It has been a long, hard road for me learning to manage my money more effectively. I am the reason advertising exists. That stuff actually works on me. I can’t tell you how many products I have gone out and deliberately purchased after seeing them advertised on TV. I love spending money.
I couldn’t tell you what’s wrong with me. For most of my life, my money has been this nebulous concept in my head. Making an impulse purchase, since I didn’t know how much I had to spend, I didn’t limit my spending. I just thought I could figure it out later. For a long time, money didn’t matter to me at all. There was no such thing as ‘‘too expensive.’’ Actual objects had way more value to me than just dollars. And the object, whatever it was, had to be the best of its kind.
Most of my childhood, my parents had a small business. My Mom was extremely good with money (as was my grandfather, who pretty much embodies the concept of ‘‘the millionaire next door.’’) Mom’s husband, however, would spend it like crazy. We lived beyond our means. My Mom tried to teach me, but that bone in my head is broken. I can’t blame my upbringing. I think I was just born this way.
When I was 18 I discovered credit cards, and by the time I was 21 I had over $10,000 in credit card debt and was nearly defaulted on my student loans. I overdrafted at like three different banks and at one point my account was frozen. That was the lowest point of my life, I think. It was so humiliating to be turned down while trying to deposit money at my freakin’ bank. When I got in the car I just started weeping. And that was the start of change.
My then-boyfriend bailed me out of the student loans situation and I went on a debt management plan for my credit cards. Then we married and used that nice chunk of change to pay off all of our revolving debt and start fresh. I started to improve. I got a job at a consumer credit counseling agency, which required me to become more financially literate.
I have learned a lot from my husband. His family on his Dad’s side is extraordinarily wealthy, and he was taught from a young age how to manage finances. My husband’s extreme wisdom with money has more or less ameliorated my issues. I have gradually taken on more responsibility for our finances. Now we do everything together. I have much better habits now that we have concrete goals and a really good budgeting software that will tell me at a glance how much I have to spend in any one category. We each receive a small amount of discretionary income that we that we can spend on anything, but that’s it… I’ve had to learn to spread my discretionary income over a whole month. I have good credit. My only remaining debt is student loans. I have a 403(b) and a Roth IRA. My father-in-law is a former financial advisor and has helped us with the long-term strategy.
As of three weeks ago, I am now the development coordinator for a nonprofit organization (which is blowing my mind, by the way.) This means I am responsible for the financial health and fiscal strategy of my organization. How I got from forgetting I even had debt to essentially running a freaking business, I will never know. This is probably one of the most unlikely places I would end up, this does not come naturally to me, and I still have SO much to learn. But I have earned my place here and I give myself a lot of credit for how far I’ve come.