This is Fish (i.e., David and Laura Trout), the Hercules developer and his wife.

Instead of whining on the Hercules list for donations, I thought I'd give GoFundMe a try.

Basically, the situation is this: we have zero savings (retirement account) to draw on, neither of us is working (we're both in poor health), and Social Security benefits are our sole(*) source of income (which is only enough to pay the rent).

Anything (everything!) above and beyond paying rent (such as buying food and paying bills) comes from donations by people like you.

We've been averaging about $1500/month for food and bills, so our initial goal is to raise enough to last us another 6 months or so. (I didn't want to ask for too much.) If this turns out to be achievable however, I might try raising our goal or possibly investigate whether asking for committed monthly donors.

When I got started in software development oh so many years ago (50?), I never thought in a million years it would eventually come down to this: basically standing on a street corner and begging for money (which is essentially what this GoFundMe campaign basically is).

But unfortunately, it has. :(

I guess the only good(?) news is that we're both in such poor health that such semi-yearly pleas for money like this probably won't last for very long, because with the way our health is right now, I expect we'll both be dead within a decade or so anyway (and no, that's not an exaggeration!)

ANYWAY... My wife and I would REALLY appreciate anything any of you can do to help us out.

Please?

Thanks.

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(*) Yeah, yeah, I earn some income from selling my software (http://www.softdevlabs.com/index.html) but that only averages maybe about $150/month, which is just a drop in the bucket in today's world.