I guess you missed the post where I indicated no one wants to hire a 57 year old white male. No one even gives me an interview. I do have a part time job. I make about $1500 a month from it. That’s about a $1,000 short of my mortgage payments.
I also posted earlier that I am not looking for sympathy or advice. This exchange is getting way too deep in details. I am simply pointing out that people can find themselves in difficult situations, and getting out of them is not always just a matter of using positive affirmations or buying a self help book.
I might add that governmental policies that favor those who don’t bother to try don’t help much either.
I disagree on the 57 year old male thing. I’m that age and I get offers. But you made the proper point that we “dig ourselves into holes”.
The problem isn’t that you are 57 and having trouble with income. The problem is that you are 57 and you dug yourself into a hole. People do that all the time. Forget the cheese, let me out of the trap.
I have led a boring life but that was by choice. I don’t need any more money. If I did, I know where to get it. My sister is one paycheck from homelessness because of all her “payments”. That is her decision. She has a nicer car and cell phone than I do and she has a nice camping trailer that she can’t even pull with her car. That’s the hole she chose and she doesn’t want to hear about it.
I rarely meet people who say to me “How can I get out of this hole I dug?”. Mostly they ask how they can dig it better or live more comfortably in it.
The most important thing you can do at 57 is convince people like my sister not to dig those holes. Write down every bad decision and why it was bad.
Sidenote: Every day, I beat myself up over how I treated my kids and they tell everyone they had a great childhood. I have to constantly remind myself not to do stupid stuff.
I don't know what you did for a living up to now but if you are able-bodied (and your mind is obviously sharp), there are no doubt some options for you. Depending on where you live, you might want to consider moving to an area where there is more opportunity.
I'm close to your age and I recently moved to the NYC area, which I never saw myself doing when I was younger. But I want to be where the opportunities are, just in case I do lose my primary job.
You might want to look into "crowdsourcing", especially if you have a skill set that would be of value to start-up companies that are not looking to add to their payroll. These are basically "project-based" jobs that go out on the Internet and you sign up for them.
Good example is that my wife was a COBOL programmer for many years and also has experience with other computer languages. On the various crowdsourcing sites, guess what, there are various projects out there that she can work on from our home. She either bids for the whole job or for a piece of it and gets paid accordingly. It's not steady work but it can be lucrative work.
The potential for crowdsourcing is limitless. Uber is a perfect example of crowdsourcing. Somebody needs a ride from here to there and you fill that need for a fee. That's another reason to live in a bigger city. Tons of opportunities to make money just driving your car.
There is a new start-up that is doing the same thing with package delivery. Let's say you have a commute from Stamford, CT to White Plains, NY. You drive that route every morning. Now, you will be able to ferry packages back and forth to those destinations. On your way to work, you might deliver one or two packages. On the way home, you might deliver 2-3 packages. You get paid $4 a package or about $20 a day. Now you just got paid for your gas and then some.
What I'm saying is that there are huge opportunities out there to earn income. The traditional "job" as we know it is going away.