Yes, I do have a full-time job, and I even enjoy it, but it doesn’t pay enough to survive in this hellscape of a world we live in. I lack the college degree required to get almost any decent-paying job (plus my last job hunt took MONTHS to get a lead), I don’t have the skills or originality to become an online content creator, nor the artistry or patience to create and sell trinkets on Etsy (plus, that would require an initial investment which I simply do not have). Should I set up a GoFundMe? OnlyFans? I wouldn’t really be offering anything except a charity basket/collection plate so that feels dishonest at best. Idk, I’m quite literally having a breakdown because I’m probably going to lose my car soon, and then my job, and then my apartment, and then my life. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thank you
Step 1: Go to any hardware store and buy a 16oz claw hammer and a 25’ measuring tape.
Step 2: drive around anywhere you know of new housing construction happening near you
Step 3: Find the project manager and ask if they’re looking to hire help (if you live in North America, they are).
Step 4: Keep your head down, show up sober every day and you’ll already be placing yourself in the top 10% of your new career field.
I did this exact thing for much of my early 20s (less than a decade ago) in 41 of the lower 48 states and lived a comfortable enough life
What do you do now, sir?
Claw. Hammer.
How much do construction workers make today?
Anywhere from sub-minimum wage to $40+/hr. Skills, employer, and experience are everything, but any able-bodied person who shows up regularly and does good work should be earning enough to support themselves. The industry is experiencing a massive labor shortage right now.
I lived for years without a car and then when I did get one, I bought a super shitty one in cash ($650 20 years ago). If you are able to get out from a car payment, that could free up some cash.
During other lean times, I’ve gotten rid of entertainment experiences like internet, Netflix, cable, etc. and used the public library to fill the gap. And during one extreme period, I held 3 not classy jobs (like 50 hrs/wk) to make ends meet. Not sure what the economy is like in your area, but the McDonald’s by my house pays $20/hr, which can add up on top of another job.
If you can get yourself pointed in the right direction, you should consider taking that moment to think about how to position yourself for the future. There are some decent online degree programs (WGU is very affordable and can be done around full-time jobs), which may be worth a small amount of debt. Obviously this is not a “follow your passion” moment - get a degree in something that will make getting a job easier or increase your income. I made the mistake of getting my undergrad in philosophy, which made me basically unhireable. So I later got an MBA, which opened a lot of doors. This was an expensive and time consuming path - hopefully you can learn from my error.
I also want to call out that it can be a heap of work, so if you are feeling tired and overwhelmed, that isn’t unusual (or a shortcomg on your part).
Hang in there, you got this.
You need roommates. When I was younger we lived in groups, to split expenses. Tackle this from that side first, get into a situation you can afford on your pay so that you aren’t panicking. Even if you go live with your family.
Then you can work on increasing your income.
And don’t think it’s any kind of failure on your part. I have never lived alone, most people at my job make good money but nearly all do live in 2-3 earner households because it’s better and more secure.
There is an economy of scale in multiple earner households. One house, not much more electric use, food costs less per lb in bigger packages, you might be able to carpool.
Can you get into a trade? Go to the electric worker union and start as a helper? Those jobs are getting so much more valuable and that trend is increasing. I don’t think you need a college degree to get a good paying job, but you probably do need to put in that same 4 years working your way up.
Not going to disagree with the tough world out there, I’m just going to suggest / ask a few things that are at least somewhat in your realm of control that might help.
- If you are willing to divulge this information - how much are you making at your current job, how much do you pay for rent and what are your expenses?
- Do you have any family members or friends you can reach out for support?
- What does the cost of living look like in your area? Any other options?
Giving you enough context to actually answer your question without giving up TOO much private info, in order:
Cubicle job where I make just under $20/hour (min. wage for my state is $15)
As for family/friends, I’ve reached out a little bit, yes. But I don’t like doing it too much, regardless of how difficult my life becomes. Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s empathy, idk. Either way, I just can’t. In short, I’ve gotten SOME help, but I won’t get much more
As for cost of living, I live in the American Midwest and split rent in a decent apartment in a relatively-safe neighborhood with one other person (hopefully 3 total in the next couple months)
And that’s about all I’m willing to give up online
Edit: I copy-pasted from a very similar response, so I had to adjust it to fit YOUR questions
As someone mentioned, write down every single purchase you make, no matter how small. You’ll see a place to cut. Check all of your subscriptions - phone, Internet, everything, to look for a cheaper option. It’s easier to get a job when you have one. Always be on the lookout for things you could do instead of or in addition to your regular job. Maybe find something for weekends that offers a good benefit or discount - gym, grocery, something that will earn you money and reduce an expense. My son did a two day class to get certified for vehicle inspections - tons of jobs. If you don’t work Monday-Friday you could get on a school district sub list - you can say yes or no when they call you.
What kind of vehicle inspections? Is he a mechanic or are these inspections something most people could easily be doing after a 2 day course?
He’s now a mechanic, but
thatbecoming an inspector was his entry to car work. Do you get your car inspected every year or two? It’s that - windshield wipers, horn, tires, drive it and see if it brakes in the allotted space, plug it into the smog check machine. If you can tolerate working outdoors (in an open garage) and you’re ok working with your hands it’s not a bad gig. I think he started at $12/hr plus a dollar for each inspection he did, plus a little commission if someone bought windshield wipers, a new gas cap, stuff like that. Here, the people who work M-F fight to be off Saturday/Sunday, so they’re always looking for weekend help. I think the two day class was about $50 and the license to be an inspector is $25/yr.Edit for grammar/clarification.
You live in Illnois? (Its the only midwest state with a min wage even approaching 15 dollars an hour) Try finding a job outside Chicago, preferably some sort of trade. Youll get your feet under you.
I appreciate your candor and caution.
Without knowing your age, it’s hard to give good advice, but if you’re young, then I’d suggest asking Mom and/ dad if you can go back home while you acquire more marketable skills. Then, unfortunately, you will likely need to move to an area with opportunity. Living in a small town, or a town without a variety of booming industries seriously limits your options.
Thanks. Sitting down and conducting a frank and realistic budget are essential. Why they don’t teach this in schools in the US is beyond me.
Teaching financial literacy to Americans would cause irreparable harm to American lending institutions.
People who care about money don’t become teachers.
You remember the Miracle Worker, right? Did any person finish High School without hearing the name Anne Sullivan?
I don’t think it’s a vast conspiracy, it is just a matter of values. You don’t spend your teen years working at an aftercare program, then six years of higher ed, then at least 5 years hopping from district to district, and finally get a job that pays about half what you should get for a master’s degree to teach kids to make a spreadsheet of their expenses. You do it to teach kids the joy of reading/music/art/math, to reach the kids that the system gave up on, and to nurture brilliance.
You don’t have to tell me. My parents were teachers.
Reach out if you’re interested in blue collar work. I’ll give you my number and you can call even. I can advise from personal experience on truck driving, water/wastewater treatment careers, or railroad work.
Truck driving has the benefit of being able to cut expenses to near zero by going over the road if you have few obligations. Getting a cushion this way makes settling down and going local much easier, even though I make more local than I ever did over the road.
I don’t haul freight anymore either, and I don’t think that’s a long-term good prospect. Blue collar jobs where you work with the truck but have onsite work with it are a bit more resilient against automation I believe. Think wastewater cleaning, railroad, lineman, heavy haul, etc.
water/wastewater treatment careers,
I been saying this for almost as long as I have been in the all-things-waste sector. If you don’t know what to do with your life consider this. It’s a huge field from air scrubbers, to ground water remediation, to industrial scrap, to feces, to recycling, to solvent recovery, to chemical waste processing, to trash incinerators, to pulping equipment, and heck even regular HVAC falls under it sometimes.
Everyone shits and everyone makes garbage. As long as humans are still around someone is going to have to deal with that fact. And if there aren’t humans around you won’t have to worry about a job.
Every working day of my life I choose to make the world a slightly cleaner place, I am harder to fire than a normal civil servant, get paid well, and always have the most badass stories of my friend-group. Most people can’t talk about the time they came up with the ideas to fight a frozen shitberg with a blowtorches for example.
There are a lot of ways to break in. If I was starting fresh I would probably apply for government jobs at a facility, start entry-level, and let them pay to train me. I came in as an engineer at a small contractor.
So here’s some things to think about that may help you out.
The biggest thing you can do to help yourself financially is to cut down on expenses and work your way out of any debts you have.
Take a look at your bank account activity and just write down how much percentage of your monthly income is going where. If you have monthly entertainment subscriptions like Netflix or patreons multiply that sub cost by twelve and ask yourself if its worth paying $ each year. Cut down on your spending as much as possible dont buy anything unless you really need it.
What I’m going to say next is going to be controversial especially among the lemmy crowd, but its a way to financial freedom you might not have considered.
Your biggest expense is almost certainly rent to your appartment. Take a look at how much money your paying to your landlord each month, and ask yourself how your financial life would look if you instead poketed that money and paid yourself the “rent”. If you were your own landlord.
The secret is, your car can be a home that you own. Yes you heard me right, I’m suggesting that you move out of your apartment into your car while still working and pay yourself all that rent money, use it towards working off any debts you may have and pay off the car loan. After all your debts are paid and you own your car you build up a emergency fund nest egg of 3-6k and set it aside. After that you are financially free compared to most people living paycheck to paycheck in their appartments and the world is your oyster. You can upgrade your car to something a little more spacious and or travel your country sight seeing, working seasonal jobs , doing a little soul searching.
The sad reality is that many people every day especially the elderly living on meager SS are forced to choose between paying rent or not starving to death that month. Inevitably they choose the latter and are forcibly lead down that path of living in their car with no choice in the matter and little time to physically or psychologically prepare after the eviction.
Yet they manage to find the mental strength to endure, adapt, and thrive. I invite you to check out the YouTube channel cheaprvliving hosted by Bob wells. He does interviews with vandwellers who are more often than not older people fallen on hard times and shares their stories and builds. As well as practical guides to everything you want to know like how to take baths, use the bathroom, keep yourself warm, generate power for basic appliances and AC. Some of his older videos that share his personal story are very inspirational I like his quote videos too.
Of course this option has its own cost. One for sure is comfort, especially starting out. Its such a radical change in lifestyle that requires adaptation and an open mind.
If you have a family or even a partner that makes it a lot tougher than if its just you.
How much would you sacrifice for financial freedom, to not live paycheck to paycheck, to have money no longer be such a huge master of your life? do you think convinence and luxury are a price you could pay for that kind of freedom?
My final suggestion is this: an attitude change. Reading your post I get a serious “cant, won’t, dont know how” self pitying vibe. Its never too late to learn something new, or to go back to school, or develop a trade skill. The barrier to those things is usually a lack of motivation and purpose in life. If you dont know what your living for or why your doing it, that’s the core problem. All that other stuff is symptoms. And there is no silver bullet cure all suggestion to finding your own meaning in life that’s something you have to reflect on and think about. Anyways hope this gave you some food for thought.
One thing to note about living in your car… not having an address shows up an awful lot. You even need one to register your car usually. I was living on the road for awhile and used a mailing service for most things combined with a family members address as my official address.
Get yourself a TEFL certificate (168 teaching hours, whatever you can find for cheap) and teach English in a third world country. Schools pay quite well to have a foreign face on their website, and the cost of living will be peanuts. That certificate cost less than 100 bucks, you’ll find a million of vouchers everywhere, and it takes maybe 4-6 weeks to complete.
Some of the highest paying countries like China or Korea require a bachelor’s degree (any, really) on top of the certificate, but others such as Thailand, Indonesia, or Vietnam don’t.
With the money you make there you could then get an online degree from a properly accredited university in a discipline you care for (or if you end up enjoying teaching, that would open the door to some other countries). Pro tip: Look for degrees outside of the US, it’s way cheaper, and tuition in English is quite common even in non-native English countries. Personally I went for a UK degree since it’s a first world country with a good education record. Paid around 18k for a 3 year program including travel expenses for a 2 week residency. The same in the US would have set me back 60-80k easily.
All depends on how much time you have before you lose important stuff without a bailout, and how far underwater you are on expenses minus your after witholdings paycheque. I’m going to assume you have a bit of time to think, then act, enough that you won’t risk anything without drastic immediate action.
Step 1 (Budget): Look through your bills, card statements, receipts, determine how much you spent vs. how much you got paid, for recurring expenses, essentials and all the rest.
If the difference is less than about $US 500 a month or 250 per biweekly paycheque, you should be able to cut expenses enough that you can break even. More than $500 means moving to somewhere new, back with your parents, getting a new job that pays more, getting a second job on top will be options that are more worth it than just squeezing your budget can reasonably do. Now stay calm, go into this with a clear head and the confidence that you can work yourself out of your current situation.
Step 2a (Cut expenses): If you have a less than 500/mo shortfall, your goal is to cut $5/month out from up to 100 places.
- Cut Netflix, Amazon, streaming services, magazine subscriptions, gym membership, any monthly luxury thing that has tied your leg to a chain. Cut, cut, cut.
- Buy cheap, filling foods: beans, potatoes, cucumbers, rice, carrots, bread, milk. Buy dollar store plastic lunch containers to hold stuff in and meal prep for yourself every week. Every meal in a month that you make yourself instead of eating out saves you $15, minimum.
- Internet and cellphone, change providers and find a better “2-year introductory offer”, if your current phone has a balance, well you can’t do as much but you should pay it off if it’s $100 or less, stick with it and get cheaper BYOD plans from now on.
- Check your credit-card, loan balances.
- Do your best never to buy more on your CC than you can pay off that month, keep a zero balance if you can. If you have a balance racked up, and nothing like a Line of Credit to move it to, then well just make minimum payments but this is the top priority to tackle once you are in the black and you want to clear that ASAP.
- If you have loans, ask for alternative payment plan options, interest deferrals, something that can give you 6 to 12 months of breathing room.
- Never EVER get payday loans, they will screw you over.
- Shop around if you can attain better rates for auto, home, health and rental insurance. Especially if you’ve recently turned 25, then insurance companies will fuck you over much less than before.
2b (Increase income or change living situation): Follow most of the same advice across the thread, highlights:
- Apply for jobs where you are, and in other cities across the country where rents you’ve checked are reasonable.
- Look for seasonal weekend work to supplement your current income.
- There’s a lot of need for blue collar work, many will train on the job, and over time, help you get your ‘tickets’/qualifications to do more specialized and well paying work. Call up the trade unions, some may have spots.
- Municipal work pays well and lower barrier to entry
- Overseas online teaching math and english is a way I know how some of my friends job searching are supplementing their current existence.
Step 3: Stay healthy, keep your chin up, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You shouldn’t act desperate, you have many options here but don’t let your pride/empathy take away your car and home.
I live abroad. If you have the money to survive the US for a month, you can survive for many months abroad.
Getting certified as an English teacher takes a few days, and you’ll be saving $1 to $2,000 a month after living expenses in a lot of countries.
No degree or skills outside of native English speaker required.
If you don’t want to travel or teach, cheap RVs + 24 hour fitness subscription for showers is a very comfortable lifestyle that cuts rent out of the equation.
If $4,000 is too much for the RV, you can find an SUV for half the price in suburbs outside of larger cities and throw a memory foam mattress in the back.
If it took you months to find a job, I’d look outside of where you are.
Search classifieds in other cities and be willing to move if the city you’re in isn’t serving your needs.
I do recommend moving out of the country rather than the state though.
Real quick to give you an idea of the costs of living abroad; siam reap, Cambodia is 3$ a day for a shared hostel, 8$ and up a day for a private room, utilities included, food will cost you less than $5 a day and if you cook for yourself, food’ll cost a dollar a day.
Very easy and cheap way to get some breathing room while you figure out what to do next.
There are many free and inexpensive certification programs that you can do online without a degree that you’ll be able to turn into better job prospects.
While I do appreciate that you are correct, the idea of up and moving to a new country is absolutely petrifying to most people. I have the wherewithal and knowledge to move to pretty much anywhere, but I don’t because I would be too far away from my family.
Or a new city, or a new job.
For you specifically, family connections are at the top of your mind, but for OP it sounds like surviving is at the top of their mind right now.
Most people have a comfort zone, but if the alternative to trying something new is throwing everything away, dip a toe outside of your comfort zone.
Enough people have asked for help and taken me up on it that I don’t stop trying to help people when they ask for it.
Humans are conservative, but enough of them have the wherewithal or are forced into circumstances where they have to take the first step into the unknown.
Living abroad specifically is so much more comfortable than living(struggling) in the US, and there are so many ways to do it easily.
Fuck that rat race shit.
That’s quite valid. I hope that our disparate views gives the OP some thought.
Did you send op a suggestion also?
No. I suspect you represented our differences well enough.
My suggestion of
- getting certified and moving somewhere near or far away with greater opportunity/lower cost, providing a suitable budget example
versus you saying
- moving is scary?
I’d rather you not equivocate those positions.
OP can benefit from concrete options and support, not detractions.
Sorry. I do not want to fight with you.
If you can’t make more money, cut expenses instead. Start by swapping your car for a bike and your apartment for a shared living situation. Go vegetarian, too: meat is expensive.
Vegetarian can be cheaper, but isn’t a guarantee. If you are eating processed foods like single serving meals, the vegetarian options are often more expensive for the same quality.
Cooking yourself, from scratch, would save a lot more money. Plus it actually is cheaper to use veggies.
Learn to save money. Not as in “don’t buy a 5$ coffee, millennial” but fixing things.
I’m kind of a DIY guy and it’s saved me a lot of money at random times. Knowing how to safely replace an outlet, a power supply for the dish washer, various little repairs on the car, etc. It might not save a lot though since you’re renting.
Also, the United States is over educated in the wrong fields. A lot of trades are desperate for competent workers, and are willing to pay good money for it. Due to the collective societal brainwashing of “work white collar or you are stupid” became a self fulfilling prophecy, there are few left who do good work
Even if you don’t have money for classes, you can save enough for the most basic of tools and start practicing until you can try for a job.
Libraries are also a valuable source of knowledge for begining a new career.
Look into switching jobs. Unemployment is on the low end. People who switch jobs tend to make more money, and it’s easier to get a high-paying job when you have a job already because employers can’t help but think more highly of you if someone else is wiling to employ you.
Depending on what you do a recruiter or staffing agency may help. What’s worked best for me is posting an updated linkedin profile with keywords that recuriters will look for that relate to buzzwords for your job. Remember recruiters are typically trained as salespeople and may not know much about your actual job, they just look for words. Put in that you’re looking for work (but only show it to recruiters) and see if anyone bites.
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Hard to offer any advice without knowing much about you. Have you told your employer about your situation? If you enjoy your job I’ll bet it shows and you’re good at it. If it’s a big company there may not be much they can do as they have to treat everyone equally. Maybe they can help you find someone to carpool with. Is public transportation an option? You can save A LOT of money that way. As others have said, if you can find a roommate that helps obviously. If where you live is expensive don’t rule out relocating.
Just know you are not alone when you are struggling. Do what you have to do, your resourcefulness may surprise you. Despite what you’ll read online it’s not always a cakewalk no matter what decade it is. When I graduated unemployment was 10% and minimum wage jobs were the norm. I lived with 8 people in an inner city house and often ate out of a dumpster. It taught me to be frugal and how to keep an eye out for opportunity. I could blather on about my own experiences but they don’t work for everybody. If I could offer one piece of advice that does, know that the people you meet are the gateway to opportunity good and bad. You sound like you have a positive attitude. This will take you farther in life than any college degree. My very best to you
Lower your standards until they fit your new forever.
In all seriousness I would apply for state and government jobs. Often you can setup an account on your state’s website and apply to a to a ton of jobs they have open all in the same go.
