Thanks, everyone, for your quick responses! I wasn't too sure about GRCNE, since there's not much on their site referring specifically to adults (of various ages, not just young adults 18-29 or so). I have bookmarked the Da Vinci Learning site as well.
I don't have money or a job; the economy is awful anyway, and I'm not emotionally healthy enough to go out and get one. Something like retail or fast-food would be far too stressful for the worthless pay I'd receive anyway.
I would work enough every year to get enough Social Security quarters of coverage, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 a year.
You have to pay into the system through employment to get any benefit.
Excellent point.
I know this to be a fact; unfortunately, as mentioned above,
I don't have money or a job ... and I'm not emotionally healthy enough to go out and get one.
My mother, sadly, was forced to abandon the career she loved (teaching elementary school) too soon before she'd paid enough into the system to earn anything back. She has not held a paid job in twenty-plus years (but works way overtime for the whole lot of us without financial compensation), is chronically ill (because of that), and despite her numerous challenges and (literally) non-profit endeavors... doesn't even qualify for SSDI.
She is closing in on sixty all too soon, and as if that wasn't difficult enough to face, she is in worse shape physically than her mother, my grandmother, of early
nonagenarian age.
Meanwhile, I myself (at the risk of sounding like a spoiled-brat trust-fund kid) haven't worked a day in my life. But retail and fast food are just one sticking point. I also tend to grow VERY apprehensive at the mere thought of wasting my talents in the doldrums of cubicle work or in dull, high-pressured, creativity-cannibalizing academic education.
(NB: Among many others -- I'm sure -- Steve Jobs probably felt the same way.)
