Scary.

I was literally where you are now when I was 22. I moved to the big city, homeless, scraped together cash working retail to put myself through one of those seedy, "recording arts" programs. Then I took out some pretty big loans to start my record label and begin living the dream. Boy was I out of touch because it didn't take long for that dream to come crashing down. Facing reality was one of the hardest things I had to do.

First, obligatory advice that ironically won't make sense until you're older and have your own story to tell: you're young and you'll get through this and you'll get old and have your own story to tell. Don't sweat it too much.

It took me almost nine years to pay off all the debt I had accumulated during that hard time. It was horrible at first. However you can beat it if you put your mind to it.

My life started turning around when I was living in a tiny room in the basement of a large boarding house in the worst part of the city. Here's how I did it:

1. I created a cash flow spreadsheet and budget. I stuck to it. The nice thing about having the cash flow though was that I could see what my finances would look like in the future. This helped me to plan things and having that really put my mind at ease because I could visualize the light at the end of the tunnel. It would take me a while but I eventually added an entertainment expense.

2. I don't recommend this long-term but when things got thin I learned how to make decent food on the cheap: lots of rice, bulk dried beans, and as much fresh produce as I could afford. I'd make a tonne of stir-fry and eat that throughout the week. It's important to eat well so the first thing I tried to expand was my food budget... this doesn't include eating out.

3. Snowball those debt payments. Pay the minimum on everything except the most important one. Put everything you can after you're most basic needs are met and the minimums are all paid out. Once that one is paid off, keep going. Pick the next highest one and don't shirk and think you have more money to start going out or something. Just make the payments bigger on the next one... they snowball into one another. After you've knocked a couple of the big ones out then start giving yourself a small weekly budget to go out (and learn to make that small budget stretch... I liked going to bars with friends and we found all of the places that had $2 beer nights and went out on those nights).

3. The best thing that happened to me was finding a job through a friend at a local hosting company making websites. It wasn't anything glamorous but it was my first salaried job and I did everything I could to land it: I brushed up on HTML, CSS, Perl, PHP... I made a rather simple little blog script that I could show them before I went into that interview. I spent as much time as I could online and at the library doing research and taking notes. I think it helped because I got that job and I hadn't done any web programming for a few years at that point.

4. I didn't stop pushing myself. I got better at what I did for a living a little bit each day. I tried learning one new thing each week. And after a couple of years I started to get calls from recruiters and have moved up from there.

(It turns out I love CS and probably should have gone to university instead of trying to be a rock star, but you live and learn)

I'm not sure if any of this will work for you but if there's anything I hope you will take away from this comment it's knowing that there's still plenty of time to work your way out of your situation and get to where you want to be. Don't spend time reading about the over-achievers who've been handed the right opportunities at the right time... and don't listen to the claim that it was because of their drive, determination, and all that. Just use your hustle and keep at it. Most of all, smile once in a while and remember that it's just life. It happens to all of us.