The bureaucratic bother I went through signing up for unemployment due to the virus turned out to be worth the trouble. A couple days ago I received in the mail a debit card loaded with three months' worth of, not just the state unemployment benefits, but the special virus-related federal benefits. It's a pretty fair chunk of money, more than I'd earn in an entire year from my intermittent concert-reviewing job; the disappearance in March of those concerts was what made me eligible for this benefit in the first place.
It'd be possible to transfer the money from the card to my bank account, in which case I'd use it mostly to pay credit card and utility bills (and I also got a form in the mail which, returned, would enable me to express the option to put the money in the account and not get the card in the first place, but it arrived after the card did), but as long as I've got the card, I might as well just use it for my incidental purchases instead of the credit cards, which will whittle my credit bills way down.
I've just got to remember to use the credit cards occasionally anyway, since I've learned from experience that credit card companies don't like it if you don't use their cards. I have one card I'd intended only to use as backup for emergencies until I started getting whining phone calls from the issuer saying, "Why aren't you using our card?" Now I try to ensure that each of my 3 cards gets used at least once per billing cycle.
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