Other than the occasional idea for a business, novel, poem or song I haven’t written a thing for months. Even the ideas I’ve written have just been quick summaries, none have been completed – in fact I’d say by just jotting down a few lines that I haven’t even started. I sincerely want to write more and with the lack of work I’ve had over the last two months I’ve had more than ample time. The issue I have is while I’ve been out of work, with little to no money, I haven’t felt comfortable sitting and writing anything at all when I believe I should only be focusing on getting more work or earning some money. I feel guilty right now writing this out instead of signing up to do twenty or so surveys for a dollar each (76p in the Queen’s).
To give you an idea of our financial plight yesterday we had to shop for two days food and essential supplies (read: toilet paper) with £7. Hot dogs, a loaf of bread, milk, sandwich meat. How depressing. My girlfriend and I scoured the cupboards and freezer two days ago to see what food we could make, the cupboards offered up two knock-off Pot Noodle style ‘meals’, one tin of soup (passed best before date) and a tin of baby carrots. You would think the freezer would be better but due to our fridge-freezer being well overdue retirement most of the food has frozen to the point of being covered in frost or defrosted while the fridge decided to turn off before re-freezing. We threw out most of the food as it was obvious it wasn’t salvageable, but we managed three plates of chips, onion rings, vegetarian sausages and chicken nuggets. That was two days ago, yesterday we had hot dogs and later today we will have beans on toast.
I feel like absolute scum. My girlfriend is seven months pregnant and my step-son is five and a half. While we haven’t gone without, yet we aren’t far off, and both deserve at least more nutritious meals. I’ve managed to borrow £250 from a friend who I just can’t thank enough but this will only cover our upcoming bills and get us some basic food, we also need to buy some school trousers for our little boy as he ripped his most recent pair on the last day of term before Christmas.
I have an interview on Tuesday (in 2 days) for a full-time permanent job driving around different offices repairing and maintaining their hardware – I believe this job would be perfect for me and I’m really hopeful but I have no idea how long it may take for me to hear back from them. Also, I’m expecting a call tomorrow regarding a temporary job which will only last four weeks, but they may ask me to start on Tuesday which means I’d have to either rearrange my interview or tell the temporary job I have start on Wednesday. It feels like I’m constantly between a rock and a hard place and can’t do right by doing wrong. I need the money now so do I prioritise the temp job? But this job ends in four weeks maximum and I really like the sound of the permanent job so do I prioritise that and potentially have a reliable job for the foreseeable future but risk not having money in the immediate short term?
Now I must make it clear that this financial distress didn’t just happen to us, in my eyes I happened to us. I’ve spent stupidly on a couple of occasions when I could have put money aside and I’ve continued to work with someone despite them only being able to offer me work two or three days a week (although these two or three days earnt me more money that most places would give me in a week so I guess this isn’t too bad but the unreliability should have been a red flag – I’m literally awaiting a phone call or text each week to let me know if I’ll be needed the following week).
I’m trying to be positive and think this is the lowest I will allow us to get and I’ll never let us be in this position again, telling myself little motivational titbits like “the good thing about being at rock bottom means you can only go one way” and the like. I’m not sure they’re helping but I’ve got to try and stay positive.
What I want long term is to have multiple income streams so I’m not just relying on one person or one job to pay my bills or put food on the table. The idea is to have a number of money-making websites such as: 5-10 niche sites (possibly with some Google advertising) offering some information and links to buy products (earning me an affiliate fee) a site based solely on affiliate marketing akin to thisiswhyimbroke.com and I have one or two more ideas but I’m not sure how practical they are at the minute. As well as this I’m looking in to a Podcast and a YouTube/Twitch channel but they all feel like dead avenues now; ideas that have already been done and markets that are saturated to the point of collapse. I’ve been looking at flipping items I find locally on eBay to make a profit, fulfilled by Amazon, Shopify and further down the line bringing in some wholesale products from China to sell individually – again I’m unsure of all of this but they are still working for plenty of people so no reason they can’t work for me. I’ve looked in to matched betting too but after the initial offers I’m not sure how sustainable this is mid to long-term. I’ve looked in to coaching too, and long-term this is absolutely something I would love to do; for as messed up as my own life seems to be, I give excellent advice to others and can be a great motivator to them despite my own issues with self-motivation. Right now I don’t think like coaching is viable.
Again, my frustration lies with the fact it seems I need time, energy and money to do any of these things. When I’m out of work I have time but no money, and with no savings I feel depressed and a failure meaning less energy. When I’m working full-time I have a little spare money and some energy but much less time. Working with the guy I’ve been working with means more time but very little energy (it’s a hard labour job) but I do have more money. Last year I spent six months working away too, very little time and energy but I was earning good money – not sure where it all went to be honest though I guess we did move house in that time and I got a much-needed new car.
Right now I must focus on the short term and that is to start bringing money in as soon as possible. The most obvious option is a job, preferably an immediate start one, then when the ship is steadied I can start looking at step number two. I have roughly ten weeks until my daughter is born so chances are step two will have to wait until after that. In ten weeks I can earn around £2500, minus bills and what we still need to buy for the baby, even if we live frugally, there won’t be much left in there to invest. It bums me out that there is nobody actually reading this blog post because I’d love to ask for some advice on things I could do to make some money quickly (maybe I’ll try reddit) but I guess this has been good to vent and maybe somebody down the line will read this and find some solace in it. It should serve as a great motivator to me too when I have a rough time in the future, or I need to look back at how far I’ve come.