To feel depressed at how skint I am?

[Smolgoose]

I was furloughed for 8 months over the past year and a bit on 80 percent pay and it has tipped my precarious finances into total shit. Money is tight anyway on full pay (I only earn 16000 a year) so I've had to make up the shortfall with overdraft and credit card.

Endless expensive things keep happening, like the car needing repairs and it's starting to really get me down. I have £50 to last till the end of the month which is doable just about, as long as I stick to cheap food.

I've taken on an extra part time job cleaning that starts later this month, but I have no idea how I'm going to physically do it on top of full time work, as I've had health issues recently.

I just feel so depressed with it all.

@AbsolutelyPatsy musuem jobs are like hens teeth and you're usually competing against PHD students. Don't you think every art student wants to do that, you know before they 'make it big.'

The fact of the matter is that I used to work in retail and 5/9 of us had arts or creative degrees. These degrees do not prepare you for employment! What your degree gives you is the range of skills to improve your craft. You either understand that this may not be anything else than a happy, you keep painting or similar on the side and sell paintings when you can or you feel that you made an incredibly expensive mistake when deciding to do your degree and wish you'd saved your one shot at free education for something that might actually allow you to earn enough to live on. You can guess which one of these I am

@Spidermanssecretary, you could pretend to boost the op though! she came on here saying she was depressed, think positive thoughts!

Many graduate training schemes are not subject specific OP. I did a degree in arts subjects and joined a graduate scheme to work in a completely unrelated field and now earn a six figure income. There are always many ways forward that we aren't aware of: you need some careers advice and to do some digging. Instead of thinking by subject think what kind of working environment and actual work you enjoy, research what roles that would provide that within various industries and the requirements/ career pathways to get to each one (so which can be accessed with a graduate scheme/ on the job training rather than a further degree that you can't afford) and then select the one you prefer and throw everything into doing that.

Many graduate schemes are not keen on taking older graduates with different experience to improve diversity so your age will not be a barrier.

I'd also consider which industries will be more future proofed from technological advances and secure in terms of recessions, pandemics etc!

But it also says that for a decent standard of living that a single person in OPs situtation needs to earn £19,229 pa, which OP does not (and she's spending more on accommodation/CT than they recommend even on that salary). This is my whole point. In order to have a good standard of living, OP needs to bring in a good wage. She does not earn enough to support the standard of living she desires. She needs to either scale back her expectations to basic living or increase her income to pay for a better standard of living.

I know that but that was not the point of my post. The OP was being told to spend only £25 a week on food, so this post was a comment on what would be considered a reasonable minimum to spend. Of course the OP can live off £25 if she needs to but that will hardly help her feel less depressed about being skint as it would be a fairly miserable existence. She has some horrible difficult choices to make and it's not OK that in our society minimum wage does not equate to a minimum living standard. I don't think the OP is asking for financial advice, more support given the horrible situation our societal priorities have put her in.

I meant now keen, not not keen! 🙄🤣

So longer term, she needs a goal to up her income, whether that's changing jobs, working for promotion in her current job, working more hours, retraining etc. Fiddling around with cancelling £5.99/m Netflix etc isn't a long term solution to her problems.

@mrsm43s if you read my posts you'll see that I was actually the first poster to be making exactly this point, so I'm not sure why you posted this to me.

[quote Spidermanssecretary]@bewilderedhedgehog you would have to do another degree to do that and there is no funding available.[/quote]
Difficult I agree, but not impossible. It is a masters, and unless the OP already has a masters, student finance is I think available. Some courses are part time which might be helpful.

Yes there is now post graduate funding similar to student loan in terms of repayment terms. I don’t think you start laying back until you earn 25k. This is irrespective of your undergraduate degree.