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birb_cromble  1d ago (text post)   331 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-08-08

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I need $43,200 to pay for yearly expenses. Unemployed, no degree, spent 5 years programming professionally and am utterly burnt out. I've got about a year to figure it out. My current plan is:

  • Work somewhere mentally easy, like a call center or a warehouse. I've done both jobs in the past and really enjoy just putting my brain on autopilot.
  • Study for tests like GMAT, LSAT, etc. and try to become a tutor. This will hopefully take care of my medium- to long-term aspirations whatever I decide to do with my life.
  • Try to write. I've always wanted to but it's tough as I am not yet a good writer. Now, in between mentally demanding jobs, feels like a good time.

Mostly I'm wondering whether anyone has ideas for a potentially better or more braindead job, and the medium-term viability of tutoring provided I can get a 99th percentile score on LSAT/GMAT.

Why not try a different company and continue to code? There are better teams out there if you are tired of the process side rather than actual coding side.

Why I think it’s worth trying is you might want to avoid nuking your lifetime earnings potential

I'm not great at programming and lack credentials and non-crypto experience. Give me a year to hammer out a degree and I think I could get a fine programming job, but I was never able to do programming in a healthy way anyways. When I regain some steam I plan to get a business degree or something.

I'm not fully ruling out programming; it's more that if I'm already starting from scratch anyways I might as well pursue a career in a field that might suit me better. If you're aware of a programming job that offers interviews based solely on IQ tests or leetcode performance, though, sign me up.

Unless you are doing accounting a business degree is fairly worthless. You can just do business and learn as you go.

I want a business job. How else do I get one without a degree or connections? So far I haven't even heard back from entry-level positions I've applied for (e.g. glorified customer service at financial companies).

Maybe it’s useful for showing interests. I don’t think there is a lot of actual learnings in most business programs.

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