Getting a bit scared.

[Erenoth02]

I know exactly how you feel, I am starting college here, working minimum wage and...lol living with my parents, I am currently 28 and I have no idea how I can make it out in the world. Currently Im studying at a Community College, and the economy is not looking to be very forgiving, my parents are strapped for cash, because they felt the need to adopt and now have 3 little boys that I often baby sit, my sister is a successful doctor and plays the cello and piano amazingly.

Im feeling the pressure to start my life, however with my parents help I'm currently paying off a lot of medical bills. Im also feeling lost watching all of my friends enjoy married life and I myself have no interest from females my age, while I want kids, so far there are no women out there who want a 28 year old guy like me.

The reason I fell into this boat was the corruption in the medical fields, doctors would rather prescribe you pills than find the root of your problems, I used to have over 20 bottles of different medications and now I take no medications at all, I spent 20 years moving from hospital to hospital trying to find out what was wrong with me, just last year I was admitted into a recovery institute in california, and the funny thing is they discovered that I'm allergic to eggs milk and sugar, very allergic.

I know how you feel sometimes life can terrify you, for me it took staring death in the face, I was honestly hoping to die back then, and now I have lost all of my fears for the most part. Im constantly pushing forward, sometimes it takes facing your demons to really get yourself set in life.

Now I'm happy, taking heavy class loads in college, working and if I ever get some free time I enjoy trying wild things. Just keep pushing forward.

[LRH]

Wow...once again thanks for the inspiration! I'm pretty humbled by everyone's stories, my life seems almost really easy by comparison.

Also- unless I'm mistaken my debit card doesn't cost anything to use. I have a savings account and checking account. Currently I'm putting about 80% of my paycheck into savings during them summer while I can, and the other 20% goes into checking for gas money and any other small expenses that need covering this summer.

[InCreator]

* Best advice given so far: learn to cook! I read that you can do this already, so you have one of strongest bases covered.

It's unbelievable how much you can save by cooking your own meal, because you can eat leftovers next day and although cost of setting up good amount of ingredients (from flour to sugar to eggs, etc), it'll pay off later as you get loads of variety for same amount of money you'd spend on instant noodles and food is actually more nutritious and tasty.

When not cooking food, look what you buy. Or more specific, look for calories and minerals. Instant noodles might be cheap, but nutritional value is almost nonexistent, and filled-feeling is best you get out of it.

* Jobs. Walking past that big newspaper/publishing/IT firm office building every day? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you simply march in and say "hello, I'm young, honest and hard-working, good with computers and this and that, do you have something for me to do?". Even if they hire you as something insignificant, such as courier, you can befriend co-workers and pick up a better paid trade.

3 of my jobs started like this. Not by an ad, employment office or website, just trying.
Because... what did I have to lose? "No" then "no". It's not like it makes me poorer. And now I have a career in something I initially had no prior idea about and zero qualification/papers to show, but became quite an expert after 3 years.

This works better with big companies where's always an extra worker in need. Infact, even if you land on a position that's also advertised as opening, you have an advantage to be physically THERE JUST WHEN NEEDED and saving boss from going through hundreds of CVs and resumés thus nullifying all the recommendations/education/experience others have if you'd send CV and wait just like others. Believe me, this shit works better than you might think. Just try.

For example, my first job, at a transportation firm:
My ex-girlfriend, while she was studying, had a summer practice at one of the offices and me, being unemployed and nothing better to do anyway, always went there at the end of the day to go home together. One day, I asked her boss for something to do and... ended up in same profession, full-time, that my GF was studying/practicing... only that she had to study 3 more years to acquire papers to do same damn thing I ended up on just by asking with no papers whatsoever... god she was pissed

[moshboy]

I can't say I've ever been in your situation (I'm lower middle class I suppose) but I do know how to tightly budget my money, which is something I had to teach myself how to do, after years of frittering away my wage on unnecessary things from week to week. Fortunately I'm in the position where I can work longer hours to get some overtime if I need to, I can walk to work to save on petrol money, I can do SOME shopping at cheaper shops when required, buy the cheapest brands of food (if it doesn't taste like crap) and manage to bank some cash each week.

I know some of it doesn't really apply to your situation though.

[straydogstrut]

While at uni, I did all my own shopping and avoided name brands. I don't have any vices and i've never been interested in fashion so my non-essential spending mostly went on games which I could pick up cheap second hand. Also I can't drive which helped because I could only buy what I could carry. I wasn't very adventurous with food though: I just bought cheap pasta mostly. I don't like cooking at all.

Luckily I shared a flat with the nicest Chinese people i've ever met who helped spread the cost of food and kept me very well fed. It was natural to them to cook as a group and share food equally. As someone who doesn't like owing people anything this made me uncomfortable at first, but it all evened out.

Now i've left uni, i'm working and i'm living with my partner's family which is a lot cheaper than it would be if we were renting elsewhere. This is the time when I should be saving the most but actually i'm doing everything wrong:

1) I regularly buy sandwiches from the sandwich shop across from my work rather than buying a loaf bread and doing my own
2) Although i'm happy with instant coffee, whenever we go out Liz and I usually end up in Starbucks
3) I either take more money out the cash machine than I need to or if I don't have enough cash I use my card rather than doing without.
4) I shop online for almost everything. It's cheaper than high street stores but I buy lots of cheap purchases so it all adds up. I adore software and tend to impulse buy new indie titles and gorgeous Mac apps all the time.
5) I don't actually buy a lot for myself. Certainly nothing expensive. Instead it makes me very happy to buy things for other people. I'm not very sensible about this though and always tend to overspend.

We're now thinking about holidays so we need to start saving for that. There's also the little matter of saving up a deposit for a flat. We have no savings at all right now, having both burnt through them at uni. I have no commercial debts though and Liz only has a few storecards that we're paying off. Our student loans are still hanging over us but we're paying those back with the minimum payments for the time being.

Your situation sounds frightening, but it can only get better. Sounds like you're a lot more sensible than I am. For all my talk about saving money, I manage to easily fritter it away!

EDIT: Ha! Another impulse buy: your mate's song. Good stuff=)

[Dualnames]

Here's an impossible story. And this happened just this semester to me. All my friends graduated faster than i did, and i had 10 classes to go, 2 of them being maths. And well, I'm gonna admit that I wasn't good at maths. More like bad, really bad. So I decided to frequent classes, and every day i was a bit nostalgic and sad, cause again all the people i met at uni, were in the army, anyhoo, it was a very sad period for me, and I was saving up money from tickets to be able to go out on weekends. So i was broke and kind of lost. And then january came. And i decided to study maths. We're talking about 2 classes that nobody ever passed on the same semester and most of the people who don't know maths, like i was, bring a teacher to cheat. And so i studied maths during the holidays, and some income helped me going out in the night and studying in the morning, and on February 14 when the results were out, I passed em both. I couldn't solve a single equation and i ended up solving triple integrations, so if i can do that, that has to mean something.

[InCreator]

Another tip I wanted to add about getting a better job:

Lie!
Let's say you're trying to get a position at newspaper. Boss is almost at the point in hiring you but you don't have any experience and things are going south, getting this "weeeellll..." attitude.

Instantly make up a story about your uncle who manages a small newspaper in some other state and how you unofficially worked for him during summers or something. This is a story that's hard to check, doesn't guarantee that you have alot of experience and might hit the final nail. So you'd be adding a bit of hope, but no promises to your resume.

Afterwards, just fake it till you make it. Truth is, nobody who graduates, doesn't know squat really. Sure, you might become a doctor via school but for example, you cannot learn to become a salesman or something like this. You graduate, get a job and understand that school gave you only a tiniest base and idea what's ahead and most of the learning actually comes from real work.

That's why experience outweighs papers heavily in almost every profession at job market.