Monthly Expenses for Temporarily Displaced PhD Student

Hi, Everyone! As most of you know, things have been rather rough for me these past couple of months, given that I was forced to abruptly leave my old PhD program at the Univ. of California, Irvine (in January) and transfer into the University at Buffalo. This drastic change in my life unfortunately became necessary after the UC administration cut my funding in retaliation for my raising concerns about a potential grant fraud issue. UC had me removed from my off-campus apartment in March, and so I had to move to New York in early April (incurring numerous travel expenses). I was deemed ineligible to collect unemployment under CAL UIC section 642, given that I was both an employee and a student (and not merely an employee) of UC. The result is that I have been precariously employed in various part-time tutoring and freelance editing roles since February. The work is not very consistent, in the sense that I have no guaranteed minimum number of hours per week, and clients often ghost me, cancel on me, or forget to pay me. UB has generously offered me an additional fellowship, on top of their regular PhD stipend, but those payments do not start until September. They have told me that they may be able to reimburse me for incurred travel expenses later this month, but I unfortunately have several bills that are due now (and that I can obtain no further extensions on). The two main bills are the credit card payment ($152 due 6/12) and the phone bill ($137 due 6/14). For this reason, I've set the initial goal to $290.

Pic: Wildflowers by a lake on the UB campus.