Paying the piper

People that know me know that I despise borrowing money. I'm proud to a fault when it comes to things like that. I'd rather die than beg.

Four years ago I moved into my house that was one of my biggest victories versus the Man™. Let me tell you what happened I left work early on Friday to go put my downpayment. Told my boss and everything he was like it's cool we will see you on Monday. So I go put my money down and I'm living the easy street. Go back to work on Monday about 8:30 at 9:15 I'm at home sending out resumes, laid off. I still have some bitterness about this situation becasue my boss knew they were going to flip me on Friday but, I can't be mad. It's business. Better you than me. I know if the situations were reversed I'd flip him too and wouldn't blink an eye.

Now then if you know how downpayments on houses work once you sign the papers your downpayment is non-refundable. So here I am 2Gs down, with no job, a house being built and I won't be able to close because I have to cash my 401k out to live. Even if I did close I'd only be in the house for 2 days before the power got cut off. If I didn't have that going on I would have packed up my bags ask my girl to move to Atlanta with me and start over at home. But, I'm 2Gs in the hole and like I said I'm no quitter. The kicker about this is that with my old company to get your severance pay you have to sign a non-competition clause. That means you can't work for a competitior of said company for a year. Well this was my first job out of school, what other job experience did I have? Bag Boy?

A loser is me.

Lesson #1 - Intern in college, diversify your knowledge base.

No one wanted to hire me and I got so many rejections I thought I was in the 10 grade again. One of the worst things to me was that when my brother go married I couldn't afford to get he and his wife a wedding gift and I had to borrow 225 dollars from my folks to get back home. How low are you on the totem pole where you can't scrape up 20 ten dollar bills? I have never forgot that feeling it fills me bile just thinking about it today. Well, my girl at the time realized that I was eating myself up inside and she talked to her stepfather about postions at his job. He was a contractor and his company worked for defense contractor so the idea was that I could work for them and then still work in the industry since I wasn't technically working for a competitor the clause was null and void. So I talked to my girl's stepfather and he said he would talk to the President of his company and see if they could use me. Well I had a meeting with the President and the Chief Software Architect and things went well next thing I know I'm getting an offer letter and the job was paying 30% more than what I was earning at my old compmay.

A winner is me.
Lesson #2 - Nepotism and cronism is good, having skills helps a little too I guess.

Well this is about 4 months after I lost my job so I have burned almost all my 401k cash and I have another 2 months to come up with about 10k to close. Well that's not going to happen so I here I am again forced to borrow. I go to my folks hat in hand and ask them for a few grand and they help me out but, I'm still short so after a long talk with my girl she said ask my stepdad he'll help you out. Oh I sat on that for a long time, I hate taking money from people I'm realted to. Taking it from people I'm not is even more pituful.

Well I talk to him and we come up with a budget plan where I can pay him back for the few grand I borrow from him. I mean I work for the same company he does and the company is doing well, I'm going to marry his stepdaughter so it's not like I'm going to skip town and once she gets out of school we will be printing 20s in the garage. So if you allow me to defer paying you till she gets out of school then we will be cool. What could go wrong?

Well a year and a half later? Everything.

The ecomony bottomed out and contractors took the first hit so I'm back on my ass. I was fortunate that I had a friend at my current comapany and I was able to get in there so I wasn't going to be TOO broke but, if you have been following my blog then you know the rest of the story.

A loser is me.
Lesson #3 - NEVER and I mean NEVER base your finacial future on what someone else will do for you. If you can't pull the weight by yourself drop the wagon.

During this entire time I have had nightmares and couldn't sleep at night because my mind was always on paying them off, I have been obsessed with the idea and if I didn't go to sleep with it on my mind, or dream about it, I woke up with it on my mind this has gone on everyday for the past four years, everyday. I mean I would pay them 50 or 100 dollars here or there but, it wasn't near what I owed them. Thank God they understood my situation (well I don't know if they understood it but, they were understanding). I sent them both checks for 1000 dollars last Friday and neither one of them expected to see the money that day. That was the first Friday I didn't dream about owing money to them.