Considering pulling the trigger and filing for bankruptcy. Adding up everything looking at my credit report, I estimate I'm around $13k in debt.
Long story short. Had a good job that paid $60k in Washington State, got laid off from there after working there for four years. While working there, financed a new car and of course credit cards. Young and stupid I guess.
Was out of work for nine months living off my severance until I found another job that was basically a dream come true. New job was $25k/yr - enough to pay the minimum on the bills with maybe $20 left over at the end of a pay period, after working there for seven months, was laid off along with a bunch of my friends thanks to the economy cratering (television station who lost a couple big accounts). After being laid off from there with no severance asides from my last paycheck, basically sold almost everything I owned to keep afloat and pay bills in hopes another station in town would hire me (was on the short list). Didn't get the job, moved back in with my mother and had to stop paying my creditors as embarrassing as I found it - whole honor thing, pay back your bills. Car was repo'ed.
While living back with my mother looking for work, any work over the past year and a half (you'd be surprised how gun-shy employers are at hiring someone who worked for a news station...what are they afraid of, I'll spill their dirty laundry to my old employer?), my mother was forced out of her home due to the landlord deciding to stop paying his mortgage and it went into foreclosure. (the landlord happens to be her ex-husband who took her to the cleaners in the divorce..he basically bullied her into signing a quit-claim deed to the house and in the divorce decree she had to pay rent to stay in the house. He decided he wanted to strategically default so he'd have money to support his new wife's spending habits)
Probably shouldn't have, but I took the tax hit and pulled what little money was in my retirement account and paid to move to Alabama since a relative offered a rental home they owned outright at a price my mother could afford on her wages. It was either that or the two of us living out of her car in a bitterly cold winter.
Seven months later, I'm sitting here with no job prospects since the industry I trained in has an unemployment rate of 20%, no income, no assets to my name asides from my bed, clothes, dresser, a few books, cheap digital camera and a laptop computer to my name and creditors hounding me. Would like to go back to school, but my credit is shot to hell of course.
Quite frankly, just want to get out from under everything and start over.
Long story short. Had a good job that paid $60k in Washington State, got laid off from there after working there for four years. While working there, financed a new car and of course credit cards. Young and stupid I guess.
Was out of work for nine months living off my severance until I found another job that was basically a dream come true. New job was $25k/yr - enough to pay the minimum on the bills with maybe $20 left over at the end of a pay period, after working there for seven months, was laid off along with a bunch of my friends thanks to the economy cratering (television station who lost a couple big accounts). After being laid off from there with no severance asides from my last paycheck, basically sold almost everything I owned to keep afloat and pay bills in hopes another station in town would hire me (was on the short list). Didn't get the job, moved back in with my mother and had to stop paying my creditors as embarrassing as I found it - whole honor thing, pay back your bills. Car was repo'ed.
While living back with my mother looking for work, any work over the past year and a half (you'd be surprised how gun-shy employers are at hiring someone who worked for a news station...what are they afraid of, I'll spill their dirty laundry to my old employer?), my mother was forced out of her home due to the landlord deciding to stop paying his mortgage and it went into foreclosure. (the landlord happens to be her ex-husband who took her to the cleaners in the divorce..he basically bullied her into signing a quit-claim deed to the house and in the divorce decree she had to pay rent to stay in the house. He decided he wanted to strategically default so he'd have money to support his new wife's spending habits)
Probably shouldn't have, but I took the tax hit and pulled what little money was in my retirement account and paid to move to Alabama since a relative offered a rental home they owned outright at a price my mother could afford on her wages. It was either that or the two of us living out of her car in a bitterly cold winter.
Seven months later, I'm sitting here with no job prospects since the industry I trained in has an unemployment rate of 20%, no income, no assets to my name asides from my bed, clothes, dresser, a few books, cheap digital camera and a laptop computer to my name and creditors hounding me. Would like to go back to school, but my credit is shot to hell of course.
Quite frankly, just want to get out from under everything and start over.
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