| I've been in your situation many, many times I'm afraid. Comes from having poor money management skills, highly narrowcast career expectations, as well as an exaggerated sense of modesty bordering on The Imposter Syndrome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome But my story is a different topic. Some quick advice: (1) You already know you're headed towards a brick wall. The most sensible thing you can do at the moment is to soften the blow, and buy yourself time. Really, every $50 or $100 is critical here... so if at all possible, pare down your lifestyle to the barest essentials. An apartment lease (in SF!) is probably the easiest to dispose of, and will net you the most cash, especially if, say, you have friends in the East Bay (or practically anywhere else besides the city and its immediate suburbs) that you can talk into letting you move in without a deposit. Plus you'll get your security back. That change alone might help you coast until Dec or Jan. (2) after that, you need to put yourself on an austerity budget, i.e. you should be able to get by on $5 a day or less on food from grocery stores, +perhaps $2.50 a day if you must use coffeeshops for wifi. If you can avoid using public transit save for special trips, that's a huge plus. (3) -DRASTICALLY- lower your expectations for you next job. Customer support, friggen PHP dev... whatever it takes. If you don't get tech work, just work at a Trader Joes, do delivery work, ANYTHING. Bottom line is it's VERY important to get out of the idea that you have to borrow money from people unless you're truly, seriously on the edge... which it sounds like you aren't6 yet, not by a longshot. (4) finally -- you're in yout 20s (sounds like).. you're touhgh, you can take anything. forget about what other people think and their so-called "success" stories. just concentrate on you'r own story for now. Trust me, when you pull yourself out of this (and you will) you'll have a lot to be proud of + to look back on yourself positively for. |
(1) Get a starbucks card and use it until you earn the gold card. This gives you free refills on basic coffee or iced coffee. This means you can work all day on decent wifi with all you can drink coffee. Get a small coffee since you get refills. If you drink fast, get a medium so you don't need to get up as often. Just make sure to tip the baristas occasionally.
(2) Rice and beans. Get a 25lb bag of each. Learn how to cook them. To save time, invest in a large pressure cooker and 1-quart jars. Make beans in bulk and freeze them. When I go into rice & bean austerity mode to save money for stuff, I can get my per meal costs down to about $1. My roommates and other people who have tried them think they are some of the best beans they've tasted. Besides trying many types of beans, also try lentils. To make sure the food doesn't get boring, remember that spices are your friend. Go get cheap spices from a Mexican or Chinese market.
If you want to learn how to make a big batch of beans one day, message me. Just be ready to come over with the kinds of beans you want and about a dozen quart jars. I have a 21-quart industrial pressure cooker. We'll cook up a big batch, which you can take home with you and freeze. Each quart will give you about 4-6 meals when paired with rice. Just send me an email in my profile.