I grew up in a small farm town in the middle of Upstate New York. This was always somewhat of a point of contention for me, as I was forced to accept the low-key and meager lifestyle that I was born into.
My mother was a young and financially unstable gal from the same sort of upbringing. Nobody in my family really came from money, and we've all done our best to live the life we do. She was only 21 when I was born (and only 19 when she had my older brother), and was working odd jobs for the first few years of my life. I'm often tempted to "blame" my bad financial habits on her, but that will come out more as I explain. My first few memories of my mom include flipping through the Avon catalogs that she used while selling cosmetics door to door, and waiting outside in hallways as she was finishing up her associates degree. She was definitely not a "spoiled" kid as we deem them now, and she worked hard for her money. I have so much respect for her and her success in raising four children.
Following a divorce and a relocation, my life really began in the town of Penn Yan, NY. This was that small-town I referred to earlier. You can look it up if you want, but there is really nothing notable about it other than the fact that we had the World's Largest Buckwheat Pancake or something like that.
My favorite times of year were birthdays, Christmas and school-shopping. As much as I say I was a simple kid in a small town, my love of things grew early. Gigapets and personal electronic journals were a huge obsession when I was younger. I began to collect books and CDs and trading cards. If it had a price tag on it, I wanted it.
I got my first cellphone when I was twelve years old. This may not seem to surprising in this age, but ten years ago, it was a pretty big deal. It was just a prepaid Tracphone, in all of its brick-like, candybar glory, but it was self-funded and all mine. This was probably the catalyst for every single event that led me to where I am financially. After I realized that you could peel off the cover and buy a shiny silver cover, I had to have it. I learned that you could download archaic games and horribly-pixelated wallpapers to make the most of it, and I did.
This phone led to others, all prepaid. It wasn't until I was 17 that I finally decided to take the leap into the world of credit: I decided to start my own phone plan.
I don't even know how I did it, since I'm pretty sure you have to be 18, but I think my mom co-signed or something like that. I joined the Verizon network, and had my very own cellphone, complete with a monthly phone bill.
I started my first job that year, at McDonalds. It definitely wasn't the most glamorous, high-profile job, but it was pretty much all there was in Penn Yan, NY, and I definitely don't regret it or look back on it with shame. I had a lot of pride in my job and the restaurant, and that $100/week felt MIGHTY amazing. Up until then, the only money I ever got was on birthdays, if I was lucky, and it was immediately blown on CDs or whatever I decided I NEEDED to have that month.
And that, I think, is where it all started to go downhill. I was never really taught the value of money, and I didn't even put one thought into starting to save anything from my paychecks. I was lucky enough to be given my first car, and being the first of my friends to have one, I spent most of my money on trips to the mall. Driving up to the city and blowing my paycheck on a new outfit became one of my favorite things to do.
By the time I graduated from high school, I had probably earned over $4000 (not a huge amount comparatively speaking, but quite a bit for a high schooler), and yet I had nothing in my wallet, and next to nothing to show for it.
The summer after I graduated (2007) was the summer that the first iPhone was released, and oh BOY did that destroy me. Like most 18-year-olds heading off to college in a few months, I was pelted with credit card offers in the mail. I was always told as a kid that credit cards were "evil", and that I should never open any. But like most 18-year-olds heading off to college in a few months, I couldn't be told. I opened three cards; a Chase card (with a $400 credit limit), a Capital One card (with a $600 limit), and my good ol' Citi card (with a whopping $1200 limit).
It was this Citi card that happily financed my iPhone. It's important to note that the original iPhone was $600 ON contract, and being that I was only 18 years old, I needed to make a $500 deposit to open an account at AT&T. So quite literally, my Citi card was entirely maxed out from one single trip to the Apple Store.
The other $1000 in newly-opened credit was used to support my lavish spending in my dating life, which was beginning to take wing. Let me tell you, when a fresh-out-of-the-closet small-town boy such as myself has a big-city Apple-fan-boy boyfriend, shit gets real. Movies, dinners, shopping... you name it, I charged it.
Now, with my plastic maxed, I headed off to college, leaving behind the security of my job and heading into the real world. I managed to secure a work-study job at school, but the $80 a week that I was making was seriously not going to cut it. I soon found myself up Shit Creek without a paddle. Between my phone bill, my three credit card bills, and various expenditures that I needed at college (books, food, whatever), there was no WAY I was going to make it...
I can't recall just how quickly I fell behind, but it couldn't have been longer than three months. As my cellphone service was being suspended every other month, and my credit cards playing Red Rover with their credit limits, I needed help.
I ended up calling up my grandparents and asking for money. I lied and said that it was for tuition and books (not ENTIRELY a lie, but yeah I know... I'm going to hell). I borrowed $2000, which I intended to use to pay off my credit cards, and get back into the black. I agreed to pay them $100 a month until it was paid off (and I was making $320 a month at my workstudy), so I figured that was doable right? Wrong. Somehow, I fucked that up and blew that money on God-knows-what. I know that I paid some of it toward my credit card bills, and some of it on books, but I know that I pretty much used it as a slush fund for random purchases. And it was gone faster than it had taken me to negotiate the loan.
Cut to: the worst summer of my life. Cue the dramatic music.
Following a heart-wrenching breakup, I soon became overwhelmed with my debt. Though now I know that debt in the lower thousands may seem small-scale (it certainly does to me today), I spent countless nights worrying myself to tears over all of it. I now had three maxed out credit cards, all of which had long-since gone into collections, a phone bill that I couldn't afford, and a new $2000 debt to my grandparents that I had no way of paying back. That $80-a-week job just wasn't going to ease my mind, so I found a new summer job.
My parents had moved closer to the city (Rochester, not NYC... sorry folks) while I was gone freshman year, so job opportunities were actually pretty abundant. I filled out applications at various stores and restaurants, and got four calls within the first couple of days: Uno Bar and Grill, American Eagle, Hollister, and Denny's. The restaurants were offering dishwashing jobs, and the clothing stores were obviously just minimum wage, run-of-the-mill retail jobs. I chose American Eagle, because that was the first opportunity I was given (I was actually given the interview right on the spot the day I turned in my application), and started there almost immediately. I soon found, however, that American Eagle was not what I was looking for.
I suppose that at a mall retail outlet like American Eagle, a lot of teenagers and early twentysomethings were just there for a bit of extra cash for the weekends and the employee discounts. But that, my friends, was not what I was looking for. I was lucky if I got two shifts a week, and that didn't even add up to the $80 per week I was making while attending school full-time. Deciding that I needed to double up, I called Denny's and took a job there washing dishes. I figured that I could work afternoons at AE, and work nights and weekends at Denny's, and save up enough to pay down my debts. I guess my bitch of a manager Karen at AE didn't agree with my logic. Due to my change in availability, which didn't affect her at all, I was terminated from American Eagle, which opened up a lot of free time for Denny's.
It's weird to think back to those months three years ago, but that was probably the beginnings of my career. I started as a dishwasher at the Denny's in Victor, NY, working about 25 hours a week. That fall, I moved back to college and transferred to the Denny's there. Still a dishwasher, I was adamant about my intent to become a server.
That's where the money's at, people. Without a doubt, if I have any pre-advice to give, it is that there is great money in waiting tables, no matter how unclassy the restaurant is (not that Denny's isn't classy, but it's not exactly fine dining...) If you figure that you get paid a server wage, usually about $5/hour, plus tips, you make out pretty damn well. Say you work a short, four-hour dinner shift and make about $50. That's $12/hour in tips, plus the wage. That's almost $20/hour, and that's speaking conservatively tipswise. Imagine you work a busy shift, at a fine-dining establishment. That number could triple. It was getting my foot in the door in the restaurant industry that really saved me financially.
Anyways, I digress. It's now Winter 2008, and I've become a server at Denny's. Two of my credit cards have been charged off, I've abandoned my postpaid AT&T contract (losing my $500 deposit in the process), and I still have yet to pay a single penny back to my grandparents. Despite this grim outlook, things do start to get better. I began devoting the money that I was making to bringing my card with the largest limit (and the largest debt) out of collections and to a manageable balance: my Citi card. I set up a payment plan that allowed me to pay $100 per month to reopen the account. It felt incredibly relieving to deal with it and set up a plan. It was the first time that I had really come face-to-face with my financial issues instead of ignoring it or running away from it. I had finally begun owning up to my mistakes.
This isn't to say that I started succeeding at that point. I was still spending far too much money on clothes and gadgets, but at least my debt was beginning to become under my control (though not necessarily paid off).
I hovered in that state for about a year, becoming comfortable with that level of stability: having enough to afford my phone, my credit card payments, and having enough money to splurge on whatever I wanted. Although I was still in school, I was becoming more and more distracted by work, my love life, and my social life, and eventually in the spring of 2010, I withdrew from college, just over a year away from getting my bachelor's in English. Even though I was number one in my class all throughout high school, I couldn't seem to manage my life enough to do well in college. I do want to go back to school, but to be honest, I don't know when (and IF) I will.
In the past year, I've sort of snapped into focus the fact that I can't go on living my life the way I had. Sure, I had enough money to cover my bills at the time, but upon leaving college, I realized that all of a sudden there was so much more to life. Student loans, car insurance, rent, utilities, food, phone bills... It was all adding up, and it scared me. I realized that I had to drastically change how I was spending my money. I was making close to $20,000 a year, and yet again I had nothing in savings. Bill payments began to slip as I was struggling to reevaluate my earnings and spending. I guess it was just a trial-and-error situation that HAD to happen in order for me to learn, but I managed to do it.
So here I am today. Still no savings, but not behind on any bills, and not crying myself to sleep every night over money. I still have a phone bill that is without-a-doubt higher than it needs to be (I'm a smartphone, tech-junkie) and I still keep my trusty Citi card with me, but I feel closer to where I need to be than ever.
So if you recognized a bit of yourself in any part of my long-winded rambling, then maybe you should follow along. Maybe this blog will fail, but I truly hope not, because I know that a great part of succeeding is self-motivation. Hopefully this blog will motivate myself and others like me to rise above the red ink and gain success. I'm not talking about millions just yet (maybe, after my 401K plans pan out), but at the very least, having the peace-of-mind to sleep at night is success enough for me. After all, if you're not happy, then what is the point this life?
I invite you to follow along with me on this journey out of broke!
