Kusanagi
10-24-2006, 01:12 AM
I'm in a really bad way here. This is just to vent, but if anyone can offer some solutions, I would greatly appreciate them. :(
I am having SERIOUS financial issues that just got way out of hand. I will freely admit I am not one that has an iron grip on my money, and I know this is my fault, but it still doesn't make things better. A little bit of background.
This time last year, I had been with my current furniture store for almost a year as a manager. I wanted to move on and make some more pay, as I was set on moving out of California and I couldn't do it on the budget I was on, and the pay I was making. The traffic there was REALLY slow, and I was the ONLY one working there, six days a week. I wanted to get into a more stable lifestyle. The showroom I was at only wrote up about 200k a year, and I was writing up over three-fourths of that.
Before I left, they offered me the management position at a store up in Los Angeles, one that wrote up over a million yearly. This would have caused my commissions to fly through the roof. However, I was unable to make the move in any way, shape or form. I was not making enough to move, and I explained that.
I was approached to be an independant contractor from a life insurance company. I obtained my liscence, and went tow rok for them. The problem was, I had just turned 21, and nobody wanted to sit with a 21 year old and discuss life and health insurance. I WAS part of a company, but the pay was commission only. Nobody more experienced wanted to take me underneath their wing, because it would mean more competition to find clients, and also time wasted where they could be looking for clients. I hung on desperately for three months, living on my credit cards and stretched my finances to their limit. Finally, I threw in the towel, and went to work for the mattress store in February. I had been approached many times while I worked at my old store to move over there (I was friends with all the employees and our stores were right next to each other). I went through the training program, and had perfect book knowledge, but when it came to being on the sales floor, I could not close sales.
Why? I could not lie to close them. I knew exactly how much each piece cost - the $3,000 sofa cost 800 for us, TOPS. Our technique was to MAKE UP reasons for discounting, to make the customer THINK they were getting a great deal. This was lying flat out and I did not have the ability to try to get everything I could out of someone just to grease my pocket. We parted ways because I was not meeting my goals.
So, I went back to my old furniture store, here in San Diego. We have a handful of showrooms here, and they placed me at the highest volume one. I started back in May. I used my training I had at the mattress store to make alot more sales. Slowly, I started to get out of the debt I had accumulated.
Then my car blew up. Well, the lower half of the engine, anyway. For no reason. Suddenly, I found myself with the need to get a new one, and I did, but it is has required maintinance, that has been a further burden on me. The car is heavily modded and as such, when something breaks it costs more to fix than something stock. So now we add on a new car payment and the increased insurance as well.
I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and I have additional bills leftover from when I broke my ankle. They overpaid me, apparently, and before I found out I used the money to do some routine maintinance on the car, and some serious stuff that needed to be fixed. So I got a bill stating they overpayed me by about 750 dollars. The car was then hit TWICE while it was parked, and even though I have all the information from the people that did it, including the VIN numbers of the cars that did it, the police and the insurance won't help me with it. I have no recourse. So now the car neds a completely new rear bumper, and since it's a bodykit, it will not be too cheap.
There were two things that finally pushed it over the edge. This summer, our competitor opened a HUGE showroom down the street from us and our business has dropped off by over 70%. My salaried pay just got cut from $400 weekly to $300 weekly and with the drop in business, the commission went to practically nothing because we are just not making sales. A dozen businesses up and down our street have closed, because of this competitor. Basically, we cannot compete and I fully realize this. But to have the pay cut, is not something I can do if ?I want to be making payments on anything but interest charges.
The SECOND issue I found out was that my insurance was not automatically drafting from my account, and I never recieved ANY notification this was happening until I got a notice from them to pay $900 or the insurance would be cancelled (and I would STILL owe it to them.) So I did, draining virtually ALL the money to my name.
Then the car payment DID draw out from the account, overdrawing it. Combined with fees for doing so, my checking account was overdrawn by nearly five hundred dollars, and my credit card (which was already close to maxed out because I've been making minimum payments and haven't been using it at all) was overdrawn as well because it was the second source of funds if I something happened to overdrawn the checking account. So now I have two overdrawn accounts, one maxed out, and just lost roughly a third of my pay, counting for commissions. Add in the whole situation with Ghetto Superstar, and I am stressing quite a bit.
I have no idea what to do. The management spot is still open in Los Angeles, and the sales associates up there make roughly three times as much as I do. But I am unable to make ends meet, at all, and there is nothing I can fall back on. I love this company, I love working here, but I understand they had to do the pay cut (is was part of my original contract if I didn't sell a certain amount of volume per month, and with the competitor opening, no way that's happening) and I WOULD like to get to the position in Los Angeles.
I'm currently looking for a second job in addition to this one to try and help me get out of the hole, or at the very least, keep me from going any deeper. I haven't slept soundly in a week, if I sleep at all, and I'm not making any progress with another job.
Ugh. I am at a complete and utter loss, and this is the first time in my life I have truly felt helpless.
I am having SERIOUS financial issues that just got way out of hand. I will freely admit I am not one that has an iron grip on my money, and I know this is my fault, but it still doesn't make things better. A little bit of background.
This time last year, I had been with my current furniture store for almost a year as a manager. I wanted to move on and make some more pay, as I was set on moving out of California and I couldn't do it on the budget I was on, and the pay I was making. The traffic there was REALLY slow, and I was the ONLY one working there, six days a week. I wanted to get into a more stable lifestyle. The showroom I was at only wrote up about 200k a year, and I was writing up over three-fourths of that.
Before I left, they offered me the management position at a store up in Los Angeles, one that wrote up over a million yearly. This would have caused my commissions to fly through the roof. However, I was unable to make the move in any way, shape or form. I was not making enough to move, and I explained that.
I was approached to be an independant contractor from a life insurance company. I obtained my liscence, and went tow rok for them. The problem was, I had just turned 21, and nobody wanted to sit with a 21 year old and discuss life and health insurance. I WAS part of a company, but the pay was commission only. Nobody more experienced wanted to take me underneath their wing, because it would mean more competition to find clients, and also time wasted where they could be looking for clients. I hung on desperately for three months, living on my credit cards and stretched my finances to their limit. Finally, I threw in the towel, and went to work for the mattress store in February. I had been approached many times while I worked at my old store to move over there (I was friends with all the employees and our stores were right next to each other). I went through the training program, and had perfect book knowledge, but when it came to being on the sales floor, I could not close sales.
Why? I could not lie to close them. I knew exactly how much each piece cost - the $3,000 sofa cost 800 for us, TOPS. Our technique was to MAKE UP reasons for discounting, to make the customer THINK they were getting a great deal. This was lying flat out and I did not have the ability to try to get everything I could out of someone just to grease my pocket. We parted ways because I was not meeting my goals.
So, I went back to my old furniture store, here in San Diego. We have a handful of showrooms here, and they placed me at the highest volume one. I started back in May. I used my training I had at the mattress store to make alot more sales. Slowly, I started to get out of the debt I had accumulated.
Then my car blew up. Well, the lower half of the engine, anyway. For no reason. Suddenly, I found myself with the need to get a new one, and I did, but it is has required maintinance, that has been a further burden on me. The car is heavily modded and as such, when something breaks it costs more to fix than something stock. So now we add on a new car payment and the increased insurance as well.
I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and I have additional bills leftover from when I broke my ankle. They overpaid me, apparently, and before I found out I used the money to do some routine maintinance on the car, and some serious stuff that needed to be fixed. So I got a bill stating they overpayed me by about 750 dollars. The car was then hit TWICE while it was parked, and even though I have all the information from the people that did it, including the VIN numbers of the cars that did it, the police and the insurance won't help me with it. I have no recourse. So now the car neds a completely new rear bumper, and since it's a bodykit, it will not be too cheap.
There were two things that finally pushed it over the edge. This summer, our competitor opened a HUGE showroom down the street from us and our business has dropped off by over 70%. My salaried pay just got cut from $400 weekly to $300 weekly and with the drop in business, the commission went to practically nothing because we are just not making sales. A dozen businesses up and down our street have closed, because of this competitor. Basically, we cannot compete and I fully realize this. But to have the pay cut, is not something I can do if ?I want to be making payments on anything but interest charges.
The SECOND issue I found out was that my insurance was not automatically drafting from my account, and I never recieved ANY notification this was happening until I got a notice from them to pay $900 or the insurance would be cancelled (and I would STILL owe it to them.) So I did, draining virtually ALL the money to my name.
Then the car payment DID draw out from the account, overdrawing it. Combined with fees for doing so, my checking account was overdrawn by nearly five hundred dollars, and my credit card (which was already close to maxed out because I've been making minimum payments and haven't been using it at all) was overdrawn as well because it was the second source of funds if I something happened to overdrawn the checking account. So now I have two overdrawn accounts, one maxed out, and just lost roughly a third of my pay, counting for commissions. Add in the whole situation with Ghetto Superstar, and I am stressing quite a bit.
I have no idea what to do. The management spot is still open in Los Angeles, and the sales associates up there make roughly three times as much as I do. But I am unable to make ends meet, at all, and there is nothing I can fall back on. I love this company, I love working here, but I understand they had to do the pay cut (is was part of my original contract if I didn't sell a certain amount of volume per month, and with the competitor opening, no way that's happening) and I WOULD like to get to the position in Los Angeles.
I'm currently looking for a second job in addition to this one to try and help me get out of the hole, or at the very least, keep me from going any deeper. I haven't slept soundly in a week, if I sleep at all, and I'm not making any progress with another job.
Ugh. I am at a complete and utter loss, and this is the first time in my life I have truly felt helpless.