I am in a broke period of my life right now. One can easily tell me about how much it is all my fault, but I thought I had enough money to last for two years when I quit my job, I thought I could find a job within six months in the bay area, people could argue that I am generous to a fault and people I have lent and given money to in the past can't or won't help me out now.
So it is easy to have some depression when scraping together a few bucks for transit to a job interview becomes one of the harder tasks. It's doubly frustrating when you get on the wrong bus and wind up 45 minutes late to the interview.
Someone with parents working at a factory goes to school, gets a job at a fast food place while in college, dropped out to work more or maybe just couldn't find work afterwards and gets stuck in a cycle. Without money, things like a flat tire become disasters because now you have to choose between going to work and paying the gas bill to keep hot water on.
It sucks living a year without hot water.
Stuff happens. Flat tire could have been lost cash, doctor appointment, anything $20 or more.
The bigger problem is that once you are down, regardless of whether it is your fault or not, it can be quite possible to get to a point that it becomes impossible to pull yourself out without some help. I kid you not, I've had buyers remorse over spending $.50 to avoid getting the store brand that I didn't like. There simply aren't many choices left at that point.
Heh...yeah right there with ya bud. I've learned to just kinda internalize it. But on a bad day that can be difficult. Like when you hear someone saying how you just need to take a chance and mention something like dipping into savings or the possibility of living off your spouses income for awhile and it's simply not possible. And the sting of some of the responses you get...they're not wrong. They're 100% right. But still, it sorta feels like you've walked into a nice restaurant off the street and are shocked at the prices. And you notice others giving you a disappointing look and hear someone mumbling "Why are they even here if they can't afford it."
For some of us just getting to the point where you're able to take a chance is a goal. And if we're lucky enough to achieve that, it's not the lack of backbone that keeps them from taking that chance. It's that the equation for them is different. Failing for these people isn't falling on their face but falling on their face from 3 floors up. There's much more to lose and we're intimately familiar with what it's like at the bottom. It's more than living comfortably but the sense of pride in being able to support yourself and loved ones that you simply can not risk. Not being able to do those things truly makes you feel worthless and if you achieve that and have half a brain you wouldn't want to risk it in a million years.
I don't think it's likely that I'll convince you otherwise, but my experience -- having grown up in a very poor community -- could not be further from yours.
Despair is exactly the word I would use to describe the feeling of not being able to make your bills and not being sure if you'll ever be able to save enough to afford moving to a more prosperous place. I'd say the majority of my friends and acquaintances at the time felt that way, too. The only reason I was ever able to escape was luck; my grandparents had to rescue me from a variety of financial disasters that would be extremely minor for somebody not on the edge of being able to make rent. It's amazing how much damage getting a $25 parking ticket because you had to work late can cause when you're working a minimum-wage -- (at the time: $5.15/hr) -- job. Lack of aspiration is definitely not the problem; lack of hope definitely is, though.
I don't mean to engage you in a debate about this, though; it seems like you have already made up your mind. I just don't want your comment to go un-challenged.
Yea, it is almost certainly more desperation. If you give someone a stable home, food, power, etc - they will find their own thing to do. It is when you owe thousands in debt, have no income, lost your car, are losing your house, etc that you become depressed and desperate enough to self harm.
I mean, you can have people who have huge downs immediately after losing a job, but someone who has just left unemployment compensation would not be considering suicide if they weren't losing everything.
In general I agree with your statement. But the grim reality is that good jobs are hard to get. It’s not always possible to find better opportunity. And you may not have the resources necessary to find something better (e.g. I can’t afford to go in a better job opportunity‘a interview, because I can’t get time off my current job, and I need this job to survive.
About 10 years ago I was living in San Francisco on less than $25k/year. Half my money went to rent, the other half went to food and the occasional movie. I couldn’t cook much, as I didn’t have a kitchen. I was able to increase my income because I’m educated, know some of the right things, and I got lucky as hell. But I was surrounded by people living on less who were flat out stuck. They all asked me why I was living there, and the answer was because I had started a business while homeless and got lucky enough that it was taking off. But I was super lucky to have that opportunity at all.
Not the person you're replying to, but I can relate to them. I've been working more than 20 years and currently have negative net worth. Shitty clothes, no car, no home, almost no pension, child on the way and I don't even know where we're going to live.
Being entrepreneurial and bootstrap-minded with big, bold visions can go poorly.
Doubly so when unexpected caring responsibilities appear in your life. Grief when you lose someone you love dearly, takes it out of you too. Add some clients who never paid. Volunteering on big projects to make a better world as well as help my own plans, only to find it being an infinite time sink. During the height of pandemic issues in 2020, I completely ran out of cash, hit the limit of my already credit-limit-hacked credit cards, and couldn't afford rent or food for a while. A rent deferral from the landlord, which I still had to pay back, helped, as did community food providers during lockdown.
If you worked with me, you'd probably consider me a highly skilled programmer among other things. I have a reasonably impressive résumé. It's not that I can't earn well, indeed I received a $350k plus equity offer a few months ago, which sadly was retracted on the day I was due to start due to the company's business changing direction. 1 year at that job would have set me up for years. Ah well.
And yet, homelessness isn't far away if I don't get another job soon. I haven't overspent either, I have next to nothing in the form of material wealth, and haven't been on a proper vacation in over a decade.
I'm always a bit irked when I see here on HN people suggesting that it's impossible to end up poor if you're a skilled developer. Shit happens, despite the potential for earning well.
Not only that, but people really underestimate how locked into a difficult financial situation you can get. Yeah, you can just get a better job or just move where there are more opportunities, except you need time to make all of that happen; if you're working dogshit hours just to keep the lights on and you have a family to feed, finding the time to go to interviews or to figure out where to live may not be on the table, at least not immediately. Especially if one can't even afford the move itself.
Those whom have reached financial escape velocity, or never had to reach it because of good fortune, often are biased towards believing that their current lifestyle is entirely the result of their own decisions and didn't involve luck.
People should act with personal responsibility, but all the personal responsibility in the world won't make a winner in a losing situation. Anyone can do what Warren Buffet does, but Buffet doesn't risk starvation or having his children live on the street when things don't work out.
It must be nice to have a life so luxurious you can't stomach working a dead end job for 2 months.
It is interesting to me the different notions of pride people have. I would lose all my pride if I had to take out loans to survive. It seems you would lose your pride if you ever had to take something less than you thought you were worth.
It has been impressed upon me my entire life that self sufficiency is the greatest thing you can achieve.
I am genuinely curious to know (you and the others that are cripplingly depressed when life doesnt go their way) -- Why would you be in a crippling state of depression?
This is eye opening and like a field course in psychology to me.
EDIT
I'm not going to baby anyone. It's pathetic to skate by on loans rather than your own hard work. Grow some balls, stomach your problems, and power through it.
My goal in life is to be the rock of stability that people can cling to when times are difficult. If that means ignoring my fears like they aren't there, then that is what I will do. If that means serving french fries to people that are more rude than you can imagine - saying horrible things about you just because you work at mcdonalds - then that is what I will do.
But please do answer my above question. I learn more with every comment that is made.
EDIT
Take from it what you will. One thing is for sure, it definitely can become an endless cycle once those 2 events(bad decision(s) and poverty) happen within a small time frame. For me personally, having a guilt-inducing high-salaried SF tech job gives me the peace of mind of not worrying about money; allowing me to read all kinds of articles/comments on topics like this, as well as financial & nutritional material - which I assume lead to better decisions for me & my family.
Having been there, I second that. Juggling late utility bills in the middle of winter against having food to eat. If you come through that, it hangs with you forever in ways that others that have not will never understand. Even though that life is almost forty years behind me now, it clearly affects my life decisions every day. I am aware of that, and I manage it, but it is always there. Like you, I am not going for the misery olympics either. Just don't assume that, given my career and place in life now, I am not happy with my perfectly maintained fourteen year old car. I know I can afford a new one, thank you very much. But spending that kind of money, just because I can, does not bring me comfort. People that have never been poor will never understand that.
If you are struggling to get hired AND have a massive financial cushion AND have the right connections in the industry to get funding for your project AND are at a stage in life where failure will not have real consequences.
Most people out there need to put food on the table for their families and make rent next month, and so don't have the above luxuries.
There's a sad undercurrent to this, as some redditors respond that they find this depressing. While I understand their plight, I do not understand the sustained pessimism for most of the depressed ones.
I went to work right out of high school at menial jobs. No college, no big family business. Paycheck-to-paycheck, and any minor emergency like a dead car battery was a financial crisis. I did not "get lucky" on stocks or anything. While getting rich has not been a focus for me, I decided I definitely did NOT like being poor. Lots of small steps, and staying on the lookout for ways to improve matters has led me to not be poor. I'm not rich but I'm in decent shape and moving in the right direction: no debt except the mortage, which will be payed off soonish; some money in savings, stocks, 401k, etc. I'm living at a decent level and should be able to retire in some comfort. No magic. No big windfalls. This is doable by most of those depressed people.
Misinterpretation of my initial post, I didn't say I was broke, I said I was on a budget : )
I'm not specifically after a job, but if in the short-term it put a roof over my head - I'd be happy for it.
I think we'll definitely have to put the Education thing down to cultural differences. You're using phrases like 'go through the rest of your life' and 'bad cards'. It simply isn't like that.
I have a safety net, it's in the form of subsidized housing where I don't have to pay anything for rent as long as I don't earn an income, and utility and food are paid by one of my relatives through an allowance. Having said that, I'd be careful how you treat these situations because it's easy to fall into a loop of complacency.
With nothing to light a fire under your butt, you have to sometimes create your own crises because simply setting deadlines when you don't need to pay for anything doesn't have any real stakes. This is coming from personal experience- I've been constantly job hunting since 2015 with no FT offers in software development, despite having 8 years experience from 2007-14. Job hunting now just feels like going through the motions and I'm burned out from so much interview practicing.
I have the potential to turn down offers because of my situation of not needing to pay for almost anything, but I can only take advantage of that if I get offers to begin with. Whatever approaches I took in the early 2010's to get work aren't effective anymore and I'm still in the process of discovering what will work for me today.
I'm sure you do, but I for one would be on the streets with my family within six months of losing my job and not finding another. A lot of that is poor financial planning in my younger years which I'm slowly rectifying, but even so not everyone here has a stack of cash behind them.
I am in a broke period of my life right now. One can easily tell me about how much it is all my fault, but I thought I had enough money to last for two years when I quit my job, I thought I could find a job within six months in the bay area, people could argue that I am generous to a fault and people I have lent and given money to in the past can't or won't help me out now.
So it is easy to have some depression when scraping together a few bucks for transit to a job interview becomes one of the harder tasks. It's doubly frustrating when you get on the wrong bus and wind up 45 minutes late to the interview.
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