32 posts
I haven't talked about this much. Watch this video. I live about 15 minutes from Wilmington. It is the county seat of our county. It's where I go to church, where I went to college, etc...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/22/60minutes/main4747832.shtmlI have MANY MANY friends who are involved in this. Several who got out of state jobs but can't sell their homes etc. I'm sure you've all heard about this, but this is HOME for me. It's hitting our area pretty hard.
I'm sorry, man. That sucks.
The only thing I've seen so far is 10 of my co-workers here at Clear Channel get fired (with more to come, for sure). Needless to say, I'm a bit worried about my job. They're calling it "Re-engineering" the company. Fuckers.
Anyway...back to work - for now!
Tripper
Something like 50,000 job cuts were announced yesterday. My company just laid off 90, 5%. I consider myself, and everyone who has a job, lucky.
Unfortunately, I'm still at the other extreme. No new work, many of my friends around here who had decent jobs are now unemployed with me and I just lowered the selling price of my Mom's home by $10g (I stand to lose over $73g after selling the house). The "bailout" never got anywhere near my Mom and I, it only made my mortgage company stop negotiating with me since they apparently no longer care. We were lining up a contract with Intel when they closed one of their areas up here (laying off 1,000 including a couple of friends of mine).
Could I sell ALL of the gear I have left? Sure, but at pennies on the dollar I'd only end up with nothing (it's hard to get $300 for anything right now, however that's how much I need to come up with every month only for my health insurance!). Not sure exactly what we're going to do.
Ever thought about....just getting a job? Any job, multiple part time jobs? Anything at all? It would urely help. Ya can't make any money fucking around here. ;D ;D Seriously, or have I missed something about your situation?
I do some things on the side, but my lifestyle requirements (or, at least my prior lifestyle requirements) need a well paying job. Lower paying jobs only would take up all available time (time I need to find real work and deal with my debt and real estate situations) and I'd STILL go broke. My monthly expenses are a little over $4,000 a month (without paying consumer debt either - and really can't be cut without finding someone to buy my house or losing everything). Part time jobs don't pay well and, usually, won't let you telecommute so that's 50-55 hours wasted every week to make a 1/3 or a 1/4 of what I need. I'll find something, it's just hard when everyone is currently laying people off and cutting project funding!
I'm currently down about $406,000 over the last couple of years... I've also gone from having a FICO of 811 and NO consumer debt to having trashed credit and over $90k on credit cards. I'm basically starting over!
I understand. But sitting on your rump doesn't pay anything at all. If your starting over, start over. Take less a job and work your way back up.
If you can cover even half your debt per month with part time or full time job, fuckin do it. There's no shame in stocking shelves at a grocery store, and that's half your debt paid. Sittin around thinking there isn't any work and loosing shit you like everyday doesn't help. Basically, get aggressive and get to work. Are you spending 8 hours a day actually searching for a job, or work of some kind? In your field? If not, you have time to pay your insurance every month with a part time job. You can pay some bills with part time work or a low paying full time job that has insurance provided. Kill 2 birds with one stone right there. Sounds to me like your ego won't allow you to work, not your ability or availability of jobs.
Just brutal honesty, nothing personal. I truly don't know your entire situation. :)
Sounds great! I'll go get the cheaper job, but what bridge do you suggest that my Mom and I live under after they take my house and all my possessions that I worked for 20 years to get? The fact that I have a bad back wipes out lots of manual labor-type jobs (which seem to be doing well right now) so maybe I could just take the money at a gas station?
I don't know your situation either, but if you had no work in what you are trained and capable of doing, would you, right now, take a job that made $1 an hour (for example) just to have a little bit of money? Remember, you'll still have all of your debts and bills you do now, but any free time you had to find the correct work for yourself is gone...
First of all, abondon your mom's home and move her in with you. Keep paying whatever. Then see what the finance company does. Let it go if you have to. Fuck it. Your starting over, remember. Give the finance comany an option, work with you, or your history.
I've started over before due to my own recession, a personal one, called divorce. I worked two full time jobs for 4 years to recover and pay off bills. I lived in a rusted out trailer for two years before I moved up to a apartment. It can be done. But not if you think you'll keep all your luxury items and ego, pride. I lost everything material I had, but I became happier everyday I replaced it, little by little. And, I got a woman instead of a girl in the process. Respect, pride, and ego intact. Or restored. Your waiting for something to find. During this time your seeing everything you have dissappear slowley.....what's the difference? If your gonna lose everything, lose it today so you can start fresh tomorrow rebuilding. Your gonna have to start over anyway. Why not today? Your life is determined by what you have now, your life could be determinded by what you do tomorrow, and the next day etc. Take back control and don't make the same mistakes twice.
If you were really hurting, you wouldn't be talking on this computer and paying $50 plus dollars for internet service. Reality check man. :)
You gonna sit there and bitch and whine and watch everything go bye bye slowely.....or say fuck it and move on? Starting tomorrow? :)
Again, sounds wonderful, but doesn't make much sense. If it was just me things would be different, but I'm the only one left in my family to take care of my Mom so that's what I'm doing (we ARE basically abandoning her house and she IS moving in with me). The internet connection is mandatory if you're going to be a software consultant that telecommutes so that's not really an issue. I'm not disgarding all of what you're saying, I AM basically starting over and I've sold, thrown out or given away a TON of things and feel pretty good actually. Some of it was long overdue to go bye-bye. I even tried to sell my house for six months with no luck (the final amount would have me losing $86k of money I put into the place - not just lost equity due to the down market).
I just think I'm allowed to be a bit bitter that I spent 20 years of my life putting myself in a very good financial position only to have the stupidity of others (mostly the financial institutions and our Government) steal it all. Then, when I try to go back to my old career, I get told everywhere that what I was an expert in is no longer relevent and that, if I don't have two years of recent experience in all of the new stuff, I'm of no use to them. Thanks to a friend that's a member of the non-profit organization that I'm the Director of, I finally got a chance to get back to work and gain that experience only to have a Government entity cut funding.
For me to make any kind of living, it helps if I find jobs that match my skills. Unfortunately, my primary skills are out-of-date (though I've been working like crazy to get them current) and my other skills aren't useful right now. I'm good at real estate (which sucks at the moment) and I'm very adept at trading commodities and financial markets (but can't even come close to the "tiny" account of $10,000 that you need to do it right). Of course, since I wasn't given the chance to finish my other training (or my PhD) due to my financial issues, I have no experience there either.
I'm not just sitting here (plus it takes very little time for me to pop around a couple of forums), I'm actively looking for a new way to make money using the skills I have. It's just hard when you have to compete with pimply college grads who are willing to take far less money.
Now that I'm a middle-aged single guy living with his mother, maybe I should turn my house into a motel. We could call it the Bates Motel. I could put in some killer showers...
All it takes is a little creativity. I have a friend who started a brilliant business... realized that he could modify lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and trimmers to run on battery packs. Then he started charging those battery packs from his home solar panels. His business is able to advertise as a renewable-power-only, low-impact, ultra-quiet gardening company. They can charge more than their competition and they still have a waiting list of clients. Sure, he lives in LA and a lot of people have the money to pay extra for a cause they find worthwhile, but... the best part is, he is a trained psychologist with a clinical psych degree who was a school psychologist. People can adapt... there are tons of niches.
But this is a downturn of a sort I don't think we've ever seen. Good luck.
I like his idea! One general area I've been trying to figure out a niche for is the so-called green area since I believe it will become big very soon (and not just because Obama wants to invest a lot of money in that sector).
I wonder how many normally wired devices could be powered by those standard 18v batteries used by power tools?
CraigBert — Jan 28, 2009I do some things on the side, but my lifestyle requirements (or, at least my prior lifestyle requirements) need a well paying job. Lower paying jobs only would take up all available time (time I need to find real work and deal with my debt and real estate situations) and I'd STILL go broke. My monthly expenses are a little over $4,000 a month (without paying consumer debt either - and really can't be cut without finding someone to buy my house or losing everything). Part time jobs don't pay well and, usually, won't let you telecommute so that's 50-55 hours wasted every week to make a 1/3 or a 1/4 of what I need. I'll find something, it's just hard when everyone is currently laying people off and cutting project funding!
I'm currently down about $406,000 over the last couple of years... I've also gone from having a FICO of 811 and NO consumer debt to having trashed credit and over $90k on credit cards. I'm basically starting over!
90k on credit cards? YIKES. are you planning on going bankrupt?
I had the credit so I used it to buy time to find work and it was the only money that was available (after my savings) to pay those two huge expenses I had (one courtesy of the previous owner and one thanks to our wonderful Government - $123k combined). All of the money I had in equity (more than enough) became untouchable (by me anyway) also thanks to a knee-jerk regulation put in place by the Government. Up until that point, I had never had a true late payment in 26 years...
man dood that sux, its good to see you taking it in stride.
You have to or you go crazy. Plus I have to believe that I can make all of my money back and more (it should be easier this time since I can avoid the mistakes I made when I was younger, right?).
Craig, you know I feel bad for you. I really do. I'm not being critical, but you know you made some choices in the past that are coming back to haunt you now, primarily, deciding you had enough money to "retire" for a while. The big whammy being that you now have dated job skills and are also going to find some people get a bit spooked by hiring someone who hasn't worked for a while, even if they really think the person was successful enough to just take some time off. I have a friend going through the same thing right now. He's nowhere near in the debt you are, but he always said "if I get in trouble, I can sell one rental property every 6 months til I get a job." And, he had 10, so he was safe for sure, right? Well, he was until property values dropped, to where he'd basically be selling solid rental properties that don't cost him any money ONLY to get rid of them, with no profit. Oh, and wanna guess what the market is like for his summer home at the lake, or his $60K boat?
Unlike the path this thread has taken though, there are all rank of employees in the DHL situation, some of which started there right out of high school. Some are now well paid supervisors. Others are skilled labor who moved here just for the job (ala aircraft mechanics, etc) and now might even be able to find a job but have to move and cant sell their home because the area is taking a beating in property value.
I do know two people though, who've retired from there within the last 4 years. Got out just in time....
The biggest thing that has everyone in an uproar though, is that despite some rumors at the time, Airborne Express was NOT in financial trouble when DHL bought them. So the big issue is, and foreign company came in and bought a company that had been there for years, and within 5 years, shut them down and laid everyone off. That REALLY sucks...
I think you're confusing me with Kevaroo there Howie. I never retired, I was actively learning a new trade to switch careers. The break from my prior work also gave me the chance to move away from Kalifornia to the beautiful Pacific Northwest (NO regrets there except I haven't been able to talk my So. Cal. friends into moving up here yet!). When the new career fell through (for a few different reasons) it was right when I had to come up with all that cash so it was like a big double whammy. I actually still made six figures for the first two years of my "retirement." The one "choice" that is coming back to haunt me is that I put so much of my money into my houses. I thought that was the safest place, kept my mortgages lower and that I'd always be able to get to it with equity loans or refinancing if I needed to (hey, I DID have an 811 FICO and no credit card debt back then). None of that mattered when it came time to get to the money though... Without seriously documentable income (like two-years worth) I was screwed. Sometime after that they relaxed the regulation a bit, but too late for me. My banks and credit card companies soon joined in to kick me and pretty much made it impossible to get out of the situation. I'm going to wait until I'm working again and have money then renegotiate to pay off my debts at 25 cents to the dollar (I already know I can do this).
I DON'T want to go back to my old career since it burned me out so much (in fact being this far in debt isn't stressing me out as much as my job used to!), but I don't have much of a choice at the moment. Eventually I'll find the correct niche for me. Something where I don't need to market myself, can work my own hours and don't have to deal with inventory or sales (gee, sounds a lot like trading commodities and real estate investing, eh?). We'll see!
hey man, I'm not being critical. I'm just going by what I read over the last few years. I took it that you were doing some real estate investing and not working a "job" anymore a good while back.
DreamTheaterRules — Jan 29, 2009hey man, I'm not being critical. I'm just going by what I read over the last few years. I took it that you were doing some real estate investing and not working a "job" anymore a good while back.
Um, yeah... Not sure how that translated into being retired though! I considered the investing to just be one of my jobs. I was also training for a new career (and working on my PhD) and I'm the Director of a non-profit organization (an unpaid position that takes up too much of my time actually). I wasn't just sitting around! I simply realized a while back that I didn't want a career, I only wanted a paycheck. My old job paid well (the lowest I worked for over the last 12 years was $70 an hour), but I
averaged 56.3 hours a week for the last ten years I worked! I didn't even had a full week off for vacation during those ten years. Add all the prep time and driving time and there wasn't much time for actually living (including not getting married, etc.). Of course, thanks to Kalifornia being what it is, paying to live there as well as supporting my parents for the last 17+ years I never seemed to get ahead with that J.O.B. even with the nice wage.
The real estate investing did better than my job with far less work (or stress). At least until the market dried up. By that time I had two houses left, one for me and one for my Mom, but it was useless to get any others going then (NOW would be a great time to start buying, houses are cheap and rates are stupidly low - IF you have the income and the money that is).
I'm with charger on this one. There is ALWAYS something to do. For instance, my cousin owns his own window tint shop and 2008 has been pretty bad for him. What to do?
Well, he has taken his old love for BMX racing and started collecting these bikes, buys them for next to nothing (some people just GIVE them to him) cleans them, repaints a little and sells them on eBay! You would be surprised how much a Redline or Huffy BMX bike will go for! Some for a little over $1K!! Right now he has like 20 bikes hanging in his garage, some waiting for parts, paint, etc.
Every Friday and Saturday morning, he is up hitting garage sales and estate sales for about two hours before he goes to his tint shop. He also knows classic furniture and does the same thing with that. He is always calling me at work, "Hey, have you heard of this guitar?" or "Hey, look this thing up on the internet, see how much it is." Then he buys it and re-sells it.
I personally, setup guitars for the crowd of musicians I run with, now I'm thinking of charging them for it. I also do custom paint jobs on guitars, I just recently did a custom paint job on our drummers drum set that came out AWESOME! If I had a shop or house with a garage I would be doing THAT part time. I also wanted to start building guitar cabs and head cabs, I think I could beat Avatars prices!
My point is, try doing something you LOVE to do anyways and make some money at it. Hell, you might even be surprised and fall into a niche that will deliver a pot of gold!
Good luck bro....
cgtrox 8-)
A hundred bucks a week doing something part time is nothing to sneeze at... Craig, you're being too picky. If I was in your position (and I may very well be soon), I would have two or three part time jobs while looking for ANY full time work... whatever I can find to get by.
Howie, that vid is the same story everywhere... Some areas of the country aren't struggling yet, but it's coming. Hating this shit.
Wow, that would really suck Mark! I've always thought you had a really cool niche with your software. :(
As for me, yeah, you're right. I am being too picky... I need to restructure some things soon. Right now way too much time is spent on things that can wait or should be done by others. I also don't have my usual get-it-done motivation - too much regretting about working your butt off for years just to have someone else come in and take away what you earned. I have to lose that attitude NOW.
Things could be worse though, at least I don't have a MIL to deal with. ;) ;D :D
Or a wife. :D
And, sometimes, a mother could be worse than all that put together.
I know what you're saying... this rattled around in my head last night a bit, and I was feeling bad for you... Sucks when your skillsets are outdated... Mine are, too. Let go of the $70 per hour idea, too... no one is hiring consultants these days... they're either doing it in-house, or bypassing the project altogether. We had a $10,000 proposal for a health care company for some ASP work on their online app... Supposed to commence the first week of January... held up now indefinitely because of the economy.
The software is still selling, but only about half of what it used to... I laid off around the holidays, brought some back, but may have to do it again... Our commission check from the CC company is only half of what it was, too, because our customers' customers aren't buying either.
Howie, that vid is the same story everywhere.../quote]
Yes, I know. Our area is getting hit particularly hard though. Within a 50 mile radius of Cincinnati, you have DHL in Wilmington (now closed) laying off 8,000 and the total in wilmington is expected to get to at least 10,000 in a county of 44.000, due to loss of business from the 8,000 people who aren't going to work there anymore). We also have the Batavia Ford plant closed (thousands laid off, and these are common production line workers most of whom made between 75-110K per year. Those guys go to another factory IF they can, and won't make half that). We also have GM Delco in Dayton, same thing.
It's brutal....
My sympathy wanes when it is blamed on a German company (DHL) ruining a Great American business.
Utter bullshit
The Great American mortgage and finance business is the cause for them losing their jobs - end of story.
DreamTheaterRules — Feb 02, 2009Howie, that vid is the same story everywhere.../quote]We also have the Batavia Ford plant closed (thousands laid off, and these are common production line workers most of whom made between 75-110K per year. Those guys go to another factory IF they can, and won't make half that). We also have GM Delco in Dayton, same thing.
It's brutal....
Luckily, as you said, most of those people were lazy, overpaid, and hardly worked anyway. Right?
charger — Feb 02, 2009[quote author=DreamTheaterRules link=1233074727/0#24 date=1233607396]Howie, that vid is the same story everywhere.../quote]We also have the Batavia Ford plant closed (thousands laid off, and these are common production line workers most of whom made between 75-110K per year. Those guys go to another factory IF they can, and won't make half that). We also have GM Delco in Dayton, same thing.
It's brutal....
Luckily, as you said, most of those people were lazy, overpaid, and hardly worked anyway. Right?
LOL! now that shit is funny!
good one charger.
yeah, hilarious! ;)
Fingers, you might want to read a little more carefully, as I only applied that to a SPECIFIC instance.
DreamTheaterRules — Jan 29, 2009
The biggest thing that has everyone in an uproar though, is that despite some rumors at the time, Airborne Express was NOT in financial trouble when DHL bought them. So the big issue is, and foreign company came in and bought a company that had been there for years, and within 5 years, shut them down and laid everyone off. That REALLY sucks...
5 years later in the middle of a huge recession they close the business.
The Great American mortgage and finance business is the cause for them losing their jobs - end of story.
Will trade gear for the following, um,
work attire that I'll need for my next job...
;) :D
You're going to get paid to be a submale?