Losing it All

I wanted to point out a funny thing though. Living in a post-soviet country I can sense my bias that tells me that this is totally ridiculous. Probably the difference between here and America is just so big. This situation is just inherently absurd by the simple fact that selling that iPhone would give me enough money to survive for 2 months paying a rent in a cheap apartment and buying another cheap phone.

Besides that, the most important difference is that we never take such big loans here. Big loans are scary for us. I understand how important they are for developing an economy, but all around me most people would hardly get a loan to buy a car. Even if the economy is poor, people are much more free because they don't take insane debts. I think american culture really needs to remember that debt is dangerous.

Just a quick thought about the abyssal difference between the 2 mentalities.

While not homeless, my sister came to a crossroads in her career and is now doing this exact thing. The extra $10K/yr basically pays her rent, she is still able to work full time, and she'll have a degree in a field she actually likes at the end. If OP suddenly had $5K in the bank, his road to recovery wouldn't have been nearly as rocky.

[1] http://www.apus.edu/

A couple of things in your story seem weird to me, though. Did they really foreclose on your rental house that fast? There were so many properties going under in 2008 that I thought the banks were backed up for months ... Why couldn't you just stay in the rental property until the bank came after it? (PS have you checked to make sure you don't have a deficiency judgment out in your name? Some people are getting charged hundreds of thousands of dollars years after foreclosure!)

Also: you had no credit cards? With most modern credit cards you actually have to call and ask them to stop sending you checks. You could have moved debt from the car to a credit card pretty easily with those, then paid the mere minimum for months.

Did you consider applying for public assistance at all? You could have also tried to barter your skills for housing or food with a church or social service charity.

Again, I'm glad you're okay, and thank you for sharing your story. So many people don't realize they are a lost job or a bad accident away from homelessness; I hope your story encourages more people to save for a rainy day.

He shouldn't have been buying a leveraged investment property until he had an emergency fund.

With $100k+/year in income, he should have been finding a way to save $10k+ per year.

For those of you who are asking "Why didn't you have an emergency fund?", please consider why you would say such a mean and thoughtless thing.

Are you asking because you want to learn something or are you asking because it makes you feel superior because you made different choices? Do you like it when someone asks you why you made a big mistake (esp when they don't actually care about the answer)?

However, remember that for many people life is like this every day and has been since childhood. These people don't have the resources, skills or networks to pull themselves out of such situations as did the author.

Next time you're tempted to judge someone who has less than you (and everyone judges based on their own experiences, it's all we can do) - remember that you've had it good, despite the downs and maybe they deserve some help too.

This is something I need to keep reminding myself of regularly.

I have a question which I definitely don't mean to be taken in the wrong way, so please just take it as a purely informational query. If I were to find myself in this situation, my first instinct would be to move back in with my parents or otherwise lean on my network of family and friends (couch-surfing, etc), especially if I was reduced to homelessness.

Please feel free to ignore this question if it's too personal, etc, but were family/friends not among your list of available resources, or if they were, was there some other reason you couldn't/wouldn't go there?

When every single "personal finance" site tells you that having an "emergency fund" of 3+ times your monthly costs (rent, food, insurance, ...) is very important, they probably are right :)

All the time, I read on HN about _things_, but never about _people_. I'm glad you shared this, because it reminds me there are humans here after all. Everyone wants to paint their life in the best light, but it's rarely true.

1. Why didn't the author just pawn the Glock? There are many shops here in Houston, and you should've been able to get a few hundred for it.

2. Why wasn't the rent being charged to the house letters enough to cover at least the 1,500/month mortgage?

3. Why couldn't the author stay with a friend?

4. How did HPD not shoot the author? Harris County is pretty good at that. :(

It's a helluva story, and I'm glad the author is on the other side of it now, but wow. ~

Some questions:

Were you by the Galleria, or in SW Houston? I'm getting it was SW Houston, maybe on Holcombe/Belaire (that being like one of the only two B&Ns around at that time)? Was the gym the LA Fitness on Wesleyan by chance? Was the movie theater the Edwards on Wesleyan, or the Angelika (I think they hadn't closed down yet), or what?

EDIT:

The hivemind clearly doesn't approve of trying to learn more about the situation. So it goes.

Also, I've heard a lot about american welfare programs, how come you weren't applicable?

As a developer I have had my fair share of job losses over the years, but the one thing that got me through each and every job loss? Savings. I can't stress how important it is to save money. It doesn't matter if you're on $100k or $50k per year, try and at least save a little bit of money from each paycheck.

Recently I was contracting for a startup, like the OP I was earning some serious money, around $10k per month (Australian Dollars) after taxes. After paying my bills, I would set aside some entertainment money, money for a months worth of food/fuel and I would move the rest into a high interest savings account (the interest rate would increase when you cleared a certain balance level) after six months unexpectedly the startup announced they were done, the contractors were fired immediately and employees given a nice 4 week period. I was a contractor, so I had no notice, just a "Thanks for everything"

Usually my first instinct would have been to panic, but living moderately after all of my expenses, I had about 12 months worth of runway. It took me 2 months to find another job, not paying as much, but I didn't struggle. Always save something, because for most of us it isn't a matter of when you'll need it, it is a matter of when.

Wow, this is disturbing. I'm so glad to hear that you could overcome that bad turn. Your story is inspirational and shows that we should never give up.

You're entitled to nothing! All you will have is what you earn, and you have to keep your sense of accountability. If you find yourself stretching your resources to buy something because you think you deserve it, remind yourself that (in the words of Clint Eastwood) "deserve's got nothing to do with it."

Freelance cash is great, but it's a bit of a mirage, because security is far more valuable than a recurring fat check that might stop recurring. Random rough example: 3 years of guaranteed 5k/month is actually more valuable (on average) than a monthly 10k check that has a 5% chance of ceasing each month, assuming no further employment chances for the remainder of the three years.

My order of priority was always: bare minimum of expenses, max out retirement, emergency fund, and then balancing my desire to increase standard of living with my desire to save. Also remember that buying luxuries has a nasty way of also increasing your ongoing expenses. I tried to aim for an emergency fund of a year, which meant keeping expenses low as much as it meant saving a pile of money.

Volatile investments can make you richer faster, but they also have an increased probability of dropping you below zero, and that's why you must be conservative until you can afford to risk your capital. That applies even more to leveraged investments like taking out a mortgage for a rental property.

Last priority should be purchases that don't make you any money - I'm currently making more than the OP topped out at in his article, but I still drive the same pickup truck I bought in the late 90's, because I personally don't need anything nicer-looking. I work from my laptop for clients that don't care what I drive.

This isn't to lecture the OP - he had his own circumstances and one hell of a humbling experience - more power to him for making his way through it. But if you're a 20-something freelancer that thinks you're doing well just because you're on a 100k projected revenue... please think again. :)

Freelancing and remote contracting can be very uneven. Luckily I had a decent amount of savings to begin with when things dried up.

Kudos to you for sharing - and for being a brave and resourceful person to get through it. The standoff scene is a crazy thing. Over nothing.

I've been living off my savings, with the aim of pivoting to a programming career after years post university stuck in under-employment. My aim was to build up a folio of work in lieu of the paucity of experience on my CV.

I continued to contribute to various pieces of Mozilla: if you're running Firefox, you're running code I've written, and I managed to build an internal web app that is now considered a fairly critical piece of their internal infrastructure. Other successes included micropolisJS, my SimCity 89 in Javascript port. Others like my functional library funkierJS and my fresh rewrite of V8Monkey/SpiderNode I've not yet managed to get over the finish line.

But as my savings dwindled, I refused to accept it, and focussed on how I'd easily claw my way back out when I landed a good position.

Even in the past year, when I've been barely hanging on, I stupidly refused to accept reality. I've lived on one meal of lentils for about 9 months or so - shedding 6 stone has been nice; it would have been nicer if it had been in a healthy controlled manner. The mobile phone is long gone, and with it my world, and my friend's list shrank considerably. And still I wouldn't accept the position I'd dug myself in.

And now, here we are. My landlord's patience is exhausted. No wonder. In 2 and a half weeks, I become the perverse dual of the homeless guy who learned to code: I know how to code but have sank the other way. There's no friend's sofas or family to bail me out, though that seems fair - I should face the consequences. At best I might get an emergency hostel with the heroin addicts and alcoholics, although my city has a reputation for failing to meet its legal obligations to the homeless.

And I did this to myself, the architect of my own demise.

Apologies for the wall of text. It was, at least, a little cathartic.

OP, congratulations for pulling yourself out of this situation, very impressive, and thanks for sharing your story.

1. Revolvers don't jam - that can decide between life and death

2. The mind is remarkably good at warping memories to be more positive. Here we have a man who (spoiler) tried to kill himself and later describing this period of time as "not that bad".

(I hope it's clear that I don't mean to belittle ShakyCode in any way; there's nothing wrong with using whatever you have to make the best of a bad situation. I don't know what I would have done in his place; I doubt I would have had the emotional strength do do any coding at all in such a rough state, and I absolutely respect what he was able to accomplish. And that's another important point: saying that someone has privilege is not an insult; it's just an observation.)

I'm curious if it's because once you engaged him he was articulate and clearly not a normal homeless person, or if it was just that humans empathize more with people they resemble?

I'm not sure this is actually the explanation he thinks it is. A significant portion of homeless people had mental illnesses before losing their house. In many cases, illnesses like schizophrenia or untreated mood disorders contribute to homelessness by making it harder to maintain the social connections that form a safety net for many people (for instance, if the poster had driven away all his friends with manic episodes before becoming homeless, nobody would have been around to lend him a car and go get a new contracting job).

Being said all that, recently I've read many similar stories of sharp fall from the height of success. It seems, many people working in the private sectors are vulnerable to "keep running, or you are doomed" like theory. The social and economical structure in many countries, even many developing countries, are different which prevent the "fall from the cliff" like cases. Strong family bonds, affordable permanent ownership of properties etc are key to stability.

Many EU countries have balanced structure where you can choose to slow down in your career path, and to enjoy life. Although government in those countries charge a huge percentage of tax, they take care of their citizens to prevent the sharp fall in career and life.

Perhaps, too strong capitalism, attention to too many distractions all over the world, relying on numbers instead of the quality in those numbers etc are affecting the whole domestic socio-economic balance.

OP's story seems to confirm.

I tend to read a lot of stories about people's misfortune, and how things turned around -- but hearing the story from someone in similar shoes as myself makes it feel so much more personal.

It's really scary how fast things can turn around, regardless of how 'successful' you are at your job / work. Especially if you're doing any sort of freelancing / etc.

One thing I'd really like to know is this: what can people like myself do to help others who are in a similar situation as the author? Are their specific charities that are useful for this sort of thing? As someone who wants to help out, what can I personally do to make a difference? Is going and volunteering at a soup kitchen something that's needed?

I'm genuinely interested in helping in some way -- if any of you have advice / etc. I'd absolutely love to hear it.

That is the best lesson to know. Question, why did the weapon jam?

But it didn't teach them to save a year's living expenses so they'd never get into this situation again? I wonder what is protecting them from becoming homeless if they fall on hard time again -- probably nothing. With that said, this was a really engrossing read and should reinforce the idea that responsible spending is absolutely key to a comfortable life for those of us who perhaps don't appreciate our nest egg of savings quite as much as we should.

Is it possible to work out a deal with these (most?) restaurants to pick up this leftover food and take it to soup kitchens? Releasing liability, and things like that of course.

But not a 4-month emergency fund?

This guy has 100k/yr in income but no savings at all? And his much highlighted Nissan 350 Turbo "pro street" was bought on credit? Where did the money go? He had people renting his house, presumably for a monthly profit? Did he fail to mention being a heroin addict, or where thd hell did all his money go?

He didn't sell his swanky car immediately, so he could rent a sucky apartment to avoid being homeless?

He gets attacked by a bunch of hoodlums who beat him up before he gets his gun out? But he somehow gets it out anyway.

Then his assailant pulls a gun right back at him, and instead of shooting in fear for his life, he proceeds to engage in a Mexican standoff (which the other guy is happy to maintain too!), and walks up to the guy to deliver a macho line, as if he's in a goddamn movie or something?

Then cops show up and somehow magically diffuse the Mexican standoff situation without using any force themselves?

And finally, there's a time when he's got thousands of dollars of "tax free" income (hah!) in the bank, but he's still homeless? Because having money in the bank sure beats having shelter?

This story is complete bullshit.