I quit my job last March and it was a bad idea.

  > Find new friends? That seems silly.

With friends like that, who needs enemies? I mean the guy is down in the dumps, "rock bottom" if you like, and his friends are attempting to kick him while he's down to elevate their own self-esteem a bit. And you think that this is a good set of people to be around?

Also advice like, "grow a thicker skin" to someone that's in the throes of depression, might as well be advice to, "just stop being depressed."

Agreed. 20 years is nothing. Assuming he doesn't have a wife and kids he has nothing to worry about. Plenty of time ahead for improvements, which mostly comes from learning more diverse things AND networking more.

When your credit is shot banks are really reluctant to take you on as a new account. He probably owes his current bank tons of money so probably doesn't want to deposit his only income there. Opening a new account requires a background check (when I opened mine they told me it was to verify I wasn't blacklisted from writing checks) and possibly a credit check.

Sometimes the check cashing store is your only choice. And they aren't all bad. They may get you on the check cashing fee, but a ding at a regular bank can put you in an even worse position ($29 overdraft fee, $35 NSF fees).

The check cashing stores are popular in poor areas because these people may only get $200-400/month and charge $5-20. It's a fixed cost that anyone can factor in quickly. Keeping a mental register of how much you have in the bank is harder than knowing what's exactly in your wallet.

I appreciate this post. I've been contemplating quitting my job for a few years now in order to focus on my business. I'm 36 years old. I have a steady IT job, which I like. And a side business which is my love. I often think that if I quit my job, the pain and hunger would force me to launch my side business into full throttle.

However, I am able to work on my side business while I have a day job, so I've been doing both for the past few years.

It's hard to say whether my side business would have blown up huge by now. But I can tell you that dragging that business along at half throttle does wear down your enthusiasm for it.

Anyway, I appreciate the 'other' side of all the 'quit your job' rancor. I suspect a lot of that comes from people who were successful who are trumpeting that success. And the people for whom it doesn't work out... well... you don't see enough of those people talking about it like you have.

Hope it all works out for you.

A couple things:

Fathers

It's funny how fathers react to being entrepreneurial, especially if they are the one-job-for-life kind of guy. I have had the same problem in the past with my father, and he always says that I should stay where I am, in the same job, until I retire. However, on the job front I'm a nomadic person and he just doesn't understand that. But then again, I can't understand his world either.

The best thing to do is to sit down and talk with each other and try to educate yourselves on what it's like living in the other's shoes. He probably has the best intentions, but when lacking a frame of reference any argument can come off as just complaining.

Depression

Everyone gets depressed about their situation. But you wouldn't believe what kind of echo chamber you have between your ears. The worst thing you can do is to constantly listen to yourself, because you'll just churn the same though (usually bad) over and over in your head, and it never gets better. Sometimes, it takes a metaphorical slap to the side of the head (or a literal one, if that's your thing) from someone else before you snap out of it. Go out and talk to your peers. Don't talk to your parents or siblings about it, but rather people who aren't there to spare your feelings.

Difficulty

I completely agree that freelancing and entrepreurship is difficult. It's not something we learn in public school, and not everyone majors in business in college. That said, you're 20 so don't beat yourself up about it. From what I read, you don't have any strings attached to your life (mortgage, wife, child) so you can bounce back very easily. It'd also be easy for you to study and get those diplomas, especially the high school one.

This may sound harsh, but failing to get a high school diploma (where they only seem to hand them out these days to everything with a pulse) is pathetic. It's the single easiest thing you can do to make sure your resume doesn't get tossed in the bin. School is important. You may not think so, but your employer does. And school is one of those things where you don't realize you are using it, so it's not fair to yourself to say that you don't need to learn X or Y because it's not relevant to you right now.