area, they could buy a decent place for a sixth of what our house would go for. The taxes would be a lot cheaper. But, it might take a long time for the house to sell. There are a lot of houses around here that have been on the market for a long long time.

I have a great family and someone would definitely take us in if we needed it.

If I were on my own:
If I’m seriously traveling I can go 80–90 miles a day in good weather on a fully loaded bicycle. With the exception of a new tire every now and then, transportation could be free.
I have enough in savings that I could probably get afford a cheap apartment and food for one month. If I couldn’t find a job in that time I don’t know what I would do.

My grandpa has a place upstate where I could at least have a roof over my head. I could probably find food. I have friends up there who would probably hire me for odd jobs if they knew I really needed the money. There wouldn’t be any hope of finding a regular job up there though.

If I were to lose all sources of income, I could probably make my savings last about 6 months I guess, but I’d really have to scale back on my spending.

Or Pete is a slow typist.. I feel ya bro.

This is actually pretty sad. It sounds like all the people that don’t live with their parents are fucked ASAP. And the people that do live with their parents are screwed but they don’t know it yet.

@johnpowell Well thank god they don’t own their own business haha. But what you said could be said about anyone.

@johnpowell, people who live with their parents are just as fucked if their parents lose their jobs. It’s been a rude awakening for a few people I work with in that situation. Parents may have as much money as their kids think, especially if they’ve put kids through college and are still paying their living expenses.

@PandoraBoxx :: Are we supposed to disagree here?

nope, just commenting. I think people sometimes have a false sense of security because they live with their parents.

6–8 months I would guestimate if I didn’t get my student loan before then. But I don’t think it would be as straight forward as not paying one months rent and then being kicked out. Plus if that nasty scenario happened I would do something about it.

I have no income and I am one illness or accident away from homelessness. I guess I would go to a shelter.

I know a lot of people who’d take me in. And I am very grateful for this.

That’d never happen to us. We own our home & both vehicles. We have no credit card debt. Hubby has his pension & SS, & I’ll have my SS starting in April. We have several thousands in the bank So our lot in life is secure. It wasn’t always like that, tho. We struggled for years when the girls were little. Living paycheck to paycheck. I fully understand what some of you are going through. Been there, done that. Our outlook on money is to take care of your responsibilities first. Then if there’s anything left over, have fun with it. No fancy-assed gadgets & trips UNTIL you can afford it.

Without family and friends to help out, we’d be on the street in less than a month.

I have enough in retirement savings that if liquidated, I could pay off the mortgage and live for at least a year. But that would mean getting rid of all of the cars, all cell phones, and my daughter would be on her own for tuition, and would be expected to contribute to household expenses.

When I was in college, I lived with my mom, and I was required to pay the utility bill every other month, and buy groceries one week out of the month, as well as pay my own tuition.

I am currently unemployed and have been since the end of June. I don’t live with my parents, still living in my apartment (no roommate, though boyfriend moved in recently and doesn’t have a job yet, either). I was lucky enough to have saved a good bit of money when I lost my job and I have a large amount in savings. I don’t want to keep using that money, so it’s come to a point where I need something….some type of job. I’ve been in this situation before, though before I had no savings to speak of and no one to fall back on. I lived off of very little food at all. I’ll do what I must to survive.

If you are purchasing your home and are unable to pay your mortgage, it takes a minimum of 1 year to be removed from your home. It can sometimes take 2. If you rent and quit paying rent it take a court order and 90 day from that court order to evict you.

If I wasn’t willing to sell any of my stuff or cash in my Roth IRA, it would take me 2 months, but otherwise I could live probably live 2–3 years. Longer with unemployment.

If I was forced to be homeless, I’d get the hell out of the city, move to the country, live out of my tent and look for a farming job. Years ago I lived out of my car for months, sleeping nightly in a tent, and it really didn’t bother me much. In fact it really made me appreciate what little I had, and ended up being a great life changing experience. I did have a job during this period, and it was by choice, which of course helped.

1 to 2 years. I’ve been homeless before.

I’d be homeless (and foodless) starting June 1. I have enough to pay my rent and eat till then. (Course it’s all student loan money…) At that point I’d have to move back in with my parents unless/until I found a job, and I’d be REAL screwed about 6 months later cause that’s when I have to start making student loan payments. Yikes. My plan is to avoid all this by going straight into a Ph.D. program… I never want to join the real world, it’s waaaaay too terrifying.

In the same boat as @fireinthepriory.

Seeing as how I live at college right now and I have parents whose money isn’t going to run any time soon, I doubt I would ever not have place to live. Just being honest…

My guess is that it could be six months to a year. But it wouldn’t be because the money ran out although the money would run out. It would be because I got depressed and stopped trying to keep myself up. I’d try to lose my job, and maybe lose my apartment, and unless someone decided to help me, I would just disappear. I’d believe that no one cared, and it didn’t really matter. If things stayed that bad, then I might die after that, but I don’t think so. I think I’d just run around being miserable.

If we stopped having an income now—well, if we were very thrifty, I think we could retire. My worry is not money. My worry is my mental health. Scary.

Our house is paid for and so are our vehicles. We live in a homestead state so even if we faced bankruptcy they couldn’t take the house. On top of that, as a severely disabled vet, my husband gets the property taxes waived completely starting this year. We are both retired, he due to his health and me in order to take care of him and our son (although I make some money selling books on the internet).

Our only big expense coming up is my daughter going off to college next year, but we started saving for that before she was born. Thus, about the only thing that would make us homeless would be the total destruction of our house by a hurricane or other disaster.

It’s very, very hard to say. After 9 months of unemployment, I’m still not late on any payments. Now if I don’t get a job, my unemployment runs out and my wife loses her job, we’ve sold everything we can and my retired parents who are doing way better than they ever did when they were working decided they could no longer help us enough to help us get by, and I run out ability to borrow any more money from anywhere…I’m guessing we’d be talking bankruptcy, welfare and whatever, possibly moving 3½ hours north to live with my parents…so the question of how soon I would lose my house? Well, I suspect we’ve got 2 to 3 years left.

If I don’t get a decent job and/or immediate financial help, I will be homeless in less than a month…maybe two weeks! I may have to put my things in storage and stay with my mother for a while…which will not be a good situation. I am scared out of my mind now…which is interfering with my momentum and positive attitude to find work.