If you aren't getting work, how are you coping financially?

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Most sources talk about keeping a six-month monetary reserve in case of layoff.
Well, I have been without significant income for much longer than that. Fortunately, in my case, my parents have quite a bit of money and have repeatedly offered to help me out and sent me money without my even asking for it. In addition, I had a renter here for a while (although not anymore.) Without that, I would probably have lost my house by now, or exhausted all of my savings (IRAs included), or both. It also helped that I bought my house while you could still get one here for five figures, as well as the fact that I have always been rather frugal.

What are others' situations?

i live with my mom currenty, but the only reason i do is because she is seperated from her husband who is not my dad. we don't get along at all/ i did live with one of her friends untill she recently seperated from him. hopefully ill be getting on ssdi soon so ill be able to move into my little winnebeggo i'll be buying with the backpayment check those bastards are gonna have to pay me. its going to be around oh $6,000.

My situation is not good. I'm on a disability support program which gives about $1300 (Cdn) a month (my wife and I are both on it), and I do some work around the building for my landlord, which nets $250 a month (rent is a little over $700, just to give an idea). When I've had jobs in the past I've been getting minimum wage, which, after transport and other expenses, amounts to about the same. It's enough to live comfortably ... in a crappy apartment in a crime-infested neighbourhood, on a street with tons of traffic, and no money to save for emergencies, no car, and a real effort to get together money for any purchases at all (clothes, etc). But its enough that I can afford to eat healthily and pay all of my bills on time ... and it's a struggle but I can squeeze out enough to clothe myself and do things like save for presents for my family (especially my nieces) at Christmas ... frugality is really important to achieving that, if you have little money you do have to learn what expenses are necessary and what expenses are not. It's a real advantage if you don't enjoy going out.

We live on benefits at the moment as my husband has become physically disabled through illness. It's hard - we have just enough for bills and food, but, for instance, we have a leaky roof at present and I'm dreading the bill. All our savings are gone

I had hoped to claw back some money over the summer (no Coal to buy), but it all went because i had to entertain my son, and my family visited for a week so we went out, etc. Normally I take my son out a few times a year but other than that we don't go out atall. We don't drink or smoke. I have 2 pairs of jeans in my wardrobe and a few t-shirts - that's the lot. Simplicity is everything!!.

Making ends meet has always been a problem for me. Even when I have had a job, it doesn't pay much so I have often worked two jobs.
One thing I have found that helped me was to take a hard look at what I could do without, and only to buy clothes from the thrift stores.
Another was dumpster diving. When I lived in the city, I was amazed at what people will throw away.
People will look at you funny, but almost all my furniture, plants, clothes, and books came from scavenging, and I was even able to upgrade to really good stuff.
When my daughter was young, we got up every Sunday morning and scavenged aluminum cans from all the weekend drinking in the neighborhood. It helped pay for her school supplies and a treat for her now and then. Back then you could get more cash from cans.
Some people won't do these things, but this is how we survived.

In a word: not!

if it weren't for a totally unexpected inheritance and some lucky savings [despite my total lack of financial acumen] i'd be an under-bridge denizen begging for handouts, for sure. but it is still a basic existence, living in a tin can out in the woods, driving an old car the 40-minute [each way] drive into greater hooterville for scratch-n'dent canned food at 25 cents per can, stocking up on that kind of stuff. i haven't been to a movie since 2001 [when i watched "AI-Artificial Intelligence"] or had a pizza in i don't know how long. no restaurant meals at all, and no travel anywhere, to save on gas.

I get SSI, so even though my hours at work were cut drastically, and it's basically a minimum wage job which was the only thing I could find in this economy. I decided it was better to just take whatever I could, as it would minimize a gap in employment, and could help me get a job with more hours in the future.

The government yo.

I'm a student and thy pay me to study and they also pay me more as I live away from home.

I could get a job, but I'd rather not as I am recovering from an illness and am not physically well enough.

I live like a Queen, yet I spend very little.

unemployment

I've been unemployed for three years, as I was homeless a year prior to losing my job it meant I had no savings and was in debt as soon as I went into unemployment - I do love that so many sources assume we're all well-off enough to have things like savings, and that we must be stupid scum if we don't

I'm on benefits, about £40 ($64) per week...when they bother to pay me, they often don't due to their staff being too incompetent to process claims correctly, which then also has a knock-on effect in paying bills. I survive thanks to a boyfriend, not strictly speaking allowed, but he stays here often enough so I can get him to pay for things for us, but not often enough for it to class as us living together. We can't afford anything, sometimes we can't afford food, and if anything happens like a fire as we can't afford insurance or to replace anything. It would be better if we lived together, even if I lost my benefits, but we can't afford privet housing and there isn't nearly enough social housing to go round, so I'm stuck in emergency housing and the boyfriend is stuck supporting his parents in their social housing. It's no fun.

I honestly don't get how people manage.

My husband has a decent job.

Otherwise, I'd have been homeless and destitute for the last 25 years.

SSI, the disability program in the US. I get $927/mo, slightly higher than the norm, because they hooked it to my mom's Social Security payments (she's retired) and took me off straight SSI. I am trying to start my own business, but so far it isn't happening. I live on my parents' property, so I don't pay rent. If US govt welfare programs go away, I'll be destitute. Unless I can get my computer repair business going. I've been on SSI my entire adult life. I can't work, and nobody will hire me because I don't have lots of work experience. It seems that lots of people here are living on welfare. That's insane, I guess they don't think aspies can make a contribution to society.

who is "they"?

The Powers That Be. The bosses of the world. We don't have "teamwork skills" so therefore we are utterly useless in the homogenized dumbed down conformist corporate world. Of course, god forbid a man march to his own drummer. No, we need to make everybody the SAME!

since the forces of darkness run the world we all live in, it is up to all of us to resist being sucked deeper into the dark side. the first way to do this is to honor the golden rule ["do onto others what you would have done to yourself"] rather than the fools' gold rule ["he with the gold makes all the rules"]. this one thing is the key to making evil's influence less acute. we can either be awful with each other in deference to the id, or excellent to one another [which peeves the id mightily]. it is strictly our choice as humans, to make. we can be either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. us on the spectrum need to better support our fellows, instead of competing with each other. this world doesn't have to be just a big drowning pool, if only we'd work together to stay afloat.