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Explaining My Life Situation
10 years ago
General
Hey folks,
I don't really post here much, but elsewhere on the Internet I'm pretty active, and if you've been following me those places, you probably know that things haven't been going so well for me lately.
Really, things haven't been going so hot for the last several years, but these last two have been the real kicker, and the last few months in particular have me looking at declaring bankruptcy (this is something I'm already receiving some help with, and not the reason for my making this post).
A lot of people are curious what's been going on. I'm sort of a private person to begin with, so getting into personal finances for the world to see isn't really my style, but at this point the situation is bad enough that it's basically overtaken my life, and since it's impossible for me to ignore it's kind of impossible to keep it bleeding through into my day-to-day. So I guess it's better for folks to know what's going on than be in the dark, wondering.
Anyway, long story short, my day job never paid all that great; I made it by, paycheck to paycheck, but that was all I was ever able to muster. I had some debt that still followed me around from earlier in life, but it was all manageable. Had a great credit score, if nothing else. Anyway, then I got laid off, which I sort of saw as a blessing in disguise.
I spent a year collecting unemployment while looking for work in my career path, which was mostly enough to get by on, but not enough to put any savings away. Eventually, an old business contact of mine got me into freelance translating, which paid more money than I'd ever seen in my life by quite a bit.
Anyhow, that initial excitement carried me along for a few months, but then one of my big clients went bankrupt and so a lot of work dried up. I was able to find more, naturally, but breaking equilibrium when you work freelance is really rough. Without getting into too much detail, most of the time, you don't get paid for a job until at least a month after it's done. So if I start a job in early July, and that job goes two months, I probably don't see money until October.
Now, when October DOES roll around, I see a LOT of money, but the issue then is what to do if I get that job in early July and don't have money already: I've got three months before I'm likely to see any money, even though I know it's on the way. Suffice it to say, this meant borrowing a lot of money from friends in order to get through those 'gaps' whenever work would dry up from time to time (which, sadly, it did).
(People would ask me, at the time, why I didn't work part-time in the meantime to have cash on hand, to which I can assure you all that I wouldn't have had time given all of the other work I was doing.)
Anyway, not an ideal situation by any stretch. I was lucky enough to have some friends who could support me during the drier periods, and some of them are unlucky enough that, due to circumstances more recently, I haven't been able to do that yet, and that's what brings me to the nail in the coffin.
After several straight years of pulling far less work than expected in translation, I finally landed a major and very exciting gig. Career-wise, I'd never seen anything like it, and anyone in my shoes or even standing on the sidelines would've seen it for the amazing opportunity it was. This was the big break I'd been waiting for.
Except it didn't work out that way. After eight solid months of work, I wound up seeing just over two weeks' of pay. Those of you with office jobs or the like, imagine what working for over seven months straight without getting paid would be like for your financial situation. Now imagine that you're planning on getting that seven months at the very end anyway, but then at the last minute everything goes, "Wait, no, you actually don't get anything." That's essentially what happened to me.
(Some of you who know me personally might know what opportunity I'm talking about here; I am asking you, please, PLEASE do not name names here in the comments. What happened happened. It's no one's fault, I'm not mad at anyone, it was just a business venture that didn't work out as well as all parties involved had hoped. No one's in breach of contract, I'm not owed anything I haven't been paid, etc.)
Anyway, that brings us to now, really. I've spent the last month buried under a mountain of work while what little was left of money has dwindled away. I talk about how I don't have money, and I think people assume I mean "I can't afford to buy nice things or go on vacations," but what I actually mean is, "I haven't paid my medical insurance in months, I'm behind on my rent, and bills beyond that got forgotten about a long time ago."
Being this broke is terrifying. It's terrifying and it's very upsetting. I've been on the line for a few years now, in a near-constant panic about this sort of thing, and now that I'm in the middle of it my emotional ability to cope with it is almost completely gone. I get angry and lash out a lot; I feel beyond helpless because none of my attempts to fix the situation have worked (and, in fact, things have just gotten perpetually worse). And of course since people see me upset and don't know what's going on behind the scenes, they (perhaps rightly) assume that my being upset is the problem, not a symptom.
People tell me to cheer up, that I shouldn't blame myself, that things'll turn around. Well, I don't blame myself, but that doesn't make the reality of eight months of work coming to nothing any less devastating, either emotionally or financially, and simply keeping my chin up and hoping for the best doesn't change the fact that I'm behind on the basic expenses for things that keep me alive and with a roof over my head while having no real solid idea when I'll see money again (I'm booked through with work until February and have multiple outstanding invoices, but money several months in the future does me no good when I still need money several months in the past). And this isn't meant to be critical of anyone legitimately trying to be encouraging; I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from and why the encouragement doesn't really work so well.
I'm not here to panhandle or to ask to borrow money; declaring bankruptcy is my one real option here, and my number one goal right now is to get stable enough to make that happen (god, how fucked up is that?). I just know a lot of people have made the case that people need to know what's going on, so there it is, in perhaps a bit too rambly a form.
(There's a lot more to the story, like being arrested and being treated for a chronic health condition but I tried to focus on the big points. There are a lot of little cuts that added up to make this all so much more complicated than what's here.)
Thanks for listening. And I hope this helps people understand a bit better just why I'm so scared and upset all the time.
tl;dr version: I'm bankrupt now because I was in a bad financial situation and then wound up not getting paid for over seven months of work; maybe it's not a fair situation, but it is what it is
I don't really post here much, but elsewhere on the Internet I'm pretty active, and if you've been following me those places, you probably know that things haven't been going so well for me lately.
Really, things haven't been going so hot for the last several years, but these last two have been the real kicker, and the last few months in particular have me looking at declaring bankruptcy (this is something I'm already receiving some help with, and not the reason for my making this post).
A lot of people are curious what's been going on. I'm sort of a private person to begin with, so getting into personal finances for the world to see isn't really my style, but at this point the situation is bad enough that it's basically overtaken my life, and since it's impossible for me to ignore it's kind of impossible to keep it bleeding through into my day-to-day. So I guess it's better for folks to know what's going on than be in the dark, wondering.
Anyway, long story short, my day job never paid all that great; I made it by, paycheck to paycheck, but that was all I was ever able to muster. I had some debt that still followed me around from earlier in life, but it was all manageable. Had a great credit score, if nothing else. Anyway, then I got laid off, which I sort of saw as a blessing in disguise.
I spent a year collecting unemployment while looking for work in my career path, which was mostly enough to get by on, but not enough to put any savings away. Eventually, an old business contact of mine got me into freelance translating, which paid more money than I'd ever seen in my life by quite a bit.
Anyhow, that initial excitement carried me along for a few months, but then one of my big clients went bankrupt and so a lot of work dried up. I was able to find more, naturally, but breaking equilibrium when you work freelance is really rough. Without getting into too much detail, most of the time, you don't get paid for a job until at least a month after it's done. So if I start a job in early July, and that job goes two months, I probably don't see money until October.
Now, when October DOES roll around, I see a LOT of money, but the issue then is what to do if I get that job in early July and don't have money already: I've got three months before I'm likely to see any money, even though I know it's on the way. Suffice it to say, this meant borrowing a lot of money from friends in order to get through those 'gaps' whenever work would dry up from time to time (which, sadly, it did).
(People would ask me, at the time, why I didn't work part-time in the meantime to have cash on hand, to which I can assure you all that I wouldn't have had time given all of the other work I was doing.)
Anyway, not an ideal situation by any stretch. I was lucky enough to have some friends who could support me during the drier periods, and some of them are unlucky enough that, due to circumstances more recently, I haven't been able to do that yet, and that's what brings me to the nail in the coffin.
After several straight years of pulling far less work than expected in translation, I finally landed a major and very exciting gig. Career-wise, I'd never seen anything like it, and anyone in my shoes or even standing on the sidelines would've seen it for the amazing opportunity it was. This was the big break I'd been waiting for.
Except it didn't work out that way. After eight solid months of work, I wound up seeing just over two weeks' of pay. Those of you with office jobs or the like, imagine what working for over seven months straight without getting paid would be like for your financial situation. Now imagine that you're planning on getting that seven months at the very end anyway, but then at the last minute everything goes, "Wait, no, you actually don't get anything." That's essentially what happened to me.
(Some of you who know me personally might know what opportunity I'm talking about here; I am asking you, please, PLEASE do not name names here in the comments. What happened happened. It's no one's fault, I'm not mad at anyone, it was just a business venture that didn't work out as well as all parties involved had hoped. No one's in breach of contract, I'm not owed anything I haven't been paid, etc.)
Anyway, that brings us to now, really. I've spent the last month buried under a mountain of work while what little was left of money has dwindled away. I talk about how I don't have money, and I think people assume I mean "I can't afford to buy nice things or go on vacations," but what I actually mean is, "I haven't paid my medical insurance in months, I'm behind on my rent, and bills beyond that got forgotten about a long time ago."
Being this broke is terrifying. It's terrifying and it's very upsetting. I've been on the line for a few years now, in a near-constant panic about this sort of thing, and now that I'm in the middle of it my emotional ability to cope with it is almost completely gone. I get angry and lash out a lot; I feel beyond helpless because none of my attempts to fix the situation have worked (and, in fact, things have just gotten perpetually worse). And of course since people see me upset and don't know what's going on behind the scenes, they (perhaps rightly) assume that my being upset is the problem, not a symptom.
People tell me to cheer up, that I shouldn't blame myself, that things'll turn around. Well, I don't blame myself, but that doesn't make the reality of eight months of work coming to nothing any less devastating, either emotionally or financially, and simply keeping my chin up and hoping for the best doesn't change the fact that I'm behind on the basic expenses for things that keep me alive and with a roof over my head while having no real solid idea when I'll see money again (I'm booked through with work until February and have multiple outstanding invoices, but money several months in the future does me no good when I still need money several months in the past). And this isn't meant to be critical of anyone legitimately trying to be encouraging; I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from and why the encouragement doesn't really work so well.
I'm not here to panhandle or to ask to borrow money; declaring bankruptcy is my one real option here, and my number one goal right now is to get stable enough to make that happen (god, how fucked up is that?). I just know a lot of people have made the case that people need to know what's going on, so there it is, in perhaps a bit too rambly a form.
(There's a lot more to the story, like being arrested and being treated for a chronic health condition but I tried to focus on the big points. There are a lot of little cuts that added up to make this all so much more complicated than what's here.)
Thanks for listening. And I hope this helps people understand a bit better just why I'm so scared and upset all the time.
tl;dr version: I'm bankrupt now because I was in a bad financial situation and then wound up not getting paid for over seven months of work; maybe it's not a fair situation, but it is what it is
You were willing to do so for me when I desperately needed it. If I can pay it back in any way, please tell me.
Ha, smells like Serbian economy. Some time ago it was usual for workers to wait 3-4 years to get paid (if they get paid at all). To quote Elisabeth Warren: "The game is rigged."
I know that I could say things like, 'it will get better', and 'just hold out for a little longer'. But I know that these wouldn't help, in fact they may do more harm than good, so I won't,
I will say that I understand your position, as I have been there a couple of times, and am nearing it now, if things don't change. I do wish you the best and wish that there was more that I could do.
*HUGS!*