Latest by Per Larson
Ten Things You Can Do to Survive and Thrive With HIV Financially
If working, ensure medical coverage. Pursue group benefits, especially medical and long-term disability insurance. It is no accident that three out of these ten recommendations deal with medical insurance.
If considering moving out of state be sur...
HIV and Personal Finance: Where Do We Go From Here?
In the early 1990s, HIV was seen as a one-way street to all the "d-words" -- disease, disability, and death. This emboldened viatical settlement companies to buy life insurance policies from people with HIV at prices near 90 percent of their face v...
Hidden Pots of Gold
The market for the sale of life insurance -- viatication -- has taken a nosedive in 2000. Yet an almost totally ignored way to get cash out of life insurance, at almost no cost, remains: accelerating the payout of life insurance directly with the ins...
Money Matters: Gay Money
Per Larson, who writes for Body Positive frequently on disability, back-to-work, and related issues, is a financial advisor to people with HIV and other serious illnesses and author of 1997's Gay Money. Excerpts from the book are printed below, along...
Hitting the Streets -- Getting the Job and Keeping It
handshake
Living in the waiting room of life? Wearing the golden handcuffs of benefits hard-won? Loath to run another gauntlet of bureaucrats and personnel people? Worried about a holey resume, interview traps, rusty skills, knowledge gaps, a 110 pe...
Getting Back In -- A Two-Pronged Strategy
handshake
Feeling better physically -- but getting worse financially? Afraid of being left behind? Wanting to return to work but running up against barriers laid down by bureaucrats, clerks, and personnel people? Worried about holes in the resumé, t...
The Road Back -- One Step at a Time
imageDisability can be a financial Land That Time Forgot, a limbo where adults are treated like children, where your illness has become your job. Leaving that land safely requires a roadmap.
The way back into the world of work can be as tricky as th...
Life Beyond Disability
image Feeling good ... and frustrated? Tired of watching the stock market soar, friends getting new apartments? Worried about credit card living, deferred tax bills -- even retirement? The source of all this may be the fact that you're on disability ...
Keep Covered! Medical Insurance and the Re-Employed
imageMedical insurance is the first line of defense with HIV, and your number-one priority in returning to work is to make sure you either improve or maintain your medical coverage.
When you went on disability, you probably learned a lot of things y...