Monday, October 8, 2007

What to do when up is the only way to go

What good does it do to talk about how to buy a $200K+ house when you’re making $7 an hour? Not much.
Great question, eh? I'd started following Trent's Simple Dollar blog and found it to be a simple, sensible place to get financial advice and inspiration. If some of the blog's posts didn't seem particularly appropriate for me I ignored them and went on to topics that seemed closer to what I needed.

Then I saw the post linked in the first paragraph of this entry.

I felt like someone had hit me over the head with a club.

I don't make minimum wage, but I'm not making much more than minimum wage. In two days I'm going to be 48 years old. In the last five years I have lived through losing my job, my marriage, my home and suffered the consequences of a lifetime of making poor financial and lifestyle decisions. My financial choices right now are about simple survival.

I'm in the same position as Trent's commentor, Minimum Wage, but I think there is a way out and this is what this blog is about -- fighting up from the bottom. How did I get here and how can I get out? What can I do to help others get out as well?

4 comments:

Matthew said...

I hope you keep this place up, my wife and I are low wage workers. I Make eight dollars an hour at an eye glasses laboratory. My wife is working part-time so we can meet expenses. Because of this we've lost all our welfare benefits (just over the poverty limit now) and are now not doing as well as we thought we'd be able to be. If you're ever looking for others to contribute look me up.

mapgirl said...

There seems to be a real need for a minimum wage blogger. Keep it real. Tell it like it is. This could be interesting.

And get some Google AdSense as up fer pete's sake. Make some money off your intellectual property. You deserve it for the effort of blogging. (But I swear, it's not a lot of money at all.)

John said...

Thanks for the comments. I really hope to keep it real.

plonkee said...

No adsense won't make you a lot of money, but its certainly better than nothing.

I'm looking forward to reading this blog, so I hope you get writing lots.