I haven't posted in a while as I was hit with yet another redundancy last autumn after my company was bought out and half of our jobs offshored. It hit me pretty hard, as I honestly thought I'd left the crazy up and down swings of employment behind after the recession ended and was planning on several years of playing catch up for all that missed salary in my 20s.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. So in late October I began job hunting yet again (something I'm getting quite good at now). I managed to score a couple of short term contracts over the winter and early spring, but since the last one ended I've been struggling to find another temporary or permanent role within commuting distance. I was lucky enough to be offered voluntary redundancy, so I had a bit of
money to tide me over and avoided having to borrow anything to pay the
rent. But it seems all of the junior level roles in my industry are based miles away from where I live, and I've invested a large amount of money into my current accommodation and can't just up sticks and move right now. I've also paid upfront for a block of classes at a nearby school and can't get any refund.
So I'm having to make a decision of whether to remain unemployed for another few months and try to live off my savings until I can move home OR change career path yet again and just take any local job I can get my hands on to tide me over.
In the meantime, I've decided to just freeze all of my portfolio where it is and once I have money coming in again I can hopefully catch up to my last total and continue from there.
Sometimes life seems to be a succession of three steps forwards, two steps back!
I'm honestly pretty tired of spending as much time unemployed and job hunting as I do in employment, so while I continue to apply for a new job I'm also looking at starting my own business. It's an incredibly risky thing to do, as I don't have any real experience in entrepreneurship (I even struggle to spell the word) and have no spare money to use as start up capital. The vast majority of new businesses fail, which is a bit scary. I therefore need to start small and look at what I can do without any initial funds. I've worked in both finance and IT, so can at least deal with the book-keeping and technical side of things. I'm not great at thinking up new viable products and don't have a home so I have no space to store other people's products to ship to clients. It will therefore need to be some sort of digital service. An ex colleague suggested I become a Youtube vlogger since everyone seems to be getting rich off Youtube these days, but I lack the social skill to talk incessantly for the length of a video (which is why I have a written blog instead).
I'm still very much in the brainstorming stage, so feel free to send any useful suggestions my way! Any general business start up advice from those who have succeeded on this path would also be very much appreciated!
