Long story, but I'm 31. I used to be a highly successful internet entrepreneur starting from high school. By the time I was in my late teens and early 20s, I sold a couple online businesses for a huge sum of money. I kept going with this and the money kept coming in. The problem stems from my addictive personality and emotionally abusive childhood (alcoholic dad and borderline mom). Lets just say I spent money like crazy as a coping mechanism. I was young, stupid, and living in a "I might die tomorrow" mentality. $100k cars, renting expensive condos, multiple Rolex watches, I had it all. I would buy stuff or expensive vacations and not even think about it. At my peak I had around $600k in cash. I had a Platinum AMEX with a near $100k credit limit. Essentially, I started spending more than I started taking in over the course of almost a decade. I started earning less and less, while still maintaining my lifestyle.
About 3 years ago I was in a relationship I wasn't happy with, running an ecommerce business, and I injured my back (herniated disc with pinched sciatic nerve) so badly that I couldn't even get out of bed to manage my business and ship orders out. I was in unfathomable pain. I was prescribed painkillers. I've never been into drugs or alcohol but I felt amazing on those and they allowed me to continue working. Eventually I got addicted and kept taking more and more to self-medicate for my unhappiness. While addicted, my spending further spiraled out of control since I was pretty much feeling "high" all the time.
Broke up with my ex, and sold my business, and got on Suboxone (which is an opioid medication to prevent withdrawals since I couldn't get off painkillers without being bedridden for months).
My business sale provided me with around $150k. It saved me since I started running out of money near that time. But after paying taxes, paying off some inventory loans, and taking a year off working after and paying expensive rent and bills (which was my biggest mistake). It dwindled quickly. I tried day trading in that time (something I've spent many years doing but never mastered) and pretty much broke even. It was a mistake trying to rely on that for income.
Fast forward a year, I poured a ton of money into another business attempt and it completely failed. During this time I racked up more debt to support myself. I sold every valuable asset I had. Fast forward to today, I have around $45k worth of credit card debt. I owe around $15k-$20k in back taxes. And my bank account balance is currently -$1,500 after being dinged by last month's rent and my portion of the bills. A year ago I stopped all personal spending except for bills and trying to pay off any debt I could.
My saving grace is I met an amazing girl a little over a year ago, and we currently live together and split the rent. She knows about my financial troubles when I told her I ran out of cash several months ago. I've been trying to do freelance web dev work but it doesn't pay well. I have no degree but a decent resume because of my prior businesses and a lot of accumulated skills. I've been rapidly applying to jobs but the processes are taking months. I found a good remote job, passed the interview and test, but they are slow in providing me with a decision. Been waiting for 2 weeks now.
My girlfriend had a great job, earns good money, but I don't want her to bail me out or help me out. I got in this mess myself.
But I'm broke, my credit is totally destroyed that I can't qualify for anything, and in huge debt. Collectors are calling me every single day but I have no money to offer them. I'm embarrassed with my girlfriend about this.
I'm just not sure what to do. Even if I do land this full time job, it pays around $60k/year, it seems like I won't be able to get out of this hole. I can't lie that I have thought about suicide as a way out, but haven't seriously considered it. I just feel so trapped from my own stupidity and irresponsibility when I was young. It weighs on me heavily each day that I don't want to wake up or get out of bed. It feels like I've aged 10 years in the past couple years, and looks like it too.
Submitted October 26, 2019 at 04:10PM by PB19885 https://ift.tt/31MshOj
