My parents are over sixty years old, unemployed/retired and they are my dependants. They live in a different country that is in a deep economic and political crisis, sometimes they have no running water for weeks, they have blackouts every day, the prices of food and other products are either dolarized or increase daily. Since my parents do not have reliable sources of income, I need to set aside $600 out of my stipend to cover their food, utilities, and other emergency costs, e.g. if they need to rent a water truck to fill their tank; if they need to stock up on food to prepare for shutdowns; if they need to fix their car; if there’s a medical emergency and need to rush to the hospital. Sometimes they have an emergency and I have to dig into my low savings to help them out.
Since my parents do not have reliable sources of income, I need to set aside $600 out of my stipend to cover their food, utilities, and other emergency costs...
Last year I had to work two other part-time jobs aside from TA-ing to cover the cost of living in SB, which amounts to roughly $2300 including rent in subsidized housing, groceries, meds, therapy, monthly debts. With this workload I was on the verge of an emotional and physical collapse. I was behind with all my coursework, and I did not have the chance to do any work related to my research. I still need to take extra jobs in order to cover all my expenses and my family’s necessities. Every month I also have to scramble to save up a bit of money because I have to plan for the summer, where we do not get any salaries, and have an emergency fund to still pay for my parents expenses. Ironically, since I am in this program, research has become the last of my priorities.
COLA matters to me because it would greatly alleviate the burden of having to take extra jobs every year for me and my parents to survive. It would provide certain financial stability, a feeling I have not experienced since I started graduate school. COLA would allow me to concentrate on the main thing I came here to do: developing my research and getting my degree on time.
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