is 'the crunch' affecting you

Been out of a job for over a year now...

  On 6/9/2011 at 1:11 PM, Gary C said:

Gas and electricity bills in the UK are set to rise after Scottish Power led the way with 4%.

 

in august scottish power are raising gas by 19% and lecky by 10%!! i was going to change but everyone will follow anyway. dire straits.

I was looking at my P60's the other day and realised my yearly earnings have been going down over the last 3 years. I've had a thoughtful payrise which means shit because my bonus has slowly been eliminated through no fault of my own and there's nothing I can do about it.

And with that everything I buy goes up in price. It's costing me silly amounts even with a little diesel runaround which I had to get because my Capri was off the scale. I think the only thing that hasn't increased drastically is music

Ahhh the life of a city banker.

I'm having to move out of my apartment at the end of the month into something that's cheaper. We lucked out after a full day of looking yesterday and actually found a nice old house that is less rent with more space, new floors, renovated kitchen, etc.

Lynch is a master of those intense and disturbing moments that come out of nowhere. As I said in some other random thread, I sat down and watched it all of the way through for the first time in awhile recently. It's weird how his newer movies start to make sense in a way after repeated viewings, like your brain is slowly absorbing and sorting it out unconsciously.

  On 7/2/2010 at 7:28 PM, asymmetrical head said:

if i stayed in florida at the job i had there. things would've been cool since other plants closed down and they've been getting a lot of work.

 

but since i moved back to cali, things been nothing but downhill... took a huge pay cut in november which is now making us move into a less expensive place. my motivation has been challenged, i've been in and out of depression. still have a job, but way not happy. been looking for another job but there isn't much. i do freelance but not enough to cover what pay i lost from my job.

 

it's hard to stay positive... especially where i work. everyone at work sees that i'm not happy and don't approach me like they used to. but that's ok. i guess i'm feeling under appreciated there. i do a lot and know everyone's roll but my boss doesn't care about that... he basically sees me as a "utility man" instead of a "major player"... but he picks favorites and no matter what their work ethic is, he'll back them up leaving the hard workers in the shit.

 

moving back to california was a mistake really. but i need to snap out of my depression and make something of it. i've been pretty depressed in the last month especially and i'm trying not to show it at home in front of the kids.

Things has changed since I posted this. I no longer work at that shit hole because we moved like +90 miles away from L.A. Was looking for work, got a few interviews and I turned down 2 jobs. Basically, being unemployed has made me the happiest I've been since we left Florida. Unemployed since December 27, 2010. the day before my birthday.

you get UI benefits asymm?

i just started an awesome job at the college i studied at. i was hoping i'd get in there because the work is easy, people are nice, i get to play with toys and the pay is acceptable. i've been working a shit job at a shit company for shit pay since sept and i'm glad to be back. i never would have gotten this job if i didn't put in nearly 4 years as a student employee though. it's just nice cause i put all my eggs in this basket and it seems to have paid off :D

Yeah. I do some freelance Graphic Design as well. But not as much as I'd like to.

don't you have to get canned at your job to get UI?

if i knew you could just move away and get ui i would have done that last year lol

  On 6/9/2011 at 9:34 PM, theSun said:

don't you have to get canned at your job to get UI?

 

if i knew you could just move away and get ui i would have done that last year lol

I stayed for a couple weeks more and my boss laid me off because he didn't like my commuting schedule. Plus things got really slow around the time I left. It still hasn't picked up either. One of my good friends still works there and he's trying to do stuff on the side because he senses that place won't be around for long.

  On 6/9/2011 at 8:44 PM, asymmetrical head said:

  On 7/2/2010 at 7:28 PM, asymmetrical head said:

if i stayed in florida at the job i had there. things would've been cool since other plants closed down and they've been getting a lot of work.

 

but since i moved back to cali, things been nothing but downhill... took a huge pay cut in november which is now making us move into a less expensive place. my motivation has been challenged, i've been in and out of depression. still have a job, but way not happy. been looking for another job but there isn't much. i do freelance but not enough to cover what pay i lost from my job.

 

it's hard to stay positive... especially where i work. everyone at work sees that i'm not happy and don't approach me like they used to. but that's ok. i guess i'm feeling under appreciated there. i do a lot and know everyone's roll but my boss doesn't care about that... he basically sees me as a "utility man" instead of a "major player"... but he picks favorites and no matter what their work ethic is, he'll back them up leaving the hard workers in the shit.

 

moving back to california was a mistake really. but i need to snap out of my depression and make something of it. i've been pretty depressed in the last month especially and i'm trying not to show it at home in front of the kids.

 

Things has changed since I posted this. I no longer work at that shit hole because we moved like +90 miles away from L.A. Was looking for work, got a few interviews and I turned down 2 jobs. Basically, being unemployed has made me the happiest I've been since we left Florida. Unemployed since December 27, 2010. the day before my birthday.

shit like this makes me fear for my future. when skilled people cant find a job...and they are overqualified to get some money working as a janitor.

its funny to remember the whole "go to college and work hard and youll make it" seems less and less true as time goes on.

i think my girlfriend and i have seriously lucked out more than we'd ever know—we both have fulltime jobs in nyc after roughly a year of freelancing. that being said, though, as freelancers (from fall 2009 to fall 2010), we were never SERIOUSLY struggling for work. maybe it's the city? our admittedly low hourly/dayrates?

nyc scares me.

maybe its because i know a friend who works for the UN, gets paid very very handsomely, and yet lives in a 20 sq.ft. cube.

then he lives in manhattan, when he shouldn't. a friend of my girlfriend's is getting a place with her boyfriend—they're dropping something like $1900 or $2000 a month for a 1BR, which i'm guessing isn't huge. it's just really tricky finding an affordable place in manhattan.

but then again, i have a glorified basement studio for $1000/month in pre-gentrified (occasionally violent) brooklyn. so yeah, might just be a new york thing.

i need to make a trip up to nyc sometime again then.

i always like meeting up with a knowledgeable friend of the areas and show me what is being rebuilt/gentrified, why, when, etc.

sounds like you are on your way then

honestly im doing alright now, once i get the book published ill be able to pay off almost a third of my student loans and have a month or two of rent money.

its when i graduate im worried about....ive been told so many nightmarish stories about not being able to get a job above min. wage unless you are a harvard grad

I keep feeling like bullets are wizzing past my head. I'm still employed, but recently our company laid off 400 engineers including people in my group and people I've known since I was hired.

  On 1/26/2009 at 4:17 PM, Charles Nelson Reilly said:

not affected right now because i am right in the middle of a 2-year post-doc job at a govt lab. however, i am going to have to start to look for jobs this summer so we'll see what it is like then.

 

plus after i get a job i am going to want to buy a house in the near future too so i dunno how thats all going to work out. fortunately my credit is good so that is probably going to help out a little.

post-doc got extended for 9 months thanks to the ARRA (thanks, govt), and applied to tons of jobs with only one phone interview (didn't get the job). ended up taking another post-doc (but this time in industry, which pays much better) hoping the climate would get better. the industrial experience coupled with the govt lab experience must have given me a leg up because i was able to get 4 phone interviews, two on-sites, and two simultaneous offers. ended up in a bidding war, so i wound up getting more $$$ and being able to choose the better place of the two!

SR4, i dunno what field you're in, but in engineering i would not have gone for a phd if i had to do it over again. there are many more phds nowadays and the same (small) number of positions. masters degrees make you much more employable and not "overqualified" for most of the jobs out there. may be a different story in other disciplines

its history more or less....so its either a professorship (not likely), or an archival job...which at least i think are usually slept on by most people. i can live with being in a basement by myself 40 hours a week.

i am going to school at the university of vermont tuition-free.

:emotawesomepm9:

  On 6/10/2011 at 6:45 AM, Ricky Downtown said:

i am going to school at the university of vermont tuition-free.

:emotawesomepm9:

no strings attached?

i mean, i got a tuition waiver but that was in exchange for working at an assistantship...rent still required some student loans.

I've been fortunate to hold onto my job through all of this economic mess. Admittedly I probably make half what I should be making, but I also have a good benefits package and a retirement/investment plan. In addition, I live in a city that has a very low cost of living, so I do okay. My freelance jobs have pretty much dried up but I'm hoping to redouble my efforts and get that kick started again soon.

I sensed this mess coming on and completely changed fields: education to nursing just b4 was getting trendy. I'm unionized and my job ain't going nowhere. The scary thing is thtat I got it just under the wire--they've stopped hiring new grads and now, nurses with tons more experience and degrees can't get my job. I'm feeling lucky and I ain't budging...

i think we in uni will all soon learn the valuable lesson that dealing cocaine and heroin is a far better life choice than getting an education.

with the scarcity of jobs at the moment, i think higher education is a "just right" sort of thing. if you have a bachelor's degree, you're stuck in the pool with a million others. if you get a phd, you're overqualified for 95% of the jobs that are actually out there (i can only speak to engineering / sciences). my advice would be to talk to people (and their bosses) who are already in the positions you would want when you finish school and see what they recommend.

i'm going to be in school for as long as possible so i don't have to work.