Originally Posted by Zeste  Well, here's the deal. My credit rating is already pretty bad. The place I work for as a contractor, they have a hard time making payrole, sometimes being 2-3-4 weeks late with money. So when they can't get money, I can't either. So all my bills go late. This has been happening for a while now. If that business folds, then my business folds, and there's very little chance I'll be able to get the same wage somewhere else, if I can find a job here at all.
I already own a home that I built that is very nice and should regain its equity some day. When I finished it, it cost me 300k and appraised for 400k. The market is destroyed here, and there's been alot of foreclosures in my neighborhood, so the value is way way way down. But that's fine since I don't need to sell it. Point being - I built this house to last me a good 20 years.
I'm not trying to just skip out on the debt and leave the country to live in China, but if/when my cashflow is crippled or stopped entirely, just paying mortgage and electricity will be hard enough.
Just trying to plan for the future, something I was terrible at. I live in what was 2005's "Fastest growing city in america!" and probably one of the hottest "buy it and flip it" real estate boom meccas in the country. Now? The city is fucking dying, businesses are being boarded up, foreclosure homes are at numbers that are some of the highest in the country. The whole city/county is just a glut of unemployed construction and real estate workers, who are no longer able to support the other businesses and places in town, which are just now starting to die off in startling numbers.
So no one really wants a website designer. It's trickling down... first construction workers took a huge hit the last 2 years or so. Then, as that died, local businesses died since the city is basically just a retirement mecca and a place for people to build nice houses. So when businesses and startups died, most of my clients who came me for websites and graphic design died too.
So, essentially, I am just trying to see what will happen when/if my 1 contract I have that supports my family dies out, and I am working at Target in the electronics section for 10 bucks an hour.
Roast me all you want, I feel just as guilty and ashamed as people think I should. I've paid all my debts faithfully all my life, but /shrug, I might as well be a custom home builder right now - it's gonna be a long, long time before my industry is on anything but life support. |
