Thread: Help me avoid living on the streets

If you passed your exams where would you be living? Can you go back and make any excuse to re-take your exams? If not then go back and move in with your dad. If he wants you to try and get him back with your mom and you know it's a waste of time then just tell him you are working on it. You need to get yourself on your feet.

Get a job....

hmm, let's see:

You have the option to move in with your dad while you look for a job and work on your business.
You have the option to get a low-paying job while you look for a better job and work on your business.

Sounds like you have plenty of choices to me. If you end up on the street it's your choice.

Getting a job is fine as long as you don't plan to stay in it forever. Many guys read the fastlane and think that they shouldn't get a job at all. That's wrong.

get 2 jobs.

start somewhere.

get a roof over your head,
get food.

THEN you can consider doing the next thing......

and read alot, since I am betting you will have some time on your hands and no money.

"Im an individualist-anarchist"

When I read this statement my first thought was life is going to be hard for you. Personally I would go live with my father and just act as a messenger as I grabbed 2 jobs and started working on my fast lane business.

Ending up homeless when you have 2 living parents is ridiculous. If you end up homeless in this situation I don't know how you'll last in business over time.

Originally Posted by anarchotrader

All i can think of right now is applying for a job in a fast food joint or offering adult services, neither of which id be too happy with :P I just need to get enough money to pay for food, shelter and have a little left over to try and start a business with/invest.
Any other suggestions?

I'll be blunt, but it's not to be a smart-ass or not put you down, so please don't be offended. Based on what you just said, it sounds like it's time to stop thinking about applying to a fast food joint and just do it already. You need money to survive, and any legal means of keeping yourself fed and sheltered is still a means to the same end: freedom. Sure, you'll hate the job, but if my own experience tells me anything, it's that you can use that as a good motivator to keep yourself focused on building your own system of income and independence.

It's not always about having capital left over from a day-job. A lot of entrepreneurs I've met got themselves started in their respective industries through strong work ethic and taking advantage of what strong business relationships have to offer. The more you get out there, the more opportunities you'll open your eyes to.

Best of luck to you, and remember not to let pride get in the way of doing a dirty job to stay fed!

Hey Arnachotrader,

I'm also in London and it can be pretty tough as the cost of living isn't easy.
I have to agree with most of the posters on here. Your welfare is of the utmost priority. More so than your ego or discomfort of living with your dad.

It's pretty easy and straightforward getting a job cleaning, delivery or flipping burgers at a fast food joint or better yet a junior sales rep. The latter giving you priceless experience and the development of your sales techniques. Who knows, if you get really good at it, you'll quicker be able to fund your business venture.

Along the way, set your fast lane goals and read, read some more, ask questions and all while keeping your focus.

You have a bright future.

I've never worked for a hedge fund or bank in the UK so this is not a fully qualified opinion, however: I suspect you are wasting your time applying to banks, hedge funds, and prop desks. You have no degree, no experience, and you flunked out of uni. No hiring manager in his right mind would hire you with that track record. There are probably plenty of highly qualified candidates competing for the job.

Sorry to say but you have well and truly screwed up a good situation, and now you're pretty hosed. Your inattention to school has cost you dearly.

Have you lost your scholarship permanently? Or could you get it back again if you passed your exams?

I see several options:

* Go back to school, f***ing PAY ATTENTION this time, pass your exams, get your scholarship back. I assume you probably can't do this because you can't pay for school without your scholarship.

* Find someone in the industry and ask them for advice. See if there are intern positions available for inexperienced and humbled newbies. Tell them you are willing to work for almost nothing (fast food wages!) to get the experience. Explain your interest and studies in quantitiative trading. If you can impress someone with your sincere intention to get your life back on track, you may be able to convince them to help you find a position. But that's a long shot.

* Failing that, you're going to have to flip burgers to pay rent and buy groceries. I'd stay away from "adult services" !!

* Meanwhile if your studies of quantitative trading models have produced anything workable, you might try building a track record. Find a service that offers simulated trading and records a history of your trades -- something like myfxbook.com. If you can document an ability to make a profit, you will have made an enormous improvement to your "failed my exams" history. Of course that may be very difficult to do if you're slinging fish & chips all day.

* Since you've come to the fastlane forum, spend your time seeing if you can come up with business ideas to make money. They don't have to be millionaire-makers at this point, and you probably don't have the experience or funds to pull off one anyway. Anything that makes you more than fast-food wages is a win. Even dog-walking or car-washing is better than being a drone in the local MacDonald's.

For all your anarchist leanings, you will find you can't be very free if you're sleeping on the street and foraging out of dustbins. It sounds like you've realized you messed up bigtime. Hopefully you've learned your lesson and can apply your new wisdom to life -- inattention to ANYthing worthwhile (uni, job, business, relationships) will get you equally bad results. Resolve to do better in the future. Your route forward will be much harder given what you've lost, but it's not impossible. Good luck!

I have never understood why people think that the only job beyond something "high paying" is in the fast food industry.

I have had some pretty shitty jobs along the way, but almost all of them paid better than I would have gotten at a fast food joint.

1) I spread driveway seal for a local asphalt company. No experience necessary.
2) I screen printed t-shirts at a local t-shirt shop. No experience necessary
3) I worked for a contractor helping clean up demolition jobs. No experience necessary
4) I installed fences for a major home / garden center. No experience necessary.

The list could go on, but not one consisted of flipping a burger.

Be slightly creative, find a job that will teach you something while you are doing it and / or get a crap night job and work a couple hours for FREE during the day with a company you want to work for.

You would be surprised what kinds of doors open when you tell someone you are willing to work for free in exchange for education.

The first 'real' job I had as an auto tech I got by asking the shop owner if I could sweep his floors and clean the bathrooms if he taught me what he could when he the opportunity came up. I would go in for a couple hours a day, clean and straighten up, and he would explain the stuff he was working on when he had a few minutes. Soon enough he was giving me oil changes, then simple brake jobs, then harder jobs, then my own bay, then guys working under me.

Thanks to everyone so far that’s offered me their advice so far. Obviously I need to get a job ASAP and should have prepared earlier than this. Ill do some brainstorming, make a list of jobs i recon i could do and start applying to them tomorrow.

Originally Posted by rocksolid

If you passed your exams where would you be living? Can you go back and make any excuse to re-take your exams?

I was living in student halls till the rent finished in July (doesnt cover summer holiday). Id still be staying where I am right now (my friend is letting me sleep at his,rent free, but is going back home to asia on sept 5th).


My access to money has just ran out, but atleast if I passed the year, i would get my scholarship money coming into my bank again in a few weeks time. One of my best friends would probably do me a favour and loan me some money/let me stay at theirs until the new term starts if I asked, but itd be uncomfortable for me to ask.


Still worrying about how long it’s going to take before I get paid/whether the money will be enough to cover somewhere to stay before my mate leaves.

Originally Posted by garyfritz

You have no degree, no experience, and you flunked out of uni. No hiring manager in his right mind would hire you with that track record. There are probably plenty of highly qualified candidates competing for the job.

I appreciate your comments but felt they were a bit harsh.


-I won a £1000 prize for a research paper on Hedge Funds (history, performance vs other asset classes, common strategies, role in 2008 financial crisis, future of the industry etc) when I was still in high school


-I placing in the top 5 (of 1000s) in a eFinancialCareers paper trading competition, where I followed an original quantitative system I developed in excel. Won an ipod. Problem solving skills were required in order to develop a strategy which would comply with competition rules (for example: limits on positions size (otherwise you’d find some smart, taking a single punt on something really volatile and hoping for the best), selection of instruments available to trade, end-of-day trading only)


-Led a team within the Finance Society, organising a series of lectures focused on the alternative Investment Industry. We got a number of fund managers and senior executives from prominent Hedge Funds, Fund of Funds and Asset Management firms, such as Man Group to come and speak to the students.


-Learned to code and back-test strategies using Amibroker (before my free trial ran out). Have a few versions of a system I tested with >3 sharpe ratios (walk-forward tested) saved on my harddrive. Still can’t do anything with it till I can afford a full copy and test out-of-sample on live data.


I’ve been making notes, following blogs and reading books on hedge funds, trading and options etc for years. I’m still 20 and despite being at one of the top uni’s in the UK, where a large % of the the students are targeting careers in finance, i havn’t met anyone my age who’s as passionate/knowledgeable about trading as me (although theyve passed their exams, which ive failed to do). Perhaps I just havn’t been searching hard enough.


I fear i’m being unrealistic/arrogant, but feel that it’s a waste for me not to be working within an environment where I could have a lot to contribute, be working with people who share similar interests and ambitions and have the opportunity to build upon the knowledge/experience i’ve acquired so far.