pocketmint

Tag: unemployment

1. Pocketmint reboot

   22 October 2011

   Three years ago, in October 2008, the stock market crashed and — not coincidentally, as I was then employed by the brokerage arm of an international bank — I promptly lost my job. The following month my partner Jak took a 10% pay cut, as the market continued dropping and layoffs and hiring freezes broke [...]

2. Less income, more savings

   6 June 2009

   Yesterday I promised to give an update on our personal financial situation and how it’s changed over the last half-year. In November I wrote that we were down to a quarter of our prior income, as Jak’s employer had cut his hours by half just as I’d been summarily dismissed from my full-time job. I [...]

3. Back in the saddle

   5 June 2009

   Well, here we are, seven months after I lost my job, more than six months since my last update. My profession and field — and perhaps also, temperament — is such that employment cycles are inevitable. Full-time job to unemployment to freelance to full-time job and around again. Dot-com boom, dot-com bust, economy surge or [...]

4. I believe this qualifies as an emergency

   14 November 2008

   I’ve been quiet for a while, going through a number of struggles that have left me without the — in the vernacular of my childhood, the ‘gumption’ — to keep writing frequently.  I’m trying really hard to get the spark back now, because I know in the long run the Pocketmint project is important to [...]

5. Inflation or unemployment: pick one

   8 August 2008

   The last time the economy took a sharp downturn it hit me hard. With dot-coms failing right and left, suddenly there was a huge glut of Internet-industry workers. Employment levels took four or five years to fully rebound, during which I got by on intermittent income and credit-card debt. This time, though Jak and I [...]