Short version: Got a job making almost six-figures with little to no education.
My religious parents "home schooled" me for my entire life and didn't give me the mandatory yearly tests. As a result, there was no way to graduate high school. The closest thing to an education I had received was playing video games. I was unable to read, write or do basic math.
I left home at 18 to try to get my situation fixed on my own. I worked a horrible manual labor job making almost minimum wage for almost 7 years. I got my GED while I was living in a homeless shelter. Worked on some open source projects. Did a few community college classes, racked up 35 thousand in student loan debt, and had to drop out with 2 classes left.
Met my girl friend who lived in AZ on reddit. Quit my manual labor job and moved to Raleigh, NC. Girlfriend came to Raleigh for her sister's graduation from bootcamp and has been living with me since. Eventually got a software consulting job in Raleigh, NC last year through reddit by excelling at their interview tests. Pay was not great but the job was decent.
I eventually left that job for a job in Phoenix, AZ which I also found on reddit that offered a higher salary. I figured since my girl friend's family lives in Arizona and I no longer speak to my family it only made since. This ended up being a mistake as my pay checks started bouncing only three months after I moved across the country.
Ended up quitting as I was working for free, we were about to be evicted, and the transmission on our car went out. My girlfriend's grand parents helped us tow the car to my girl friend's mom's house. While being unemployed I rebuilt the transmission on the car with the small amount of money we had from my girlfriend getting a part-time job in a call center.
I went crazy looking for a job and we had to sell most of our stuff. Nothing was panning out but I kept trying and got in touch with recruiter who gave me a lot of programming tests and I scored super high on all of them. Have have since been hired by a company that does salesforce consulting making almost six figures.