I wish I could get a payday loan

I’m a Realtor in Marin County, California

I am painfully aware that that simple sentence may conjure up images of a shiny new Mercedes Benz parked outside a chichi Parisian-style café in the middle of the afternoon on a nice summer day in some swanky Northern California neighborhood. But that’s a far cry from me. I’m one of the invisible Marin County realtors. There are a lot of us – members of the Association of Invisible Marin County Realtors. We work and we struggle and we wonder how in the world we ever came to this. We wonder why we don’t have real jobs, and we’re constantly on the look for them. And we wonder how we’re going to pay our bills.

I have poor credit and I don’t have credit cards

I drive a 14-year-old Honda Accord. I rent a two-bedroom cottage. It’s cute, in that California garden-court 1920s sort of way. But nothing works, not even the heat, and I pay $1750 a month. Yes, I heat the place with the gas oven. Yes, the landlord knows it doesn’t work. Yes, I’ve had PG&E come take a look. Yes, yes, yes. And no, I won’t push the issue. When you’re living on the financial edge, you don’t push your landlord. You lose your personal power and your self-respect when you struggle with money. Plus, in this part of the country, it’s tough to find a place to rent, especially when you have a dog, poor credit, and a not-too-steady income.

I wish I could get a payday loan. But I understand why you can’t get one without a steady income. I want it, but I honestly don’t know how I’d pay it back. My only monthly expenses are auto insurance, utilities, cell phone (can’t work without it or I’d ditch it completely) and rent. But I haven’t closed a sale in four months.

I don’t know why I’m trying to sell real estate

I think I started doing this because I couldn’t find a job. I don’t know why I couldn’t find a job. When I think about this stuff, it makes me absolutely dizzy. I’m educated, hard-working, and willing. I’m selling real estate because I’m unemployed, basically. I wish I could get a payday loan because that would mean that I have a steady income.

I’m not a quitter in the derogatory sense of that word, but it must have been something about my willingness to make changes that got me into this mess. I was a CPA for years. I didn’t like my work and it was dragging me down all the time, keeping me awake at night. So I decided to try something else. I walked out on my career 15 years ago. Since that time, I’ve been a caregiver, a landscape worker, a bar tender, a mailroom clerk, a retail manager, a realtor, and I can’t remember what else. One thing I’ve never been is unemployed. I’ve looked at all these jobs as ways to tide me over until I finally find a real job. I see the problem with this, but now I’m stuck. And I really wish I had a real job so I could get a real payday loan or maybe so I wouldn’t need one!