<prompt> Human: Obvious throwaway. The title isnt an exaggeration, it took me a lot of time to write and rewrite everything, I was banging my head on the desk every couple sentences. I know maybe the full story wasnt necessary, I intented it to be one paragraph at first, but Im bad at cutting words. There are a lot of posts here and I bet this one is too long to get noticed, but I dont care at this point, I probably wrote this for myself..Im 22yo, havent gone to uni, I have been working since high school as a graphic designer, later moved on to mainly website designprogramming. First I started as a freelancer, a project here and there, nothing major. Then I had to move out, because after my parents divorced my mom sold our flat and bought another one with her new boyfriend. I couldnt stand living with her anymore, prior to that she tried to throw me out twice anyway. Living with my dad wasnt an option because he was practically homeless at that point and there are other causes too. I moved out at the last possible moment when the new owners were moving in, rented a flat and found a semi-stable job. Now this is key - my new job was at a company which my dad in a way co-founded, or Id say helped a lot when it was starting out, he had and still has a high manager position there, working closely with the owner. However, he is not, by law, a co-founder, he doesnt have a stake in the company, because when it was beginning, he was in deep financial troubles, so they agreed to unofficially split income. The company growth was kinda slow at first when I was still at school, but at the point where I joined it was already up and running, over 50 people and a lot of money for everything, new employees and new investments. The job was paying better than any freelance jobs I couldve found and I liked it quite a lot, also it felt friendly and safe, because my family well, dad was close friends with the owner and Ive known him for years. What I did was to start my own single person company, because only then I could get financial help from local municipality, which I got and bought a new PC and other stuff, at that point dramatically needed to keep working. I dont recommend repeating what Ive done next: since there was a lot of money in the company, I was friends with the owner, I didnt sign an agreement, we just agreed verbally to an invoice from me every month.After a year so a year ago Ive asked for a raise, because I have learned a ton, got into more serious programming work and I started getting other offers. I realized I was severaly underpaid - and I was barely making ends meet, living on your own is way more expensive that I thought - I asked to match the average of those offers, the owner agreed to double my pay. First 4-5 months everything was fine and dandy, invoice payments were never late, I practically got the money on the same day as I sent the invoice. I cleaned up my finances, saved some money for emergency, set up a proper budget, bought a bit of BTC. Problems started just before summer, it was related to a huge multi-million investment made around the time I got the raise. My invoice payments started getting late and finally not at all. I panicked, started calling my dad and the owner, I had never been put in such a situation before. There was a lot of deception, youre getting paid this week, avoiding my calls etc. Other people working at the company were being owed money too, but nobody as far as I know to such an extent as me, certainly not people officially employed, because that would be a legal disaster. I realized Im last on the list to get paid, I talked to my dad a couple of times about maybe taking a loan.I dont recommend repeating what Ive done next: I was owing taxes, rent was late over a month, couldnt pay for utilities, so Ive taken a huge for me loan. It was equal to 5x my monthly income, I took it in July.It didnt last me nowhere close to 5 months, because my dad asked me to borrow him 15 of that sum and I was already 1.5 month behind. Through that time only one monthly invoice got paid and I ran out of money in late October. I didnt buy anything what wasnt necessary with the loan, I can honestly say I rationed the money well, but it ran out. I kept talking to my dad and hoping hed pressure the owner, he was critical of my attitude, telling me I should be grateful for the job and that I should be loyal and patiently wait, as everyone is, for the money. My dad is in a corner himself, he has no other option than stay with the company, looking for anothe job in his spot would be catastrophic, he has built a house near the company logistics base in the middle of nowhere. I was still on quite good terms with the owner for some reason, lets not forget he was our close friend for years.It all sounds like a typical rpersonalfinance thread where people make every bad decision they can and I realized that even then, but dismissed it because I kept telling myself this situation is different, because my boss is a friend and the atmosphere was friendly. I got paid once more about a month ago, with a promise there will be more money promptly, but there wasnt. Yesterday I got a text! from the owner saying he consulted with other people in the company that Im not worth the money they are paying me and that we are ceasing our partership. Moreover, he said he would only pay me for up until October, because he feels like I havent been up to much last month, which is untrue and a lie - except for all the small stuff people called me with and Im not able to easily prove, I had at least 5 graphics projects with many iterations in November which I sent off to print by e-mails and Im able to prove that. He said he wont accept my November invoice I usually send the invoice around the 10th of the next month. I wasnt expecting that turn of events at all, but maybe I underestimated how bad the financial situation in the company is. I was the only IT guy, there isnt anyone except me even on the I can google stuff if something happens level in 50 people company with two offices, I had a call almost every day with some trouble from people. Except for making the companys website and all projects of any kind, I chose 1920x1080, SSD and 12gb ram for a fair price yay, ordered peoples notebooks and set them up, fixed computers, managed e-mails, did some networking and sysadmin work nothing advanced, like setting up DDNS to access monitoring from outside, which no one else in the company had any idea how to do. It makes NO sense to let go of me, they will for sure pay more for outside help and will be forced to employ somebody else in my place, which is even more ridiculous.Next loan payment is due in 3 days, I have no money, I owe rent, utilities, taxes, I have no job and turns out I was working for free since 1st of November, but nobody told me that. I took it all really hard since early summer, I think I might be depressed. I would never ever admit it to anybody, because its tough man culture around here and I would be stigmatized as a pussy, but I seriously think Im depressed. I have problems getting out of bed often, not to mention out of home, I havent been this disappointed with myself and other people in my life ever. I had a girlfriend for 6 years, we broke up in early September due to multitude of reasons, it was the last person that was offering me any support, but in the months leading to that she didnt care too. I feel betrayed by everyone, I thought I approached everything properly, I budgeted my expenses, I dont drink, dont smoke, dont do drugs, I always spend money responsibly, yet Im practically bankrupt and I owe a ton of money. I realize theyre in the wrong and are supposed to pay my invoices, but I have no money for any lawyer, that company employs a full-time lawyer and other ones from time to time, I dont know how to do anything of that kind anyway.If I was on the other side of this post I would have no problem listing all the mistakes Ive done, I know I should have jumped ship as soon as invoices were getting late, I shouldnt have taken the loan, I should have signed an agreement, I should have been distrustful. The whole point is that I havent done all that and Im in a really bad situation, I dont know what to do, even if I magically found a job today I wont earn even close to enough money in time. I just dont see any solution, the thing which I could write on a post-it note and stick to the wall next to my monitor, so I could work towards something. Im fuckededit: spelling2 edit: A lot of people dont know what to assume when it comes to the country Im from, I live in Poland, I dont know why I put EU in the title, I dont think its such a sensitive information. I was also the sole English except for maybe two people in the company who knew broken English enough to understand whats being said and Russian translator for the company, including talks and legal documents, if that changes anything.  <response>: Step 1: advertise yourself as a graphicsweb designer on craigslistwherever. You can work remotely for any company so do it. This should take 30 minutes to an hour. Nothing fancy, dont make a website or anything. Step 2: google the closest two temp agencies in your area. Make appointments to see them tomorrow. This will take 15 minutes. Step 3: google a library or cafe you can job hunt in. This should take 10 mins tops. You want a space outside of your house so you have to 1 get up 2 shower 3 put on clean clothes 4 sit in a sunny, clean space 5 that is around other people 6 so you dont nap or play video games or otherwise avoid the situation. Last thing to do today: Apply for jobs at any Starbucks you can get to by car or bus or train. They have health insurance. It can tide you over while you transition to something else. Tomorrow: Drive to the closest temp agency with your laptop. Work with them on your resume. Apply for positions through them. Then drive to the next closest temp agency, iterate on the resume you just finished at the first and put your application in with them too. This will take a day. Maybe you get calls for work from craigslist. beware bounced check scams.Saturday:Go to the librarycafe. Take your new resume and make a linked in profile. This will take 1 to 1.5 hours. At the librarycafe, apply to every job you qualify for on linked in. And craigslist. And whatever other websites you would use for job hunting in your industry. Force yourself to do this for three entire hours. You can use a timer app like toggl to track your time. Three hours of applying to jobs and scheduling interviews. From Sunday on, every day you are not at work, you are at the library looking for work. For a minimum of five hours. Not counting bathroom breaks or eating or reddit or games or anything. Five hours, not straight but five hours nonetheless. Time yourself. Force yourself. Oh, and call your landlord. Try to get out of the lease and offer to sign an agreement to pay them back what you owe on some kind of payment plan. If they wont agree you have to sell everything you have until you have enough to pay the back rent. Move in with your dad. Youve got to, unless he is physically dangerous you have to move in with a parent. Or couch surf. If you couch surf, clean the kitchen every morning when you get up and again before bed. Even if its not your mess. Thats how you pay them, even if youre paying them. You will get it if this and you will obviously learn things from it. No point in beating yourself up though. If you can apply to jobs for 5 hours a day, you have done everything you can do. I bet you get some work within a week, even if its just a temporary gig. The companies who hire temps might want to offer you a job, btw, so show up ready to work. I got a job offer from my one and only temp job. Oh, and in about seven days when youve taken some steps to get income, sue the company for the unpaid contracts in small claims court. I dont care if it wasnt written down, you give them work and they gave you money until they stopped giving you money. Go sue. 