I am poor because my career revolved around landscaping and heavy equipment/CDL driving. At the age of 43 no one is going to hire me to run around with a weedwacker all day. You higher 17 year olds to do that. I have over 20 years experience and 16 of those years is managerial experience. I am far too overqualified to be in a general labor position, too old to run with the youngins, but I cannot speak spanish. All landscape jobs in Orlando that would consider me for employment (as in managerial not labor) have almost entirely Mexican and or latino crews. 90% of the time Puerto Ricans get highered for management even with less experience, because they can speak spanish and english. Again, I physically am unable to keep up with a real crew, and could not do the miles upon miles of walking required in a day. I have no knowledge in construction other than lead crew or lead tendant. So I'm not qualified to have my butt in a truck or on equipment all day, and I can no longer do hard labor.
I lost my job out at Bonnet Creek Orlando Wyndham Resort, after having worked there for 8 years, and was managing 3 other crews off site at different locations also. I was boss man #2 in our company out in the disney/International drive area. I signed and handed out paychecks and received payments on accounts. Had 32 men. 18 accounts, 6 of which were multi million dollar properties. Made $20 an hour.
Some of my workers started complaining that both myself and my bossman, the guy above me, couldn't properly communicate what we wanted done, and before long we were fired. One puerto rican was hired replacing both of us. I started driving full time to make a living. Accidently my wife, thinking she was in her car and had an Epass to pay tolls, blew right thru tolls in my car getting my license suspended for 'failure to pay'. As a CDL driver... no license, no job. Putting us in the current situation that we can never make enough in a month to save for, or pay the fines on my license.