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Speak to local plumbers or electrician's unions if possible. I think many of these people would be happy to help out a young man looking to make his way in the world. Learn more about what they do, income potential and so on. Listen to their advice, have questions for them.
The men I know in the trades make a very good living. They are not poor by any stretch.
The military is another option you should consider. Figure out which branch of service will best fill your needs and what you might want to learn. A friend's son will be leaving the USMC in about a year. He will be repairing helicopters in the private sector and I can assure you he will not be poor.
This is America, friend. Opportunity awaits for a young man with a strong work ethic and the will to get ahead.
( - and PS...do not get married right now, do not get anyone pregnant - you have a job to do that's far more important: improving your life and being the man YOU want to be )
I feel like no matter what i try to do something destroys my plans for a better life. Ive been in and out college but finances would always destroy my chances. I have another factory job my first job was a 14hr. One but due to pay cuts i was laid off. The other ones an 8hr. it pays the bills but i dont want to live off the government i need to feel accomplished. Im not a sit at home and whine kind of person . I just seem to have the worst luck when trying to get ahead. Right now im trying to learn coding. You know html,java script,etc. Maybe oneday i could be a web developer. I need advice on how to become sucessful . Im 19 and just wanna be proud i made it out of the projects.anyway possible.
Don't bother learning coding unless you're going to school for it. I say this because no matter how good you are at it, no one will hire you without the piece of paper. If someone's supporting you, and I get the impression that that's the case, you have no reason not to go and finish school. If you were poor you wouldn't even have that luxury.
If you can't afford school, don't go. Don't take out a loan. Take whatever job you can, save up now. Pay for school outright if you really want to, or move up in whatever company you find and abandon the school idea.
Coding is going to require attention to detail that the grammar of your post tells me you just don't have, and it's not something school will teach you.
If you want to get out of the projects, don't spend money on **** the people you surround yourself do. You had enough money to buy whatever you're using to access the internet, right? Stop it. Save what you've got.
Don't just go out and look for hard labor. Look for places you can actually advance in. Educate yourself in other ways, make yourself look professional. Being a web developer is ambitious. You have to start small.
Failing all that, invent the next Facebook. Just don't be the "idea guy." Make it work.
edit: Oh yeah, and the post above reminded me and I definitely agree: Absolutely disregard women. Acquire paper. Worry about them after you are completely secure. A baby born today will cost a million dollars if you want to pay for it through college. Would you rather have money deducted from your check when the relationship stops working out, or would you rather have a million dollars over the next 18 years of your life? Worry about women in your 30's.
Hey! You are 19 - you're supposed to be poor - enjoy it! You will be poor forever, no matter what you do. In today's times it is unavoidable.
In your early twenties you will learn how to be "broke" and things get... well... much harder, but hey, that's why I'm telling you, just enjoy it now before it's too late. If you made it out of the projects, the next step you need to take is college. Focus on school FIRST, screw the third world jobs, work and do what you can and go to the community college. Take out the entire freaking $25,000 loan if you have to - that's what it's there for and it works (the federal one.) Only loan for school expenses.
When I was your age, I was beginning my years of taking out $86,000 in student loan debt. I'm en engineer now, but the only time I had any money was when pretended I was middle class. That's actually the key to it dude, middle class people are poor-er than poor people, they just don't act poor. To not be poor, you need to build wealth - two words to get out of poverty - education & mortgage. Repeat it over and over, don't be afraid of the debt, I promise you, the sting goes away and after a while, you realize you're not so poor anymore. Income is useless. Rent is far too expensive. Wages suck. Everything sucks. Get an associate's degree in healthcare, or go get your RadTech cert. Heck, try to get your foot in the door at the hospital cleaning or something. Sometimes the benefits are great. You really need health insurance, else you're under a pretty massive financial risk, some help with tuition, and all around - just better places to work. The only places that aren't a joke in this job market.
Just roll with the punches, take a few of them when you have to, built your credit up (be diligent - you get one shot), get back up quickly when you're knocked down without even thinking about it - you can do that later when you can laugh about it, and always budget out months in advance. Always live below your means, and if you can't, painful sacrifices must be made - then you will graduate to a broke person instead of poor. The security, not the money, is what solves this anxiety, I've learned.
And for god sake, if you lose your job and no one will hire you and you burn through $10k in savings, don't do what I did and refuse to charge up your credit cards for food and waste away for six months. No wonder no one would hire me. 6-foot-1 and 118 pounds. I was so disoriented by the entire situation, I didn't even know I rotted away until I looked in the mirror months alter and took a good look at it. This is where I got my grit to pay these loan payments, but I do not recommend any of it, it was horrific, stressful yet eye-opening and humbling.
Oh, and if you need help, get it. It's there for this, they take $10k/year in taxes from me either way and we are still in financial crisis, the economy still sucks, job market is awful and everything's on fire! That's why it's there - don't be stupid like me, don't do that to yourself no matter how "unworthy" your situation makes you feel. I have spent about $6,000 replacing teeth and dealing with other health problems that were caused by letting the situation punish me. It took two years to get over it, I just turned 26, I had more in the bank when I was 15, but I am worth the most now - I have begun investing in my 401k again (after I had to drain it to live through unemployment), I pay obscene amounts on my debt and I have health insurance, a BS and like everyone else, a job that used to pay twice what I make. But OMG I am freaking BROKE! It's a force that pushes me to explore the new job openings downtown, as the flashbacks that I get from two years ago push me to stay where I can no longer afford to stay. This has been going on for about a year now, that flashback makes me beat my chest now and if I don't find a job that pays about $10/hour more, I'll be "crunched" (not enough coming in / too much has to go out.) Trick of being poor, in these situation, cancel your f***ing auto insurance, it's like the cost of two months of food. That got me through a year and just might have to the next year if I still work at he hospital by then... which I might, I reserve the right to not have to leave now that my boss has worked me in, I know everyone & I don't deal with what I dealt with as an SW Engineer. Essentially, this isn't 2012 anymore, I'm almost 30, I'm 160 pounds again and I just had the surgeon implant the last tooth (like it never even happened - oh my god - I remember when I had a credit card with a $20k limit that could have taken care of this the day it happened - advice to you - keep your credit perfect until/if the moment when you financially collapse, then when it blows up, you'll be too busy dealing with the rest and never will regret it... three times I have attempted to charge my way out of poverty, job losses, pay cuts, etc... I was right at the coming of age right when the economy was at its worst for jobs, and it took many years from my youth, it caused suffering I didn't deserve but I beat myself up with because I was too young to understand and society teaches you that it's your fault. Well I'm here to tell you it's not, the economy has nothing for you and any opportunity would have been a joke 10 years ago, I'm here to reassure you that you will adjust to it as you begin to find stability and after you have that stability, you finally be able to seek out a path and will have the wisdom to know when the slightly better deal the path offers is the one you pounce on. All of this makes our generation's head spin, a study came out of England that studied people my age in England in the US (where the job market/student loans have caused similar damage) and they found widespread anxiety that is permanent because this all as we turned 20, drew itself out over three years and was still kicking as we manage to get up off the floor... that was all my friends and me, I was my boss's first Millennial, she's hired three more now, one is 26 just like me and has "it", the 22 year old is great and, well, let's just say thank god the young one was a summer college intern, because if anyone needs a good four years of crushing reality... he wore our nerves thin, I had to take my vacation days and go to Canada after he left. First paid vacation since I was 19 and it wasn't the stess deflator that the time I skipped my first week of senior classes, flew up to Detroit, parked it at the airport and got on a plane to Arizona, but being honest, after you make it through 4th year engineering school, who cares about that little b**** intern, he won't make it a week, then maybe he'll change... no he won't... most do, most get back up and learn... THIS is why my boss was skeptical about this generation. What. A. Mess.) Last word of advice - don't be all "hard." You know what I mean. Beta-male it. The woman runs the show these days. The men drove companies off the cliff, women are heavily in charge now... don't underestimate the differences in expectation - listen like a tape recorder and when you get real good at it, don't even get all proud, women evaluate everything, she already saw it. I say this as you get into HTML+JS - most my bosses were women, at one point I had four bosses, three of which were women and I had to learn how to deal with it - I had to think a lot more when I responded and pay very close attention, sometimes I'd go waaay outside the box if I got a hunch it would help them out, that's when I've solidified my worth and slowly became indispensable, which in normal economic conditions would usually equal raises. I got my first raise in 5 years last month. It was 13 cents. LOL
Exploring the web path is good. It's not what it used to be, you'll have to put a good five years of practice in and learn a lot of technologies. I did it alongside my degree. It's begun to be incredibly boring, I'm not sure if I need to spice something up or if this is me regretting my career choice. With my degree and experience, I can bounce around MIS, front-end development or straight Software Engineering. Worth all the sleepless nights & cost? Hell no! 3600 hours building that application, and you're not even getting paid for it. Now, you keep doing that until your awesome at it, then come find me and maybe I'll have finally gotten my **** together and have my business opened back up!
You ain't lost, we all are. And the age old American law of jobs remains... pack up and move to the good jobs! ****. Move to Toledo. Chrysler was just saying they're hiring. $16/hour or something. Buildin' Jeepz.
I read that something about a large majority of surveyors are nearing retirement age. Median pay is $56k. It is also a skill that you can take with you all over the world. It does require a 4 yr. degree.
Maybe get CDL and move to Midland/Odessa or the Eagle Ford in Texas and make between 80-100 k a year.Some companies will train you if you agree to work for them for a set amount of time.
I always say I never work, I just do what I love to do and people pay me for it.
That is just crazy talk. People say it all the time and it is wrong, oh so wrong. And so blatantly, obviously, wrong. And it can easily be seen to be wrong, just open your eyes and think about it.
I like to watch kitten videos on the internet. No one pays me for it.
Most young people are into music. It is a passion, either listening to it or creating it. So what should the world look like? Should 90% of the people be musicians?
Imagine a world filled with musicians, basketball players, actors, comedians because everyone followed their passion. Who would be left to be the plumbers, electricians, construction workers, and farmers?
Sure, some people make a living traveling, being in a band, watching kitten videos. They are the lucky ones. Only one in a million rock star wannabes actually become someone like Jay-Z or Justin Timberlake. They are lottery winners but don't realize it. And they will probably give terrible advice to young people like "follow your passion".
They are called hobbies for a reason. They are something you like to do but no one will pay you to do.
It is called work for a reason. It is something that needs to be done and someone will pay you to do it.
Sorry to crush your illusions but it had to be said.
its not how much you make but how you budget your money
I do not agree.
I've been poor, and it doesn't matter how well you budget your dollars, there are baseline expenses that have to be met if you're going to survive independently in the US of A. I don't care how good you are with a dollar, if you're making $15,000 a year (and not living in Mom's basement), saving money is impossible.
Being poor is misery. It's a hard life, and one that I lived for many years.
As Wilkins Micawber said, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."
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With my degree and experience, I can bounce around MIS, front-end development or straight Software Engineering. Worth all the sleepless nights & cost? Hell no! 3600 hours building that application, and you're not even getting paid for it. Now, you keep doing that until your awesome at it, then come find me and maybe I'll have finally gotten my **** together and have my business opened back up!
