the lowdown on unemployment in usa

[cariad]

up until now, as most of you know my experiences have mostly been good while we have been in the states. my biggest worry has always been the future and having enough money to live on as we get older and are unable to work.

unfortunately, on oct 6th we had a car accident. i let them take dh to the hospital as he had hurt his back but i refused to go because i had only hurt my shoulder. i stayed in work, but found out that i had a full thickness tear in my rotator cuff and was scheduled for surgery on 10th january. so then the employee health found out that i was working with an injury and stopped me from working, luckily enough that was on 5th january so just before the surgery.

so now we have had no income since then, so i am speaking from experience.

dh hasnt been able to work since the accident so we only had my wage. luckily enough we were earning enough money that we had a small amount of savings, and we did still have money from the sale of our house in the uk still in an internet bank that we could use.

we are also lucky that i have parents that can give us money if we need it, but i wont do that unless we really needed it. but i am experiencing what most of you dread.

if you come and are going to be employed by a hospital then you will probably have better medical insurance than i have got as it is with an agency, and you may have been employed long enough to earn sick time, which they will give you some money for.

but the message is that somewhere we all have to have a back up plan, whether its relatives who will help you out or if its money that you can save or if theres a way that you can afford to pay for cover if you are not working.

its a very different system from back home, once you are in this kind of situation you are on your own, the bill payments will still come in and there is no way of telling them that you have no income,,,,they are not interested.

this is not to frighten you for coming here, just to try and explain that things do happen, and we have to be prepared for it.

we are lucky that we have made friends with other uk nurses here who will help and we help them.

its the old cliche of thinking that it wont happen to me. but it did.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

really sorry you have had a bad time, really hope something gets sorted soon for you both

[suzanne7575]

sorry you are having a bad time, and hope you are on the road to recovery and you will be back able to work soon. I hope it all works out for you

[cariad]

thanks for the good wishes, i am on the road to recovery and i will get back to work, as soon as i am able.

we have had over two and a half years of good health and good fortune before this has happened to us, and it has been difficult to cope with the american system when it comes to dealing with the medical system and the legal system. but we do have friends here who have been a great support through this.

but the upshot is that you need a monetary back-up, just in case.

[RGN1]

(((((((HUGS)))))))) Hope everything gets back on track soon.

Thanks for the warning - like you the sale of our UK house should leave us with no USA mortgage plus some "padding" in the bank - guess we'd be very wise to keep that well & truly topped up!