Day 48 - Joblessness, Homelessness, and Other Scary Prospects

          Today I redid my résumé and boiler-plated a couple of cover letters. I checked the job boards and updated my profiles yet again. The last time I went looking for work I used Career Builder and Monster. I still have accounts set up on both those sites. I added a new one called Indeed that somehow combines listings from multiple boards including Career Builder and Monster into one super board. This seems like the way to go to me. The more they do to make finding a job easy, the more I’m going to like it. I did a search to see what’s available. I limited the search to jobs that contain the words controller, CFO, and accounting. I further limited it to jobs paying over $100,000 annually. No sense taking a cut—at least I hope not. Who knows how bad the economy is really going to get? Still it’s early in the game to be lowering my expectations. Last year I made over $132,000 including a nice bonus. I need to do that well again to maintain my lifestyle—not that my lifestyle is very lavish.

I’ve got a huge amount of credit card debt, and just making the monthly minimums has kept me from accumulating any appreciable net worth for the last 20 years. It’s a sad tale, best saved for another time. I don’t like to talk about it or think about it. It’s depressing as hell—especially if you consider I have paid Bank of America something like $180,000 in interest over that period of time, and have nothing to show for it. 


(If you find yourself in a like situation, you may want to consider visiting Dave Ramsey's Web Site and taking advantage of the many resources he has available to help you get your financial life back in order.)

          
          The search yielded about 7 jobs worth looking at. None of them were stellar. That was kind of troubling, but even more problematic—the less than stellar jobs all wanted an MBA and/or an active CPA. I’ve only got a Bachelor’s degree, and I let my certification lapse. I shouldn’t have done that, but it’s too late now. I applied to the two best jobs, hoping that ‘former’ CPA and 30 years experience will make up for the short credentials.

I have to say this didn’t leave a very good taste in my mouth. Hopefully what I saw today was an anomaly. The last time I was looking, the job listings ran hot and cold in spurts. I’m still just testing the waters. Monday I have to get after this job search. I’ve only got 3 months of severance left. I still hope to book two incomes for a while, but if I don’t have a job by the end of January I’m going to have to move. At the current amount I’m paying for rent and utilities I’ll last about 6 weeks. Then I’m in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. I’m not ready for homelessness. That’s a scary damn prospect.