My Story

Up until the end of September 2008 I had a good paying job as an electronics technician at a biomedical company. Great wages, health insurance, dental insurance, paid vacations and plenty of overtime. All my bills were paid every month. Rent, auto insurance, car payment, phone bill, laptop payment, child support were all afforded and I still had money to live. I even had money left over every paycheck to buy nice things that I wanted. Money left over to spend on hobbies like my auto tuning hobby I'm writing about in one of my other blogs (You can find a link to that blog in the sidebar if you want to read about it.) On September 24th 2008 I lost my job. I was overwhelmed by stress the moment it happened. "How am I going to pay my rent?" "How am I going to live?" These are just a couple of the thoughts that were going through my head. I called unemployment the day I lost the job and filed a claim. Because so many people are unemployed and unemployment is so backed up, they told me it would take 5 weeks from the day I filed the initial claim to the time I was able to start getting checks. So for 5 weeks I have to borrow money to pay rent. I started looking online and applying to numerous jobs. I even had a couple interviews within the first week of unemployment but didn't get the jobs. Then life got even worse. My car was badly vandalized. All of the windows broken out. To add insult to injury I didn't have comprehensive coverage with my auto insurance and I could in no way afford $2000 worth of windows for my car. So I had no transportation to look for work or get back and forth to a job if I found one. When I finally started getting weekly checks 5 weeks later, again stress and depression hit me. The checks are $164 a week! This was barely enough to pay my share of the rent! I looked local for work, within walking distance applying for jobs I would have worked at while I was in high school. I finally found a job at a hardware store in November. It was only part time and the hourly wages were half as much as the wages at my last job. No health insurance, no dental coverage, no benefits at all but considering my situation I had no choice but to take it. I am still at that job because of the transportation issue. I can't even afford my child support and that upsets me deeply but the truth of the matter is if I paid it I would in no way be able to afford my rent and would literally be homeless. Well, luckily I had gotten myself 2 side jobs and was able to buy a car for a few hundred dollars because it needed to be fixed and I have the ability to fix it myself. As soon as I can afford the car insurance down payment and registration fees I will be looking for a new job but because of the economic status I am very worried about this. Will I be able to find a job? If I do how long will it take? With what I make at my current job I won't be able to afford the monthly car insurance bill on top of my rent so I need to find a job quickly but will I be able to? When will the economy get better? Will it get better? This country really took a turn for the worst under the Bush Administration. I have some hope for the future but in all reality I don't know if hope is enough. Optimism has never been one of my strong points but one thing I do know is I can't give up hope all together. I have to keep pushing, keep trying for something better. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Please look for my next post, What to do and Hope for the Future.