Bankruptcy

[doodab]

so in the past 2-3 years what have you done to make you're not stuck in a little niche?
That's more than enough time to get trained in something else and cross sell your skills into other areas which have more demand

Ooh, well, going back 6-7 years I had a stint as a PL/SQL programmer on a data warehouse project, then did a season snowboarding & developing a java web app plan B, came back to a (niche related) gig doing Java web services (they were just phoning me and asking me how much I wanted, no interview or anything, so it never actually occurred to me to see what else was available) which turned into a product for the consultancy firm and my plan B code got subsumed into it in return for a promise of shares (that never ******* materialized but that's another story, they went to the wall anyway).

After that, I had a few months paternity leave, picked up a mish mash of short gigs including having one of the top 80 or so biggest companies in the world pay me to spend 3 months learning C# and rewrite some fairly simple integration code because they didn't want my off the shelf Java version as they had no one to look after it on their existing team.

The last 2 or 3 years, I've been in Germany writing integrations and various other bits and bobs in Java with spring, hibernate and so on, and doing the odd bit of maintenance on some C code written by someone who clearly had no idea what a thread was. In the last month I've set up a maven repo, started to mavenise some of the existing projects and I'm looking at getting OSGi in there as that seems to be catching on.

The problem is, once you have a family and are used to a certain amount of money coming in, you can't really say "no, I'm going to spend 6 months on the bench waiting for just the right gig to come along" you sort of need to keep the money flowing.

Although most people would consider me fairly expert, I actually have very little to do with "niche product" aside from interfacing to it occasionally.

[lilelvis2000]

If I let mine do that I will end up with a house full of cheap tulip that either isn't fit for purpose or breaks when you look at it, 600 pairs of cheap faux leather shoes and a lot of completely random tulip so bizarre that I can't even work out what it is well enough to describe it on here.

When I was running the finances that's what she did. Now that she is - she's saving more money that I every could. I suggest you give it a try for 3 months.

[Sysman]

I've been contracting for just over 13 years and up until 2008 I had never been on the bench and aside from the first gig I ever got and two others I've never even had an interview, I didn't even have to think about looking for work because people who knew me would phone me up and offer me jobs. 99% of that was because of the generic skills I have in addition to niche product X, and of course I had little cause to chase non-niche jobs with people phoning me up and offering me work. Great as that was, I think it might turn out to be a bit of a curse, because those jobs have just dried up now.

I can feel your pain. I was once rather good at a niche product and thanks to user group meetings was well known. All I had to do for long enough was let folks know was when I would be free and the work came automatically. Fortunately I'd picked up a lot of sysadmin skills at the same time so the transition was possible, though then I had to deal with agents and it became much harder.

On the money control side, your best bet is to start writing down everything you spend, and I do mean everything. Bash it into a spreadsheet/database by category so that you can see where it is all going. I've done this in that past and it really does work. A spreadsheet column with how much money per day you can afford to spend until next pay day absolutely concentrates your mind on your goal.

[EternalOptimist]

i only read the first few pages. But wtf is going on ?

moving location for a job as a contractor is lunacy. even a good permie job - risky.
changing culture and moving away from family ? double wtf


as a bloke, and as a contractor your duty is to stop paying two rents. start living in a tent or a sh1thole and save money. buy a house and stick her and the kid in it. err thats it

or get rid

[doodab]

i only read the first few pages. But wtf is going on ?

moving location for a job as a contractor is lunacy. even a good permie job - risky.
changing culture and moving away from family ? double wtf

When you've been benched for 6 months and you are paying the rent with your credit card moving location for £450 a day seems like a pretty sensible move, actually.

as a bloke, and as a contractor your duty is to stop paying two rents. start living in a tent or a sh1thole and save money. buy a house and stick her and the kid in it. err thats it

or get rid

It's not very practical to live in a tent long term (I've been here over 2 years), especially in a country where it gets down to -20C some nights. But thanks for the tips. I'll buy a house tomorrow, just as soon as I find someone willing to lend me a few hundred k with no deposit.

[EternalOptimist]

When you've been benched for 6 months and you are paying the rent with your credit card moving location for £450 a day seems like a pretty sensible move, actually.



It's not very practical to live in a tent long term (I've been here over 2 years), especially in a country where it gets down to -20C some nights. But thanks for the tips. I'll buy a house tomorrow, just as soon as I find someone willing to lend me a few hundred k with no deposit.

its just my opinion, not a criticism (there is zero chance that I understand your situation properly)

but get rid of the card. stop borrowing. live like a monk. there's no quick solution to this, just years of having a sh1t life. sorry

[DimPrawn]

https://www.wonga.com/HomePage.aspx

Go on, the rent is due.

[doodab]

its just my opinion, not a criticism (there is zero chance that I understand your situation properly)

but get rid of the card. stop borrowing. live like a monk. there's no quick solution to this, just years of having a sh1t life. sorry

I don't actually use the cards, except the one which I use to book my flights back and forth and pay off every month. In fact I can't use the cards, because most shops here don't even take them. The debt is due to the money that I borrowed on them at the end of 2008 (when I was on the bench, warchest gone, and would have gone under without them) and a recent edition of approx 2 weeks earnings because I had some time off ill with stress that wasn't in the plan. The alternative there was to not pay the rent or bills or buy food for a month which didn't seem terribly practical.

But I do see your point, we need to live within my means and get rid of the debt. It seems to me that the obvious way to do that is to keep my well paid job and live in a city where we could live comfortably on £100 a day less than I'm earning, rather than bin it and return to an uncertain future in a city where I will struggle to make ends meet.

[EternalOptimist]

I don't actually use the cards, except the one which I use to book my flights back and forth and pay off every month. In fact I can't use the cards, because most shops here don't even take them. The debt is due to the money that I borrowed on them at the end of 2008 (when I was on the bench, warchest gone, and would have gone under without them) and a recent edition of approx 2 weeks earnings because I had some time off ill with stress that wasn't in the plan. The alternative there was to not pay the rent or bills or buy food for a month which didn't seem terribly practical.

But I do see your point, we need to live within my means and get rid of the debt. It seems to me that the obvious way to do that is to keep my well paid job and live in a city where we could live comfortably on £100 a day less than I'm earning, rather than bin it and return to an uncertain future in a city where I will struggle to make ends meet.

I think what I am suggesting is this. get a base, buy it and install the wife and kid. you travel around after the gold and keep your costs low. very low.

when the kid is grown, the wife gets a job and you get a life

between now and then - its sh1t all the way mate



but you'll have some good stories for cuk 2025

[doodab]

I think what I am suggesting is this. get a base, buy it and install the wife and kid. you travel around after the gold and keep your costs low. very low.

when the kid is grown, the wife gets a job and you get a life

between now and then - its sh1t all the way mate



but you'll have some good stories for cuk 2025

But I don't want a tulip life, and I don't want my boy to have a tulip life. Surely that's just giving up?

Either way, I will be able to buy a place a lot quicker if I can pay the debt off and save a deposit, and that will happen within a couple of years if she moves here but looks a lot less likely if I move back to London. So she's going to have to move to somewhere cheaper, and TBH I'll probably stay here because unless I can get more than £350 in the UK it works out about the same financially and the beer is better.

If I look around I can probably save €200 on the rent here as well, but I'd have to commit to a year and buy some basic ikea furniture like a bed and stuff. My current rent includes the bills as well, so the saving might not actually be very much.