Debt Craziness - Really Worried :(

ILW

How did the business fail due to cash flow problems?
It appears it was a one man setup, with little overhead.

TakingControl

I really hate to burst a bubble but I think you might be a little over confident in what you can get banks/lenders to do and about getting a £40K job in London (where £40K is really not a lot).

Personally (and I also work in IT), if I would get your CV, by the sounds of it, I would be most likely impressed with your skill set but I wouldn't employ you at a £40K mark at your age. Just because you started 'coding' at the age of 12, that doesn't mean you have 6 years work experience. You have 6 years experience coding but no qualifications which would make me wonder why? You said you live in the US for 2 years, I assume you mean you lived with your parents for 2 years in the US? I would be very impressed if any employer would take this as a 'you lived and worked in the US' for 2 years at the age of 16. I guess you can see where I am going with this?

Now, you said you did contract work for a online shop? I would say going rate would be say £150-£200 a day if you are really good? Yet you have no income, no savings but debt, no property and the 'new car date 2014' won't be happening as with no income and adverse credit files, they won't renew your PCP.

Take this £28K west country job, live frugal and pay the debts back ASAP, save up for your final balloon payment for the car and save for the move to London whilst maybe getting some qualifications and 12 months experience.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but the above would be all I would be expecting answers if you were sitting in front of me.

DCFC79

What makes you worth an employer paying 40k for ?

A tea and coffee maker maybe ?

EmmaHerts

I had friends who made good money coding and running websites when they were teens. In the OP's other thread, many people thought he was lying. It's nice to see more respectful people in this thread.

OP- don't move to London until you pay off your debts and have a little bit of savings behind you. Perhaps plan to make your move when you are 20?

CKhalvashi

DeltaWing wrote: »

I'm worried about your insistence that you're going to land a £40k+ job. Ignore what the recruiter tells you; it's their job to lie - to you, and to the companies they're recruiting for. All they care about is getting their commission.

I work in IT (development manager for a FTSE100) and whilst £40k+ jobs are plentiful, I certainly wouldn't offer an 18-year old kid one. I might put them in the role, but it'd be at £20k-£23k max. I don't care how good your programming skills are; without a minimum of 2-3 years in an ITIL environment, plus qualifications, plus experience, you're just not worth it. Having said that, I'm assuming you're talking about desktop programming - if you're talking about web/mobile applications, probably for a smaller design studio, then you can probably ignore the ITIL requirements - but the competition in that sector is even more fierce (it seems every uni student thinks they're the next Zuck these days). Working with Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc is no big deal - I haven't seen a CV lately from anyone who hasn't; the fact you're not still there suggests they didn't think you were worth holding on to.

A letter offering you a job, even at 40k, is unlikely to wow your bank - offers can be withdrawn, and there's every chance you wouldn't last the probation.

Rather than trying to focus on moving to London, perhaps you could look at contracting? It's an excellent way to get a lot of experience quickly, and a few years of contracting with a Microsoft Gold Partner, for example, will give you an edge should you decide to go permy. You'll still need to get your qualifications, though - we don't much care about what degree you've got, but if you're not an MCP or similar then you're going to get binned at a lot of first rounds (your CV will probably get seen by HR first, and if they don't see any quals, they'll put you in the round filing cabinet quicker than you can blink). Sorry, I digress - what I'm trying to say is that contracting may well be the way to go. You wouldn't need to be based in London; we've just re-hired a contractor who is based on the NW coast; he travels down to our London office once a week for face-to-face and deployments, but works remotely the rest of the time. And of course the travel is paid for by us.

I know this post isn't very supportive, but the fact you're relying on this wonderful job in London is alarming, as is the fact you want to solve your debt problems with more debt. Give CCCS a call, see if you can get a DMP set up, and go from there. I sincerely hope you do land a nicely paid job; I just want you to be prepared for the reality.

Oh, and you're signed up with more than one recruiter, right? And your LinkedIn profile is up to date, you've got recommendations on there?

This is exactly what I've been thinking when looking through this thread.

We own a medium-sized (and rapidly growing) publishing/events company, and something that I certainly wouldn't do without experience is offer an 18y.o a £40k job with the snap of fingers, no matter how good you are.

You're going to be looking at £18-20k with us, and if you work to prove yourself, we could possibly pay for you to sit exams in 2-3 years time, which at that point you may only still be looking at £25k.

Do you realise how difficult it is to live on that sort of income in London, and especially in the area that we're in. I moved out of the city five years ago for this exact reason; we could suddenly afford a 5 bed, Victorian semi, in a town centre, instead of a 3 bed terraced without room to swing a cat. We were actually in the lucky position of upsizing on this level, to get £150k more for the London property than we bought for. On £20k, you're looking at roomshares/studio apartments, and still then with very little left over at the end of the month. We were lucky to buy reasonably cheaply when prices were on their way up significantly, and even then, we're valued at £500k and our old house has re-sold for nearly £800k, so we're £150k down on staying in London in just five years.

Get work with a company elsewhere and stay out of London until you can get £30k/year in a job there. If you have a £26k offer elsewhere, then brilliant. Use this to work your way up, however my main reservation with employing a failed businessman is that they could fail my business. This isn't me being harsh, it's the way it is.

Make sure that your Linkedin is up to date, get yourself on freelancing sites such as People Per Hour, and stop expecting the unrealistic. You'll get nowhere until you've sorted your own money problems out. With PPH, if we go quiet, I'll post up the 'hourlies' and get work in that way, some of which turns into regular PR/Marketing and Events work. If you can show you're bringing work into a company, you'll get a lot further, a lot faster!

Finally, good on you for being a young person that wants to make a success of his life!

CK

mildredalien

It sounds like you are young, talented and ambitious which is great and you clearly have motivation and drive to achieve a lot. Whether you are overconfident or not is debatable I guess, if you've been working in IT since you were 12 (?!) I guess you can do anything!

Don't confuse ambition with needing everything to happen RIGHT NOW though You're skint and can't afford to move and complaining about not being able to get credit to do it. Well, the sensible thing to do is to wait until you can actually afford it yourself. The earlier you get out of the habit of relying on credit to do things the better!

Make sure that you do an SOA for each potential job you look for and try and get an idea for actual living costs vs your actual income. Again, the earlier you start supporting yourself and finding out how much things actually cost the better. Uni could be a good idea - you would be able to get student loans to cover tuition fees/living costs (read Martin's student loan info to check out how much it might cost you and whether you'd have to pay it all back - it really is very cheap borrowing if you want/need a degree and will be linked to your income so you don't have to pay it back if you are unemployed).

Good luck!

hadahardyear

i can't believe how great everyone thinks this guy is. Reading through his thread, he is completely deluded and all he does is berate other people and think he's above everyone else ie. single mums who burn through money.

In this day and age, and no there's nothing wrong with ambition, but he comes across as cocky and arrogant, who's in debt the same as the rest as everyone on this board, but seems to think he's not in the same category.

He has no job, significant debt and lives in a fantasy world of this fictional job offer of £40k when friends of mine with phds stack shelves because the country is in a recovering recession with unemployment.

Doesn't stack up to me, and for the record, i'm a single mother, and work 2 jobs and i certainly don't burn through money

ms_london

I think some people are just being mean just to take out their own personal angst at the world, the OP has come here for advice!

It is refreshing to see an 18 year old with ambition and confidence, perhaps the hope of a £40k job may be somewhat optimistic as a first job in London, but I have no doubt that the OP will eventually get to London and do very well..

@nocreditlifestyle - it sounds like you have decided to take the local job, I think the best move at the moment while you get back on your feet! London is great (I recently just moved out of London but still work there) but get yourself sorted first! Best of luck to you!

ms_london

Oh I meant to say that you should contact your creditors to let them know you are not currently working at the moment and to offer them token payments until your circumstances change. Even if you take this job it will be over a month until payday so this will give you a bit of breathing space!

Regarding your food, I see you contribute to your sister, perhaps you could both pop over to the old style board to see if you an stretch your grocery budget further...

neas

Be intrugued to see how he gets on. Takes job gets on feet and makes millions in london .. Sounds like a movie ;P