Apologies for the wall of text, nervous FTB here!
My partner and I are excited to have finally saved enough of our money to buy our first house. Honestly, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster… housing in England is a bit of a mess!
We have a mortgage approved, have nearly completed all searches with the solicitor and the surveyor has just completed his assessment (report to be issued soon). The solicitor advised that we should be able to complete by late April / early May.
However, on Friday I received the extremely unexpected news that our company are making mass redundancies and that all of the jobs in my office are at risk. The formal consultation period is likely to end by mid-April, but they will start informing those “at risk” early next week and conducting interviews for “at risk” staff. They intend to let go of c. 100 staff from the c. 250 that are currently employed. I have worked at this company for 4 years. I say this because on balance, it is not unlikely that I will be let go.
My partner is able to make the monthly mortgage repayments on his salary alone but the mortgage lender approved the mortgage on the basis of two salaries.
Obviously this is terrible timing for our lives as I could be informed of my redundancy literally a week or two before completion. What are my options here?
We are concerned that the mortgage lender will withdraw the offer if I am made redundant. Do I have to inform them even after the mortgage has been approved, because we have not yet completed? Could we negotiate based on the fact that my partner can afford the monthly repayments on his own? Is that usually possible?
Please, any advice to help us in this very delicate situation would be very much appreciated. We’re nervous about opening this conversation with the lendebroker before any redundancy news in case it leads to a preemptive withdrawal, and we’re not yet sure whether I will be made redundant. We don’t want to scare anyone, just be able to plan some options out.
Thanks in advance!

Salary difference is 10k more than my current role. And the other one is hybrid but once a month with 20-30 min commute. Please advise!
More context:
I recently obtained my AWS SAA which led me to the f100 offer. And the team is production facing with alternating on-calls that primarily use AWS but some other cloud services. My current place is very legacy with intentions of using more modern stack but not yet executed.
My concern is do the risks overweigh the rewards? About 1.5 yoe, counting internship. Please share your experiences.
Edited to add context.

Twenty years ago this week, the United States began its blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turned into a hideous quagmire.
I had joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 2001. I was still in boot camp on 9/11, which made for an interesting couple of days. In early 2002 I obtained a two-year leave of absence to ‘serve’ a Mormon mission, and by March of 2003 I was more than a year into being a full-time religious propagandist in Mexico.
The war was big news in Mexico, with public opinion generally running pretty strong against it. Given my history of relentless indoctrination, and my current assignment of telling everyone I saw that they were immorally wrong about everything that mattered, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to consume any kind of non-religious media material of any kind, I of course took the opposite position.
But I improved with time. I came home in early 2004, and quickly discovered that the war was, at best, very badly managed. But I was back into military service (as a reservist), so I fully expected to end up being deployed to Iraq at some point.
The miserable shitshow that played out across Iraq throughout 2005 and especially 2006 convinced me that the war wasn’t just badly executed but a hopelessly terrible idea from its very beginning, supported by blatant lies and unconscionable manipulation.
When my turn to deploy finally came, in 2009, I was rather conflicted. On the one hand, I clearly understood that the war was immoral and dangerous and I should avoid it at all cost. On the other hand, I was four years into attending college and making no discernible progress towards any of the goals I had set for myself: graduating, choosing a career, getting married, existing as a functional adult. So the choice (and it was a choice: contrary to the contract I thought I’d signed, I was set to be released from service in mid-2008, and so this deployment was entirely optional for me) was fraught. I didn’t want to kill or die for a mistake; but I also didn’t want to dodge what I was sure would be the challenge of a lifetime for a second time; and I also could not say with a straight face that I had anything better to do.
So I went. It didn’t go well , but it went at least as well as I had any right to expect. I never saw anything like combat (shooting flares at a few civilian vehicles was as close as I ever got), was never in danger, and so on. But it was no picnic, either: severe and extended boredom can be just as damaging as actual trauma, and the psychological abuse inherent in military life was constant. And things weren’t entirely safe: my unit had two suicides during the work-up, and given the state of my mental health, I was never all that unlikely to have joined them.
The whole experience did me no immediate good, but as an experience with disillusionment with and escaping from an all-consuming self-admiring institution, it was a pretty decent dry run for my exit from Mormonism a few years later. And, as I had expected, it got me a year’s salary (which was probably the majority of the money I’d made in my life up to that point), and a lifetime of monthly disability payments and free health insurance. So I really can’t say I completely regret it.
​
The movie I’ve chosen to commemorate this anniversary is Green Zone, because it came out shortly after I came back, and I’d always wanted to see it, and I’d heard that it took an interesting angle on the whole mess, and I’d heard that it was pretty good (which is a rare quality among Iraq War movies, which have, shall we say, a mixed record ). And it’s pretty good, though of course it has some issues.
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The best thing about it is how it nails the look and feel of the military occupation. The movie abounds with details large and small that just look exactly right, from US troops driving green Humvees with no doors and unprotected gun turrets* to piles of Pizza-Hut-labeled shipping containers at the airport to one of them carrying around a bottle of chewing-tobacco spit to the use of the then-new Blue Force Tracker technology. Greg Kinnear as the villain of the piece looks exactly like he should, a completely nondescript bureaucrat that would never get a second look at any white-collar office in America, incongruously transplanted into a blood-soaked conflict in an environment where only fools and the extraordinarily pampered (he is both, of course) dress like that. And I didn’t know I needed to see exactly what the Google homepage looked like in 2003, but I did, and the movie delivered.
It’s also a very good look at the culture of the US military; the briefing with Colonel Bethel is pretty spot-on (except for the one guy interrupting to speak the truth; that pretty much never happens). It’s a bit optimistic to assume that a random US military unit would have even one Arabic speaker in it, but the movie makes up for it by having him only know a dialect that’s completely useless in Iraq. The soldier who argues with Damon and tells him that the reasons for going to war don’t matter to him struck me as a perfect distillation of the me-first attitude that the US military explicitly teaches its members: the “My only job is to get home safe” dogma was basically a part of the official training materials, very much to the detriment of accomplishing any particular mission beyond that (and of course no one ever wants to talk about how obviously cowardly and selfish such an attitude is).
The movie also does well with points of view from outside of the US military, namely the absolute terror of being an Iraqi unfortunate enough to fall into US hands during the occupation, and the possibly greater terror of being on the ground when the Americans started bombing or disbanded the Iraqi army and purged the civil service, which this movie treats as an irrefutable sign of the apocalypse. Not that any of that took any great insight to determine in 2010, years after it became clear what US detention was like and how foolish it was to send thousands of unhappy armed men out into the streets with nothing to do, but it’s still good to see it stated so plainly.
One aspect that does not look so good is the trademark Paul Greengrass shaky-cam technique; it’s tolerable in the actual action scenes, which are supposed to be stressful and chaotic, but in the opening scene, in which the ‘action’ mostly involves men walking quickly down crowded hallways,** it really doesn’t work. I do wonder how Greengrass does it; does he plan and rehearse the camera movements, or just have the actors do their thing while someone waves the camera around randomly? One analysis of one of Greengrass’s Bourne movies pointed out that it seems that the camera can’t predict the characters’ movements, which adds to the sense of uncertainty and danger; I wonder how closely Greengrass controls the camera’s ‘random’ movements, and what he thinks he’s saying with them.
There are other moments that fall short of the movie’s best moments of authenticity: Damon’s first scene, in which he explains (over the radio, no less!) where his team is going and what they’ll be doing there is pure Hollywood bullshit; any such explanation would be given (likely multiple times) well before the mission actually started, and the team will try to minimize radio use while out in the field. And that’s not the only moment of clumsy exposition; once that mission fails to find anything of use, Damon laments “That’s the third one in a row,” to a roomful of guys who’ve been on all the same missions and all presumably know exactly how many of them there have been. On that same mission, someone, for some reason, uses a Geiger counter to analyze a suspected chemical weapons site, which…what?
The movie’s second-strongest sympathetic character is a CIA ‘Middle-East expert’ that knows everything he needs to know and that no one listens to. While I don’t doubt that no one important listened to anyone who knew what was going on, the thing-knower being a CIA agent that the CIA chose to send to Baghdad seems unlikely; were there any such thing-knowers left in the CIA in 2003? If so, why would leadership (which was fully behind the WMD hoax) send such an ‘unreliable’ person to such a sensitive post? Surely they knew there was a risk of him doing exactly what he ended up doing, and would have kept him as far from the action as possible.***
And how and why does he have such detailed information at his fingertips about the movements of people that don’t officially concern him? That information would be a closely guarded secret that he has no plausible official need to know. And why the hell does he dare take a very important phone call, which concerns a blatantly illegal operation he’s running off the books, on speaker in a room that’s crowded with god knows who that he very obviously can’t necessarily trust?
Once he makes contact with Damon, he sets up a meeting in the most secure part of the infamous Green Zone, which Damon is somehow able to access with minimal trouble. That strikes me as outrageously implausible; the highest security I ever experienced in Iraq was about 37 levels lower than the Green Zone (where American civilians could expect to live and work in pretty much complete safety), and even there I had to show my dog tags and scan my ID to enter the gym or the chow hall. Green Zone security would emphatically not just wave through any random US military vehicle or personnel that showed up at the gate. Damon would have to show some kind of proof that he belongs there, and since he’s going to an unauthorized meeting with a civilian far outside his chain of command, he just wouldn’t have that, and the gate guards would turn him away.
At that meeting, the CIA guy instructs Damon to get out of uniform, which is wise, but we never find out where Damon gets the civilian clothes and the civilian body armor we see him wearing right after. (I doubt he would have brought civvies with him for his invasion deployment, and even military body armor was pretty hard to come by in Iraq in 2003.) But also I understand why the movie felt it didn’t have time for a deep dive into this question. What it leads to is egregious, though; in the movie’s climactic scene, Damon, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a clearly non-American weapon he stole from a local, runs through a combat situation involving US troops who spot him from a helicopter…and they somehow assume that he’s an American who’s on their side. What makes them think that? Did all US troops in Iraq in 2003 have implanted RFID chips that all US night-vision scopes could pick out from a distance? (No. No they did not.) Nothing at all that they can see indicates that Damon is American, but even if they knew he was American, he’s actually working against those particular US troops (who are very explicitly there to kill the man that Damon is trying to contact and rescue), and so there’s still no reason to identify him as a ‘friendly.’ This is a most unfortunate misstep, because doing it more realistically (having the US troops not know who Damon is, assume he’s their enemy, and act accordingly) would actually better serve the movie’s general theme of disunity and confusion.
Those same US troops are first seen arriving in a helicopter that suddenly arrives from below the not-very-high high ground that Damon is standing on, which means they must have been flying very low indeed (like, below rooftop level) over a very urban area, which is ridiculous; and without anyone hearing them approach from miles away, which is even more ridiculous.**** But those same US troops also drive around in Humvees at night with their headlights blazing, which is just dumb enough to be real. But what’s way too smart to be real is the timing of that helicopter arrival; Damon apprehends an important individual, and those troops (who are also looking for that person for unrelated reasons) somehow know about that and are able to arrive instantly, which…rather stretches the bounds of plausibility.
There are also some timeline issues, which are bad to have in a movie that is so closely tied to historical events on very specific dates. The invasion began on March 19, as seen in the first scene. Then we skip forward to ‘four weeks later,’ around April 16. The rest of the movie seems to take place over only a few days, and yet prominent plot points include George W. Bush’s (spit) Mission Accomplished speech (which happened on May 1), and the CPA’s dissolution of the Iraqi state apparatus (which happened on May 23). In the movie, those 22 days seem to pass in a matter of hours.
Also, and this is unbelievably petty of me, somewhere in the Green Zone, sometime at least as late as April 16, we catch a glimpse of someone watching a college basketball game (UCLA vs. Oregon, if I’m not mistaken) on TV. The final game of the 2003 NCAA tournament was played on April 7, and didn’t involve either team: Oregon lost to Utah in the first round, and UCLA didn’t even make the tournament, so that game is misplaced in time by at least a month.
​
Around the time it came out, I heard that this movie was a kind of Inglourious Basterds treatment of the Iraq War. While it’s certainly not NOT that (in that it’s an optimistic fantasy that revises well-known historical events about which there is little cause for optimism), it’s also different in that it doesn’t depart from the historical events nearly as much. There really was a ‘Magellan’ figure in real life, but he was called ‘Curveball,’ and, despite being pretty different from the version in the movie, he had precisely the same effect of being cited in favor of the invasion. In the movie, Magellan is an Iraqi Army officer who secretly meets with Americans to tell them that Iraq has no WMD programs. The Americans then falsely report that he’s told them Iraq has WMDs, and the war machine’s gears start to turn and the Americans plot to kill Magellan so he won’t reveal what he actually told them. In reality, Curveball was an Iraqi exile who actually told the Germans (not the Americans) what the Americans wanted to hear, because he figured it would make his asylum application (he’d fled Iraq after embezzling money from his government employer) easier. I’m not sure why the movie felt the need to change these details; an Iraqi who lies for his own gain is at least as interesting a character as an Iraqi who tells a truth that certain people are determined to disbelieve, and what US intelligence did with Curveball’s obviously flawed reports was hardly any more honest than blatantly telling the world he’d said something he never said.
The movie isn’t really clear what it thinks Damon’s heroism amounts to. He leaks his final report to every news outlet he can think of. Perhaps one of them will publish, but perhaps not. News outlets strive to scoop each other, but sometimes, as the real-life Iraq War amply shows, they collude to cover things up, especially when it’s something as explosive and ‘unpatriotic’ as “The whole reason for this very popular war was a complete lie.” Furthermore, how credible is Damon’s information? It’s based entirely on conversations he says he had with an enemy general who is now dead. No one has any reason to believe these conversations took place, or if they did that the general said what Damon says he said, or if he did that he wasn’t mistaken or lying.
But even if someone does publish, it will make no difference. US troops are already in Baghdad, and the CPA has already taken the plunge that made civil war inevitable. A report (even one whose credibility is bulletproof, which this one very much is not) that the whole war was based on a lie will not change anything, any more than it did in real life when the lack of WMDs and the falsity of the pre-war intelligence became similarly clear on a similar timeline.
In any case, Damon’s Army career is over. He leaked a very sensitive internal document, using an email account under his own name. He might not be guaranteed to go to prison, but he has to be in a shitload of trouble. The Army quietly booting him out and never speaking of this again is the absolute best-case scenario for him.
The movie’s two main sympathetic characters take turns reminding each other to not be naïve, but the movie itself is pretty naïve if it thinks that what we see is a happy ending. Or maybe it’s not meant to be a happy ending, and I’m the one being naïve.
In any case, I was expecting the SF team led by Jason Isaacs to kill Damon and then, upon realizing who he was, hype him up as a hero who gave his life for his country, thus completely obscuring the very unpatriotic truth about what he died doing and why. You know, a slightly worse version of exactly what the real-life Army actually did with the actual case of Pat Tillman.
​
The movie also runs into trouble upon consideration of its moral perspective; movies love the idea of someone going rogue, breaking whatever rules get in the way of ‘doing the right thing,’ as Damon does throughout the movie. But that’s the whole problem with the Iraq War, isn’t it? Government officials decided that brutalizing Iraq was ‘the right thing,’ and they broke any number of rules of humanity and decency (not to mention actual laws) to make it happen. They went rogue exactly as Damon does, so who can really say that he’s right and they’re wrong?
His confrontation with Amy Ryan’s reporter character also struck me as backwards; the movie wants us to see it as Damon, the heroic teller of inconvenient truths, heroically confronting the corrupt and decadent and much more powerful peddler of lies. But it’s really not that at all; she got lied to just as hard as he did, and he’s a heavily armed agent of the state security apparatus upon which her life and safety directly depend. It’s pretty ridiculous to see him as any kind of underdog in that situation.
​
Some stray observations:
It’s pretty funny that the early scene at the airport shows the blown-up remains of a large cargo plane, given the famous fate of the An-225 in that other, more recent, blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turns into a hideous quagmire.
I was surprised by how much of the spoken Arabic I understood; I ‘studied’ Arabic for two years in college, and didn’t really get anywhere with it, but there were multiple instances where seeing the English word in the subtitles brought to mind a particular Arabic word that the characters promptly said. (These include ‘ichwan’ for ‘brothers,’ ‘kul il balad’ for ‘the entire country,’ ‘bernamaj’ for ‘program,’ and some others.)
Ben Sliney is in the cast as a random bureaucrat in the background of one of the Green Zone scenes. This is the air-traffic-control official who gave the ground-all-flights order on 9/11, and then legendarily played himself in the movie United 93. This is his only other non-documentary film credit, so I hope he kept his day job.
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*By the time I got to Iraq, the Humvees had all been painted desert-tan and heavily armored, but my understanding is that this change did not take hold until like 2007.
**In a manner unfortunately reminiscent of George Bluth Senior ‘running with great intensity.’ Yes, this is foreshadowing. It is inevitable, because despite its ambitions, this movie proves that the definitive Hollywood treatment of the Iraq War is still selected episodes of Arrested Development. (And Generation Kill, which I considered revisiting for this anniversary post.)
***I do enjoy how Kinnear frames the idea of people who know things: they’re ‘dinosaurs’ with heads full of ‘old ideas,’ which sounds like he’s being boldly innovative and courageously resisting hidebound bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness. But of course the ‘old ideas’ are things like ‘Know what the hell is going on’ and ‘Don’t assume you can simply kill anyone you don’t like,’ and Kinnear’s ‘bold innovations’ are just clueless wishful thinking.
****Movies very often miss this detail, but helicopters are really loud. Almost as loud as gunfire, though of course movies also very often fail to convey how loud gunfire is. It is impossible for a low-flying helicopter to sneak up like that on anyone with functional ears. They’d be drowning out any attempt at conversation before they got within hundreds of yards.

Hi everyone, I currently have 2 offers in hand and I am very confused as to which one I would be better off accepting (Both these jobs are based in the Middle East and in the same location but I will list the salaries in USD as well as I know a lot of you are based in the US)
Offer 1:
Company info: Global Supply chain & logistics industry leader
Job: Finance Leadership Program (2 Year program)
Salary: 16,000 (about $4350)
Offer 2:
Company info: Leading Fintech company in this region (specifically a BNPL company)
Job: Corporate Finance Analyst
Salary: 13,000 (about $3500)
​
Just based on money the Leadership Program is the clearly better option, but I feel the Corporate Finance Analyst role would enable me to have higher earnings potential in the future. So which one should I pick?

Hi everyone! I am currently a risk and regulatory consultant for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies doing mostly compliance work. This is my first job post undergrad. I have been here 6 months but already want out. I want to not have to worry about utilization and be back into the science field more than designing compliance programs and policies. I have two bachelors degrees in Biomedical Engineering, and Immunology and Infectious disease, as well as minors in Biology, and Bioethics and Medical Humanities. I am looking to switch jobs at the one year mark. I need to be able to work remotely full time with no travel. Does anyone have any roles or companies in mind that would suit my background? I really appreciate it and know that I am pretty limited based on my experience and needing remote work. Salary is also an important factor. I’m currently making 93k and know I probably won’t find that much elsewhere, but I just can’t do the terrible hours anymore. Thanks!

This was incredibly hard for me to write and admit., I'm sure I have forgotten important information and have errors.
DEEP IN DEBT DIARY TEMPLATE
Title: I am 33 years old, making $80,000 salary ( just started new job ) plus $21,300. Spouse ( 39 )makes $40 per hour plus $14,200, and we have $77,313 debt not including our mortgage.
SECTION ONE: Background
Job: Project Analyst ( new job ) & GIS Analyst
Industry: Finance
Location - MCOL, rural Texas
Context - I have worked for my MIL since 2015 with no benefits. My husband has worked for her since 2013 with no benefits. We were led to believe we would take over the business and have a really good secure income. Instead, we have made less than others in our same careers or near the same, but with no benefits, no paid holidays etc. We attempted to get the plan of action for us to take over starting in 2017, but were met with aggression and personality issues each time. It’s been a long mentally exhausting 5+ years. I have finally broken away.
SECTION TWO: Current Debt and Assets
Credit card debt: Total Credit Card Debt $31,606.30. Breakdown: Card 1 ($10,799.30 out of $14,500) Card 2 ( $17,002.84 out of $18,000 ) Card 3 ( $0 out $0 ) Card 4 ( $3,805 out of $5,000)
Personal loans: $0
Medical debt: $0 paid down from $18,000
Student loan debt (for what degree). $12,534.18 Bachelors in Engineering Technology. Already paid off over $15,000. His grandparents and parents paid for his undergrad; he saved up ( before we met ) and paid for his master's.
Remaining mortgage balance if you’re a homeowner. $298,000 remaining. Originally 318,000 at 4.84%. Yearly Dividends are around $3,500-$3,800.
Auto loans: Truck $19,781.71 u/2.25%, small SUV $13,390.64 @ 2.25%
Any other type of debt and how you accumulated it (e.g., payday loans, title loans). N/a
Retirement balance (and how you got there). Around $5000-$6,000 for both of us. This was from putting some into accounts we opened a few years ago.
Equity $502,000
Our first house was purchased for $82,000 in December 2010 with low interest. We sold it 2016 for $115,000 to buy our land.
To buy our land, we put some of the equity towards credit card debt and the rest towards purchasing the land for $150,000 at a 15 yr fixed rate of around 5% interest rate. We “rebuilt” our house starting Nov 2019 with a refinance and construction loan in one. We didn’t put any down, it was 90% loan to value. The house we built made the value ( once complete ) more than the loan. Currently, the estimated appraisal is around $800,000 leaving $498,000 in equity. We didn’t purchase and build in a typical way. We bought the 45 acres for 150k 4% or so15 year loan 3 years before refinancing with a construction loan. We did put down $15,000 to purchase the land originally.
Savings account balance: $200
Checking account balance: averages $4000-$5000 to cover all bills etc.
Any other assets that are applicable to you.
SECTION THREE: Income
Main Job Monthly Take Home aka Net Pay I just started my new job so I don’t know what the health insurance etc will look like. My salary is $80,000. My insurance is 80% covered. My husband makes $40/hour with no benefits besides two weeks of paid vacation.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home
We have owned a business for 10 years. It is a contract that has been $30,000 per year until this year; it is now $35,500. This is very part-time, part of the year. We have always worked on this in our free time, until 2021 when I did work it as my main job for that year and a half. We have had our real estate licenses since 2016; we didn’t make any money until 2019. It ranged from $15,000-$30,000, was in 2021. He is quitting real estate and I recently also quit.
Any Other Monthly Income Here
N/A
SECTION FOUR: Monthly Expenses
Mortgage $1676
Home insurance Annually $3,000
Property Taxes Annually $3,300
Private Health Insurance $580
Additional Retirement contribution N/A
Savings contribution N/A
Investment contribution N/A
Private School $350 plus $100 for aftercare
Trash Pickup $89/quarter
Husbands Life Insurance $51 monthly
My Life Insurance Annually $180
Debt payments We put extra money towards debt and get out of credit card debt most years, then go back into it. We paid the minimum from when I quit working full time for MIL until now.
Donations (please estimate monthly) I donate a lot; I’ve been on a minimalist journey for years and donate nearly everything. I used to also donate to St Jude's $25 a month.
Electricity averages $200-$275.
Water Averages $45-50
Sewage on a septic system
Internet $71 it will go up to $97 soon.
Cellphone $240 per quarter Mint
Subscriptions Apple TV $6.99, Apple Care $10.81, Discovery+ $6, Hulu Disney Bundle $5.39, Amazon $8 ( sister is taking over ), Netflix another sister usually pays for this,
Pet expenses Approximately $50
Car payment / insurance small SUV $317, truck $526. Yearly auto-ins. $1,000 for the truck, $600 suv
Parking/toll/gas/other transportation costs. $500-$700 we live out of town. It’s a 45-mile drive one way to go to a decent grocery store or to buy most things. Our town only has a tiny walmart ( limited options and bad produce ) and a very expensive small grocery store. He does get paid mileage but also has to have a 4x4 truck for work; although he doesn't work in the woods most days.
Regular therapy/other routine healthcare or wellness treatments. No insurance to cover it, but grandfathered in at $75 when I go. I/we used to go once or twice a month for years on and off. Our daughter did see a therapist last summer. She was $125 every two weeks for a couple of months.
Beauty/grooming not enough, honest. I may get a haircut twice a year and he gets his cut maybe once every few months. This will become more scheduled.
Paid hobbies nodda
Food/Drink Average $800 a month on groceries but during the worst times for us, $2000. I want to get this lower; we don’t buy meat so I feel like we need to do better planning.
Fun / Entertainment $0
Random House/Property stuff Averages $200 a month +
Clothes $0. Our daughter has a uniform for school; I tend to buy when on clearance. I’ve rarely bought anything since quitting MIL.
Any other expense that's relevant to you.
SECTION FIVE: [Write your Deep in Debt Diary here]
Please provide a detailed history of your debt accumulation and payments, including your pay at the time, any strategies you used to target your debt, and anecdotes about your experience. Example:
2010-2014 Worked as a draftsman while getting my associates in drafting. I was honest with them from the beginning about going back for a bachelor's. The most I made was $15/ hour with benefits only in the last year of employment. We started our contract work in 2013 at $25,000 per year.
2014 went back to college for a bachelor's degree and got my first real credit card. I don’t recall my balance when I started working on it but I would say it was over 3k. I also learned he had over 5k in cc debt when we started talking about combining our finances and working on debt. He was making $33 per hour with no benefits. Our contract was $25,000 per year which was broken up into equal payments over the year.
2016 - 2019 We combined out income and I took over finances completely with no help. I agreed to join the family business after finishing my degree in May 2016 and also got my real estate license ( boss MIL was also a broker). Worked full time from May until end of November when our child was born. I made $15-$25 in that time. We paid $800 per month for private insurance and had a traumatic delivery that came to another $18,000 after insurance coverage. I was scared of being one alone with my child; I had postpartum but didn’t tell anyone nor fully wanted to admit it to myself. Our daughter wasn’t easy going even as a baby, she had to be on my body at all times to be happy. She still gets bored easily. We spent a lot of money on stuff to entertain her at home; she never liked anything, not even a swing. We hired a nanny to be at our office with us full time from age 1 month to 3. We paid her $10 per hour in cash. Our daughter started pre-k at a private school at 3. $350 a month. Debt varied as always. I was at the office 40-45 hours but my boss used me to do real estate stuff she didn’t want to do which cut my hours to 30-32 per week hourly; I was never compensated for all of the real estate admin and website building. We both had our real estate licenses but never made anything until 2019-2022. It took up 8+ hours or so of my weekly hours then a lot of our weekends. In 2016, our contract work increased to $30,000 and payments changed to larger payments during our busy time of the year. I feel like that was when we started relying on that income to bail us out of debt.
Nov 2019-April 2020. Refinanced our land and did a construction loan to rebuild our house. Our daughter was out of school and at home with me working which was very hard. Our house was finished April 2020 two weeks before everything started shutting down further it seems. Debt was maybe around 10k because we forgot to plan for the carport that still doesn’t have a slab. It’s just dirt.
2020-2021 We told our boss MIL we were leaving the business. We were tired of the stress and chaos with her and low wages with no benefits. We were given raises ( $33 and $40 per hour ) to keep us there. I told her several months later in a formal notice I was quitting. I was guilt tripped and manipulated to stay; she stated we would make the changes necessary and I would start taking over her job. Of course nothing at all changed. I was a wreck and quit without notice 6 months later after trying again 2 months before because I was a serious mess. This hurt us financially because I wasn’t taking care of our finances and was too upset. I did take over our business contract work so we didn’t have to work on that during our free time. My husband was also a mess on and off, so we kept an emergency fund to support him quitting and finding a job. He told her twice he was quitting but could never follow through. We used up our emergency fund because we weren’t paying attention. Somehow spending 2k a month on groceries for several months. I hate that I have no clue how it happened and how much food waste we had.
2021-2023 I didn’t work for MIL from May 2021-October 2021 when I went back but only 10 hours per week. I went back because we needed the income. I typically worked 12 hours a week until leaving recently. We decided to move to Michigan; I feel like i sacrificed a lot staying in Texas ( I never wanted to ) and putting up with everything working for his mother and all the chaos and control that came with that. We will be moving end of May beginning on June. He still works for her and doesn’t have a set plan.
Reflection
I feel like our lives have been a wreck the last 3-6 years and I refuse to fall back into it. I feel like not having benefits has hurt us more than we ever imagined it would. Just this year so far we’ve paid $2400 for his emergency root canal and crown. $400 for a consultation and CT scan for my nose for sinus issues. $3500 for a new fence for our dogs. It seems to never end.
I was upset with myself for awhile; I am trying hard to focus on the future. We need to learn to plan and save for large expenses. I am highly considering separating our finances and splitting everything proportionally. He has yet to actually help me with managing our finances although I have mentioned and asked numerous times. He is also supposed to be evaluated for ADHD. He does try and he’s a great partner besides his mom problems and not helping with finances. He thinks just not spending money is enough for our finances. Our therapist thinks us getting away ( even if it is only part of the year ) will change my husband and his dynamic with his mother. I hope he will fall in love with where we are moving, and agree to stay there permanently and sell our home/property in Texas.
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The above template was modified, with permission, from MoneyDiariesACTIVE.

Hi everyone, I'm going through a bit of a hussle with skat (DK) and my situation regarding my income. I receive a scholarship (stipend) from Lund University, which is tax free, since it's a gift/help for my "education" as a postdoc. All my paperwork is OK in Sweden, but I've got the issue that I don't know how to declare it in Skat (dk). Everytime I call, help people from skat answer something different. I don't want to risk making mistakes and the having an issue with the law or paying unnecessarily.
I know it shouldn't be taxed, but I don't get how to declare it since it is not legally a salary and I'm not "employed" (public institutions doing tax evasion I guess). Anyone has gone through similar situations? Any lead would be appreciated!!

This is more of a rant/search for solidarity, but I'm torn. I'm a Report for America corps member working in a Gannett newsroom. My newsroom was supposed to fund half of my salary for at least two years. It didn't. So now my RFA contract is ending after just a year. This is a job that I literally moved across the country for and have worked really hard to do.
And my editors say I do it well. So, while they can't keep me on as their RFA reporter, they have offered me a permanent position as a "News Now" (breaking/trending news) reporter.
The pros: It's a job. My colleagues are talented and devoted. My editor is a kind and compassionate leader, albeit a little old-school. I wouldn't have to worry about relocating again after just a year.
The cons: My salary is ABYSMAL. I know none of us do this for the money, but I'm a 29-year-old professional drowning in student loan and credit card debt (accumulated, in large part, from this cross-country move). I should be building a life for myself; instead I'm barely surviving. I told myself I'd make it work for RFA because I love the mission and believe in my beat. It's a harder pill to swallow for an arguably more exhausting beat. BUT. A low salary is better than no salary at all, I guess, which could be the alternative.
I've also been doing this for a while. People keep telling me that the breaking news desk is a great way to learn. But I already did that, for four years, in my hometown. I got a master's in journalism (and accumulated more debt lol) because I wanted to stop doing that. I wanted to do more.
Also also... Gannett sucks lol. It's a reaper. Report for America sheltered me from the layoffs and furloughs (three rounds in the nine short months I've been here). I worry about working for Gannett without Report for America's protection. Morale is low in my newsroom overall. I know a better model and world is out there and I'd love to find it.
My editors want an answer ASAP. Either I take this job and bite the bullet for a while, or... I don't, and I risk unemployment in June. I've put other applications out into the world, but I doubt I'll hear from them before the end of the week (which is when I'm supposed to decide). Is it worth it to take a job just for the sake of having a job? Or do I take advantage of this exit ramp and hope this propels me into something better (with effort, of course)? Any success stories about lives after Gannett to share?

A small Arkansas police department is bracing to lose more than half of its police force after a local city council rejected approving a pay raise for the police chief. The Parkin Police Department has a seven-member staff, but is at risk of losing at least four people over the salary dispute. The police chief … Continue reading Arkansas town has almost no police protection after tiff over chief’s raise: ‘Matter of life or death’

I have interview lined up at Senior Analyst at Agoda ( Bangkok Location) probably Marketing team. Recruiter is asking me for the expected salary. What is the salary range one can expect at Agoda ? Also what is the general living cost in Bangkok ? Considering moving to a different country I need to be sure of pay otherwise moving to interview will be waste of time. Also considering the PPP Bangkok is little but expensive than India.

I’m currently making $65k and only have an associates degree, but want to know what certifications I can get to further help me earn more. I’m slated to starts Bachelor’s in Data Analytics in September, but want to know what I can get before then incase school doesn’t work out?

For someone who is 100% set on PI, what are the risks of going to GULC ($$) and relying on LRAP/PSLF?
(Aside from the $75,000 salary cap for full repayment)
It seems too good to be true almost?

Job Title	Company	Location	Country	Skills
Data Analyst Intern (APAC)	foodpanda	Singapore	Singapore	Machine Learning, Tableau, Python
Jr. Data Analyst / Full-time (Remote)	Bblue Dream	Birmingham	United Kingdom	SQL
Data Analyst (They/She/He)	Glovo	Łódź	Poland	Python
Data Engineer (Job ID MK)	Talent Corner HR Services Pvt Ltd	Pune	India	SQL, Java, Python
Mid-Level Data Engineer - Python/ETL/MongoDB/AWS	Motion Recruitment	Washington	United States	Python, Scala, SQL
Python Data Engineer (60-100%)	CLEMAP	Zurich	Switzerland	SQL, Python, Scala
Data Analyst IV (Healthcare Analytics)(SQL, Terada...	Get It Recruit - Information Technology	St Petersburg	Remote	Business Intelligence, SQL, Modeling
Big Data Engineer	IBM	Greater Kolkata Area	India	ETL, SQL, Python
Data Analyst II	GTT	Florida	United States
Machine Learning Engineer (Risk Control) - Global ...	ByteDance	Singapore	Singapore	Machine Learning, Scala
Senior Data Engineer - all genders	Die Karrierearchitekten	Vienna	Austria	Python, Power BI, Linux
Data Scientist	Talent Search People	Barcelona	Spain	Tableau
Sr Big Data Engineer	Palo Alto Networks	Melbourne	Australia	SQL, AWS, Scala
(Remote Part-time) Clinical Data Analyst	Doctor Care Anywhere	London Area	United Kingdom	SPSS, Data Mining
Data Engineer	EssenceMediacom UK	Manchester	United Kingdom	Python
Data Engineer	Live Nation Entertainment	West Hollywood	Remote	Spark, SQL, AWS
Data Engineer	Cognizant	Sydney	Australia	SQL, AWS
Data Scientist	Ford Motor Company	Dearborn	Remote	Python, SQL, Modeling
Data Engineer	Resource Informatics Group, Inc	Dallas	United States	Python, AWS, Java
Data Scientist Forecasting	bol.com	Utrecht	Netherlands	Machine Learning
Senior Data Engineer	Outset Medical, Inc.	San Jose	United States	SQL, Scala
Data Analyst	Spirit Health	England	United Kingdom

Hi, here are 22 New Data Science, Data Engineering and Machine Learning jobs.
For more, check our Google sheet with more opportunities in Data Science and Machine Learning (updated each week) here
Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers!

I’m a career shifter from my 4 years corporate job and transitioned to IT as Business Analyst. I had an interview mid last year and at that time I just gained one year of experience as BA.
It’s an hour interview, we’re in the latter part, and was asked why I deserve that 30-50% increase as my asking expected salary.
Honestly, I’m stunned by that question and caught off guard as I don’t know what to answer. I just answered it by saying that “I think it fair as it is the usual rate if you get promoted” 🙈🙈🙈
Then next day I was told that I passed the interview and they’ll schedule a meeting with the Project POC (from EU) but eventually I didn't heard from them as it kept rescheduled and cancelled since the POC just came from vacation and was busy. After a month they reach out again and asking if I’m still interested and I just told them that I accepted an offer from a different company. The offer was actually almost 100% increase.
So fast forward eight months later, they reached out again If I’m open for new opportunities. It is quite enticing as the Job might requires onsite client visit in EU.
I really want to shoot my shot but I’m hesitant as the role is for Senior Level and I only have less than 2 years IT experience.
I also don’t know what to answer incase they asked again that question of why do i deserve that increase.
My intrusive thoughts telling me to respond “It doesn’t make sense to move to another company for the same salary duhhh”

I applied to EY for Technology Consulting however after my group interview they told me I need to pick another role because the Tech Con stream is now full. They offered a few different roles, Tech risk, transformation architecture/delivery, and data and analytics, however I'm not sure what is most similar to Tech Consulting and what role might allow me to pivot into it later, if that is possible - Has anyone had luck changing to a consulting role later in recent years? From what I have seen tech consulting seems to have a good blaance of client facing work and technical reqirements but this might be incorrect as I don't have anyone to talk to about what these roles entail on a daily bases in the UK. The roles for each are pretty vague and repeat you'll be working with tech and clients to solve problems, but the day to day and how involved you are with technical tasks is not outlined - risk is looking at client tech stacks, delivery is working on those techstacks etc but how technical each role is and what stage of the project you are involved in is difficult to see eg. Do architects just layout requirements for the delivery transformation team, or do they stay on the whole project. Do risk just also help to outline changes and move onto the next project or do they stay throughout and help with technical chages? There are also no salaries listed and finding what the base and projected averages are, so is is difficult to judge how involved a role is based on salary and what the roles will look like in terms of respincilibty and .
From what I have found online and reddit comments, delivery might be more like Tech Con with the aspect of helping transition clients to different technologies. Risk look like it might be more advisory and investigative rather than doing hands on work which I think might be boring after a while if I'm not doing anything technical and partiucaly if I'm going to be regurgitating data governance procedures - are there opportunities to specialise or is the role broad throughout the entire career? I also don't know what the salaries look like for these roles (UK based, so lower across the board of roles) nor the carrer progression and what it looks like beyond people manging - is the salary and senior responsibilities wildly different between these two roles? Is there more technical work in delivery later and more client facing work in risk, or do the roles follow on from the work mostly the same but with more team management later, for example?
I'm interested in both client and technical work so I am also considering data and analytics, however I'm less interest in making models and dashboards which I feel like grads may get pigeonholed into. It also seems less likely that I would be able to pivot out to tech consulting if the operuntiy arises, as I would imagine the role is less client facing and this might impact expirnce necessary to move. I have some limited exprience with cloud engineering but would like to continue learning since it's something I enjoy, and with the current redundancies, if I was let go in the future I could continue as a data engineer. I'm not sure what ex-delivery or risk roles look like in the UK and how easy it is to find work in the same or similar roles and what carrer changes or progress looks like. I've only just been given notice and have until Friday to decide so I'm trying to gather as much info about these new roles as possible since I'm not familiar with them at all.
In terms of work from home I'm guessing d&a has the biggest opportunity for this with something like delivery and needing to train clients as least? Or do they all offer roughly the same wfh opportunities?
Any guidance about roles similar to consulting, salaries, day to day work, or general information about these roles in the UK specifically would be greatly appreciated.

I am very new to this. I have been listening to reddit stories on YouTube and have been really interested even addicted to listening to all the relationship stories. I realize that the stories I hear on YouTube have been curated and only the best or most popular comments are the ones read aloud. but I've heard so much good advice that I was hoping to bring my family relationship here and hopes to get some good advice. I have to admit I'm a little afraid of the hate that I hear about but anyway let's get started.
I, female, 50ish have a really big involved family. Even though my family identifies strongly with our heritage, and even though many of us are bilingual, we are every bit Americans and have been here, in the US (legally) for many generations. Most of my family is also in general very good looking, healthy, strong people and are very proud of this. When I say we are very good looking, robust and vigorous people I'm telling you this because this is pertinent to the story.
Needless to say my family is full of really big personalities. I myself have always been shy and introverted. My family is loud and boisterous and they call themselves Bigger than Life. My family refers to our collective and individual good looks as "the family blessing". I have never really enjoyed the big family parties and gatherings over the years. Until recently I always just chalked it up to not enjoying big events or loud and boisterous interactions, but lately I have figured out that I honestly really don't even like most of my family. Not only are they big and proud and loud but they are ableists in the worst way. Let me explain.
Okay I just had to erase the last paragraph because I really don't want my family to recognize themselves in this story so I can't tell you some of the background. What I can tell you is that I have a cousin, let's call her Chelsea. Chelsea was born with a disability. Her parents did not fight for custody as my big brawny, good looking uncle could not handle the fact that she was disabled and gave her up to her Mother completely. He says it's because he was baby trapped. He was forced to pay child support. We did not see Chelsea for many many years as she lived with her Mother and her Father was loath to bring her around. (Chelsea would disagree with this part as in her mind and heart her Father loves her and maybe he does in his own way but, I can’t see it) Not only that, when Chelsea reached adulthood at the age of 22, my uncle sued her, Yes! his own daughter, for back child support. He asked her to testify that she was perfectly able to pay and therefore he won. Because she had a good paying job and a Pell Grant to begin an education I guess the Judge decided that she was set and could pay the back child support which she did.
Chelsea is now in her mid to late 30s and has had a very hard life due to her disability. She has not been able to make a salary much over the poverty line and has experienced a lot of discrimination and been passed up for promotions and even forced out of jobs because of ableists prejudice against her disability and Etc. Chelsea is single and lives alone unlike every other member of our family who has parents, husbands, wives, siblings and children. I don't want to say exactly what her disability is again because I want to keep anonymity, however I will say that her disability is apparent to anyone who looks at her and it does make it difficult for her mobility. She does use Mobility AIDS but is unable to drive herself anywhere.
Recently one of my other cousins had a big wedding. This cousin, Brittany, has had both her mother, my aunt and her father with her all her life doting on her every achievement including her dominating in sports as she is big, brawny, beautiful and brainy, basically Bigger than Life. The wedding was beautiful and she was supported by her entire…Our entire, huge family.
One of my Aunty's who is now in her late eighties came to the wedding and tottered about as she has balance issues and trouble with her feet, but she refused to use her cane or bring her walker because in her words, " I would rather die than be seen like that” that meaning using a Mobility device, despite being a fall risk.
At one point the wedding party was to be transported to a second venue. But something had happened and transport was delayed. No one considered my cousin, Chelsea or my Aunty (who refused to use her cane and so was a fall risk), or my other cousin who had sprained her ankle or the bride's mother's best friend who has a crippling disease that she has contracted in her older years that requires her to use a wheelchair. The wedding party was directed to walk to the second venue. I eventually had to speak up for those who could not walk as they were all, every single one of them, not willing to, “mess up the wedding party for everyone else”. The bride's mother's best friend disappeared, I assume because she knew that she wasn't going to be able to make it to the second venue without help. I could tell the bride was not happy that we couldn't just all walk to the next venue and it did seem to mess up the wedding party for everyone else as it took a lot longer for us to wait for transportation. But wait, there's more.
Every time the family was expected to be in a photograph I noticed my cousin Chelsea would get run over, cut in front of and twice she was almost pushed over. She seriously lost her balance on two occasions and was luckily caught by someone one time and was able to rite herself the second time. All she was trying to do was to move to the front to be in the family wedding pictures as she was called to do, but just like being out in the general public, she was worse than disregarded. Worse because she was actually put in danger by able-bodied people pushing past her and not just people, these were Her people, these are Her family. Anyway this isn't even the biggest issue.
The biggest issue is a couple of months down the road when she sent out a family text message. Basically Chelsea was frustrated because she gets left out of a lot of family events because people don't want to give her a ride. She's not told about Family events so that nobody has to worry about who is going to transport her. (But she always finds out after the fact because they post on social media!) she didn't mention that part in her text. What she did mention is that she would like help figuring out how to get rides to family events. She mentioned a previous family event that she was unable to get a ride to. She had asked another cousin, Let's call her Anna, who wasn't able to do it. Chelsea Was frustrated and tired and didn't feel like making 10 phone calls to get a ride so she just gave up after asking Anna. She did mention this in the text and said that she didn't mean to throw Anna under the bus but that she was just letting people know what it's like and how she feels And can she get some help for next time. Anna decided that she HAD been thrown under the bus (metaphorically of course) but you would have thought that she was actually pushed under a real bus the way that she reacted. The story is, after reading Chelsea's text, Anna went into full panic mode gasping for air and went into the fetal position (My mother told me that Anna (a grown, adult woman with a husband, two parents [with money] and great career, also, in the Bigger than Life crowd) was actually in the fetal position because, "Chelsea was mean to her in front of the whole family." There is a whole second text chain of family, that didn't include Chelsea so they could talk about and rally poor Anna.
To be fair, I do not want to discount unseen disabilities like mental illness here, but, rest assured Anna doesn't have any of these issues. Believe me, the whole family would know about it.
Anna's husband then called Chelsea and chewed her out and told her how ungrateful she was and that they would no longer be giving her any rides anywhere because of her behavior. Her behavior being that she sent out a text message asking for help. Not only that but another male cousin called Chelsea and berated her for being so mean to Sweet Anna.
Now, here's the kicker. I'm ready to take my cousin Chelsea and call ourselves a family and disown the rest of the family, but she loves them and she knows they love her, even if they don't know how to show it. I think this reeks of ableism and it makes me sick. I want to know what to do from this point that will help Chelsea and maybe even our family. Because I saw so much good advice here I thought maybe I would try it out. Thank you in advance for anything that you have to say. TLDR My disabled cousin is misunderstood by our ableist family

I see a lot of advice on here for people with a “normal” career progression, which makes sense, since most people will fit it. Slowly making more and more money until you retire.
I am in a different situation. I was hired for a job I was underqualified for and am now making great money, but I just don’t expect it to last. I think it’s more than simple impostor syndrome, I can’t see having this job for more than 3-4 years. I am being paid 2-3x what I was in my previous role, and I expect my income would return to the same if I was laid off.
So given that, I’ve deprioritized TFSA contributions and am focusing on RRSPs. I am in the current highest tax bracket in my province, so barring changes in legislation, I am definitely paying more now than I will in retirement, especially considering my lifestyle.
I did leverage this job to get more house than I would have otherwise bought, though we would still qualify based on my previous income (I just would have been less comfortable with it). So I do also want to pay off as much of my house as possible in the next couple years to de-risk ourselves a bit.
I am 36 and want to retire at 55. Anything else I should be doing? Anything else that is “non-standard” advice that would apply to someone making 2-3x salary for a short window? My wife normally makes a little more than me, but is now making less, any spousal credits or ways to transfer income to her? We have one child, and I can post my full budget if needed.

Hello! I'm a young professional looking to get more info on temp agencies. To give a little background, I've been with the same company since I graduated college (I'm 25, so coming up on 4 years since I graduated at 21) and have moved up the ladder, starting as an intern, and now an analyst. There have been a handful of structural & procedural changes that have been pros and cons, but most have led to a not-so-healthy workplace. I've applied to quite a few jobs in my field and have had interviews, but all jobs have either not met my salary expectations or don't work with my situation. I'm considering a temp agency, but not sure if it's right for me.
Financially, I'm doing ok. I'm moving back home once my apartment lease is over next month so I will not be paying rent, leaving my only liabilities a car payment (450/month with insurance) some credit card debt (under 1,000) and streaming & subs (about 40/month.) For people who have worked with a temp agency, how did it work out for you? I'm in a business related field and my current supervisor came from a temp agency and she says nothing but great things about them. How likely is permanent work? As far as benefits - I can forgo PTO in lieu of working extra hours, and I'm still under my parents health insurance.