Satan Claus is Coming to Town 2012! - $1000 Prize!

[TheGreatSatan]

"bump" Seriously I'm the only one that's had a crappy year?

You're still competing with a lot of people over at Bit-Tech.net too

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=237717

[AmEv]

Is it bad that I thought you were giving away 3 identical PCs?

[TLHarrell]

Well, the last few years have not been kind to me financially. We've been bleeding out, money wise. At $20,000 in the hole, we started looking for help, budgeting everywhere possible, and trying to fill in the gaps. We have an annoying living situation... we co-own a duplex with a family member. It's cheaper than renting, but the original intent was this is a starter home (it's barely 1,000sf, 1 bath, 2 bedrooms, lost the home office to the kid, and a new baby on the way in November). Well, we'd like to borrow against the house so we can write off the interest and condense multiple payments into one. Family member basically doesn't want to go with that as it "might affect her financially". We start to bring the bills and payments into line with our budget. Then the big housing bust settles in. I work for a civil engineer. I make good money. If I were to take a similar job elsewhere I'd take a 40% pay cut to start out. Wife isn't working since my son is high functioning autistic, has massive social issues, and can't really be put in daycare. We have no other family support, except for my wife's grandparents who I don't want to impose upon too often. Economy slides so far that at work, billable hours at one point reached such a low that I was paid $22.00 for two weeks. That is with going in every morning to see if there is any work for me and my staff, and to reply to any clients needs. Everything at that point goes onto credit cards. The downward spiral only increases. Here it is a couple years later and we're brushing up against $50,000 in the hole. Can't borrow against the house to consolidate the debt, and to relieve ourselves of the % rate burden and have a chance to pay it off. The latest letter we've received from one of the credit companies basically raised our % rate on our lowest card because we "have too high of a balance". Thank you very much for helping us by ramming your boot down on us.

I've taken several side jobs in the past which would have helped at the time. I'm still owed about $8,500 in total between two of the jobs. Still working on getting paid. If they had paid on completion of the work, I'd have been in a lot better financial situation. Where I'm at now, if they eventually pay me, it'll just disappear in the wind as it won't even take me back to where I was when I should have been paid. Started a home business with some of the money I was paid before... not making it too far with that, but hoping it'll pick up. It's at least making enough money to buy materials and do a few interesting projects. Getting a pretty grim view of my chances at this point of pulling out of this. Just picked up another side job, which thankfully is paying every time I deliver a piece of the project.

My health has declined significantly during all this, making it progressively harder to keep myself going and trying to get ahead. I ended up with Type 2 Diabetes. I'm only now starting to bring that under control. And last October I ended up with Chron's Disease. By the time I was diagnosed and started on treatment, I was barely able to function. I had lost about 40 pounds and was getting arthritis in all of my leg joints, and popping tons of ibuprofen just to stay vertical. Now that I wouldn't wish on a mortal enemy. I'm in treatment now, which is unpleasant. I'm sure the treatments are causing all kinds of other minor glitches I keep feeling in my body. Some days I just go curl up on the couch after work and watch TV... and I hate sitting around watching TV.

I used to play World of Warcraft pretty heavily. Haven't played in about 18 months now. My super expensive rig is not even capable of handling many of today's games. I could really use a new setup, not only for gaming, but for doing CAD work and designing stuff on.

Not real happy with where I've ended up. I work hard, I'm nice to people. I help wherever I can. I just can't seem to get a leg up at this point in my life. I will press on. I can only hope that something will change and I can pull out of this mess.

[msmrx57]

I know the contest is over but just had to add on top of everything else I just got laid off for at least three months.

[TLHarrell]

Too late. But, man I hate it when that happens. Slowdown at work here, I'm hosing a lot of my vacation time trying to keep the paycheck up.