The Reckoning Day

            It was fall 2018 and I was 29 years old. After dropping my little sister off at school to teach kindergarten, I pulled off the highway and onto a side street of a south side Chicago neighborhood and cried out of shame and fear. The 0% interest rate on one of my credit cards was coming to an end, and I had just applied for a new credit card so that I could do a balance transfer for the third or fourth time. Unfortunately I was only offered a limit of around $1,400, far below the $6k balance I wanted to transfer. AND I still had high balances on other cards. I had no idea how I was going to meet the minimums, let alone pay off my cards with the accumulating interest. All I could think to myself was “How did I let this happen?”.

            I had what I would call acceptable money habits in my early 20s. Despite not making much, and lacking any financial knowledge (savings and investing were basically foreign concepts that seemed outside the realm of possibility), I still kept detailed records of my finances written down in notebooks, searched out and paid off any lingering medical bills, and kept an envelope system to keep my budgeting in line. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t in debt. That changed when I transferred to Columbia University to finish my undergrad at age 25.

I had it in my mind that because I was attending an Ivy League school I would easily land a high paying job once I graduated (ha!). While in school I was still pretty on top of my budget and loan balance, but as graduation got closer I got more and more relaxed about my spending habits. I got a credit card. I thought I would just easily start to pay it off soon. However, upon graduating my first job offered a $35k salary, and yet I spent as if I was making $80k.

Staring at the email of the too-low credit line offer, I knew my embarrassment came from the very fortunate situation I found myself in. I was living with my long-term partner (now husband) who had funded much of my education and bailed me out of a few missed credit card statements with the promise that I wouldn’t get into debt again. I didn’t have many home expenses, and yet I still couldn’t manage my money well. I never felt like I was buying anything extravagant, but lots of small expenses added up quickly. The day I pulled my car over, I had $10k in left in student loans and had racked up $16k of consumer debt.

Turning it Around

After relaying my debt frustrations to my sister, she asked me if I’d ever heard of Dave Ramsey. I hadn’t, but that question was the start of me finding my passion for personal finance. Determined to get my shit together, (and glad to be hearing I wasn’t the only person who didn’t have it together), I read his Baby Steps and listened to dozens of podcast episodes. I read posts on the subreddit r/personalfinance, and then subsequently discovered the FIRE community.

While immersed in the world of things they don’t teach you in school, one payday I noticed my direct deposit hadn’t hit my account. I asked a coworker if he’d been paid, and he replied that he didn’t know, he hadn’t checked. I was floored. It wasn’t standard practice for everyone to check their bank accounts at 5am on the 1st and 15th? I honestly hadn’t considered not needing to check my bank account each payday - I’d always lived paycheck to paycheck. It was as automatic as brushing my teeth.

Now, of course I had no idea what my coworker’s actual situation was, but the realization that I had a peer my age, in my role, who was “obviously” (in my mind) living very differently than I was lit a fire under my own ass like never before. I don’t think I’ve ever been as passionate about anything as much as I was about getting out of debt, being able to invest, feeling in control of my money, and being someone who didn’t need to check their bank account to see if they were paid.

 About a year and a half later, just before my 31st birthday, I paid off the remaining balance of the final student loan and was completely debt free. I was also let go from my job as a result of Covid19 layoffs, but I never felt more financially unburdened. Fortunately I received unemployment, inflated by the pandemic, and found a suitable position 3 months later.