So I’m 36, and after being unemployed for basically two years (long story), I got a job a few months ago. It’s not going great, but pays 65k a year. Now here’s the rub; I’m in the northern Virginia area, where rent starts around $1500 a month. I’ve got about 16k in credit card debt, which obviously isn’t ideal. Because I wound up being late on payments before I could find work, my credit score is also not so good, I think around 520.
I’ve been staying with friends, and was paying them 700 a month, however the wife mentioned they’re thinking they’re ready to have the house back to themselves, so again, I’m likely looking at 1500 on the cheaper end of rent. I have zero savings at this point, though fortunately my car is paid off (probably needs new tires, but trying not to spend money unless absolutely necessary). If I make it to Wednesday this will be the first time since I started that I’ll have actually made it from one paycheck to the next, bank account still in the positive. My take-home pay is about 1800 every two weeks (about to be lower now that I’m adding health insurance), and my credit cards plus a medical bill are running me about 1600 a month (it was running more because I had to make up multiple missed payments as well, but I’m at least current on everything now).
Maybe I’m just being overly negative, but I’m not seeing a lot of hope for my situation. The cheapest “house” within a 2-hour commute of my work that I can find, is a 2bed 1bath townhouse for 250k. I couldn’t even find any vacancies in the mobile home parks in the city I work. I feel like I’m just going to be barely staying afloat, which is about where I was like 3 years ago when I had my own place and decided to move. That’s when my work let me go (president just “didn’t like people being remote”), which put me in this whole mess of not being able to find work so I had to move back.
There doesn’t seem to be anywhere for me to move up in terms of salary, and since I don’t have a college credits, at 36 years old, going back to school doesn’t seem very realistic.
Just kinda feels like I’m fucked, no matter how I look at it. And with my job going poorly, I don’t even feel like that’s stable, either.
I’m just having a hard time. The stress has gotten to the point I pretty much leave work, go to my room and just go to sleep; nobody to hang out with, and not feeling like I can afford to go out anyways. I feel like just giving up, because I’m not seeing a way forward.
original posted by Jcorb to r/personalfinance on Sat, 23 Mar 2024 11:10:00 GMT.