If physical or mental health issues bar you I’d consider that different. I never really understood how you can live your life being a NEET. Its a term I’ve known about for awhile but only recently remembered was a thing. Do you have bills? Do you have autonomy in general? Whats the living situation look like? Is the term offensive? I have a ton of questions really. Not here to shit on anyone I’m just full of curiosity on this one.
Because these bastards won’t hire me!
I have been unemployed close to two years. I have full autonomy and bills. Im older and going through savings. I have tried to get into a program for more education but was not accepted and a training program would have taken a lot of time away from looking for work and some work I can get (I substitute teach some so maybe im not strictly a neet although I don’t think there will be many oportunities for it over the summer). I was a stem major and worked in tech all my life which allowed for “odd” individuals in the ranks. When I was young kids like me were called introverts and that was that. It makes me wonder. I have been struggling with depression and want to get help but im on the us lowest level medicaly system and its that much harder to navigate and the depression itself makes it hard to even try.
I was talking to a homeless man a few years back that was a brick layer, his wife got into drugs and took his kids from him. He fought in court for them but lost (they, the kids, wanted to stay with their mom) and got slapped with pretty alimony. He eventually just quit caring, quite going to work, and decided to just live on the streets. He panhandles and saves up to get a hotel room every few weeks, cleans up, and goes to the bars to pick up chicks.
At least all according to him while we were chatting
Sounds like a real rough life.
Was this at a bar?
No he asked for some food so I said sure cause I could eat some too.
I was NEET after I flunked out of college the first time and after I graduated (during COVID). It was miserable. It was not a pleasant way to live at all. It was simply, I was a young adult with poor social skills and no work experience, so nobody wanted to hire me. That was it. I submitted job applications, they mostly were ignored. I didn’t have any kind of mentor in my life to encourage and guide me to something that would work out. It was extremely depressing.
Damn sounds like a rough patch. Considering you used the past tense I’m guessing things are better now?
Yeah, I found a cause I supported, and my first job hired me based on my support for the cause. And, you know, the low pay. Now I’m in law school, which I feel wishy-washy about. I do think I’m better off in law school than trying to find another job in this economy.
similarly with working in mental health. my first job was also with criminally insane men so in addition to the low pay it was also stupidly dangerous. but now that I’m an RN on a lower acuity unit and one of the few nurses with that kind of high acuity experience so it did give me something valuable? 😭
Good for you. Glad you were able to find a path you care about.
I suffer from major depression and have since I was a kid. I was diagnosed at fifty to be ASD and a recent assessment in March confirmed I’m spectrum AF.
I worked for a few years and was nearly driven to suicide and have been on disability ever since. Not a bad thing. All my career hopes either required education and credentials I couldn’t ever afford to acquire, or had spirit-crushing consequences (e.g. crunching, which practically all video-game developers are required to suffer).
Damn thats a heavy cross to bear. Sorry you deal with that.
I never really understood how you can live your life being a NEET
I am, i quit work at 40 am now 60, i had thought to do some higher ed (I do have a Science degree) but it’s too expensive here in Australia.
Do you have bills?
of course, i made some lucky investments early in, with a little surplus cash, they’ve grown and cover my expenses.
Do you have autonomy in general?
within reason sure. I have always been reasonably frugal and lived under the maxim of spending less then I earn and investing the rest. That has served me well and I still do that albeit the income side has ballooned from compounding investments over the deacdes but my spending hasn’t.
I have a cheap, modest cottage in a quiet rural area that I own, no mortgage. I get all the free beef i want as my farmer neighbor uses my small back paddock (as well as his paddock) for his cattle and pays me rent in free beef. I don’t eat much beef though and give a fair bit of it to a homeless charity locally, they prepare meals with it. He also pays me a notial $500p.a
I travel overseas in SE Asia for 8 months a year. I have inexpensive hobbies, I ride my MTB and cycle, hike, walk, have a home gym, grow fruit and vegetables. Have a bunch of solar panels in my roof and have near zero electricity bills, have a cheap ecar and ebike that charge off said panels. I don’t have to commute fie work of course. I can walk to my local library but also have a kobo ebook reader, a zillion ebooks managed via Calibre and use overdrive to borrow ebooks from the library sometimes.
I play some tennis, pickleball, badminton in the community, they are all free. I swim in the local pool in Summer as it has free entry etc have a older desktop, a laptop (both on linux) and use nearly all FOSS software and an android phone with most software from F Droid. I hope to move to Graphene eventually. I have no subs to software or tv etc. I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV, people who work full time mostly seem to do that. i do watch YT a bit (Newpipe etc)
Whats the living situation look like?
my gf lives with me, she works 3 days a week part-time for 4 months a year if that’s what you’re asking. We travel OS together. She’s a Chef and cooks amazing meals and loves growing fresh produce in our yard.
I have been living like this for just over 2 decades. I was living off grid for 11 years with my gf, my own solar, own water, grew lots of my own food etc in a small cottage in the bush but have since moved for climate change related reasons.
I have a ton of questions really
ask away
That sounds like FIRE than NEET but idk there can be overlap.
The guy has a beautiful arrangement but it is neither NEET or Fire as he rents land and sells beef.
Is being retired the same as being a NEET, though? I retired in my 40s and live with my bf, who works, but not sure if that’s what people mean when they use that term.
What’s the difference?
Retirees are using money they saved, SS, pension etc that they earned during their working years, and I understand NEETs to be adults young and capable but disinterested in working/training, whether they have income/savings/pushover parents/sugar-parents.
So it’s basically just a judgment call of whether someone “deserves” to avoid working, because of having had a job in the past? To me it’s basically the same if people are living the same sort of life, because those sorts of judgments are not a good way to consider a person’s identity. It’s only natural to not want a job and the main question is whether you have the means to avoid being coerced into it, people who have the means are really in the same category.
No longer a NEET but when I was I had very few bills. My parents paid for most of my living expenses and other things I funded by boosting other players in videogames mostly league of legends and RuneScape. I didn’t have a lot of autonomy but I also didn’t really want anything so it was never a real issue. Looking back on it it was very bleak but at the time I was happy enough playing video games and coding little projects. I rarely left the house maybe once a month. I don’t think the term is offensive.
I feel like it would be bleak in retrospect but maybe not that bad when you’re in it. So that makes sense interesting. Thanks!
I do high skill work that pays a lot. I could do a lot of it and have a lot of money, or do a little and live modestly and not work much. I chose option two.
Oh, also, no kids. Also, live somewhere where labor demand is high but supply low.
So you do work, just infrequently?
Yes. But if surveyed at a random time, including now, I’d be most likely to be classified as NEET.
not in education employment or training
Retired?
I’d consider that different. The term is more commonly applied to individuals who have never participated in the job market, academia or trades. Or at the very least in a limited and temporary capacity.
It’s a popular term in anime. I think of it more like a gap year that never ends or something like that
I can’t give a first hand account on this, but my middle aged cousin is one so I can give a second hand account. It’s been a combination of things. She had health problems as a baby and genuinely needed a lot of care and attention for a while. But she has been treated with those kid gloves her entire life. She was never pushed to do anything she didn’t want and also hs never had the drive or ambition to do anything either. She’s never even had any hobbies. And AFAIK, she still lives with her parents and they pay for everything.
It wasn’t until her mid to late 30s that I stopped asking or caring about her life. I still love her but we’re all worried about what’s going to happen when her parents die. Cause none of us are willing to take her in and keep enabling her behavior.
You don’t need to have a job to have value, but you do need something. Sitting on the couch all day isn’t a life. And I say this as a couch potato. Seriously, I’m writing this from my couch.
I don’t really care about money, and every part of modern employed (USA) life just seems like a scam. Car dependence+insurance, stagnant wages, housing/rent cost, debt traps, yearly tax burden (the filing process, not payment in general*), health insurance, captive markets, consumerism that doesn’t even seem desirable anymore. Which has only gotten worse over the years.
The only employment I’ve had was an unpaid internship at a car dealership (not really related to what I was interested in at all), which I would say was definitely a net negative when it came to my chances of entering the workforce.
* except that it goes towards harming people. Our post-2016 government is very Twilight-Zone feeling, so that does not inspire confidence when it comes to joining society either
If physical or mental health issues bar you I’d consider that different.
This is a big part for me, though I’d imagine it’s a common reason behind being NEET/Hikikomori. Don’t discount it.
Do you have bills?
No, I don’t buy services. I barely buy things at all.
Do you have autonomy in general?
I can go where my 2 legs and 2 wheels can take me, but where I live there I don’t really know much of anything within a comfortable distance.
I’m also limited by where the trail goes and how much cold water I carry, being in a somewhat rural area (and not knowing anyone) makes that even worse. So I’m not even really going the distance these days. Not really prepared for long travel, either.
Whats the living situation look like?
Boring, living with parents. Nothing most days. On top of typical rotting, I do try to help family when I can. Basic chores (emptying dishwasher, sweeping, unloading firewood from truckbed or carrying wood bucket in winter, pulling garbage bag out+replacing, peeling potatoes for dinner etc), recently I helped carry fence panels. In the past I have kept the house+garden when parents were gone. Today I pan-roasted myself some carrots+summer squash.
I do 3D model stuff and programming (somewhat niche language), though I still lack motivation for practice/projects there. I actually finished something simple a month or so ago, but don’t want to share it on Github (because copilot training) and can’t even share an export with anyone because problems with my system that I haven’t bothered to fix.
Is the term offensive?
Not really. There’s definitely worse said, though that stuff probably gets thrown at everybody rather than NEETs in particular.
