Credit. I have bad credit, financially speaking. I wasn't raised to be fiscally responsible, largely because when I was eight years old my dad quit his high-profile and I presume well-paying job as the PR man for a big NFL team and was subsequently out of work for three years. In this time he made an excellent Mr. Mom, was written about in Sports Illustrated, and almost went on tour with the Jackson Five but declined so as to not leave us alone all summer, which was a good decision as that was the summer my sister broke her little arm.
These lean years were the kindling upon which my deep-seated hatred of numbers were built. I began keeping a diary at some point and remember writing entries in all caps screaming "I HATE MONEY!" from my bedroom while below my parents were loudly arguing over same, or the lack thereof. The financial crisis my parents found themselves in at this time changed immeasurably most things that I took for granted as our lifestyle. Gone were the company cars and the vacations and the Sundays dressed in full green regalia. My mother had to unwillingly return to the workforce she had happily stopped being a part of after I was born, taking a series of shitty retail jobs before landing a long-term gig as a secretary for the local college. My dad eventually found a new position which did not fulfill him but did start paying the bills. Obviously at age eight through eleven I didn't know the details of how things were, but I heard things that stuck with me, which may or may not be true thirty years later. That this one event created a chain reaction heard 'round the walls of our home--that there was no planned-for and much-wanted third child, that my parents almost separated either to save money or because being together without any was that bad, that big trips and the best schools and piano and ballet lessons and annually replenished back-to-school wardrobes were but dreams of the past.
I know that somehow deep down by eight I had expectations for my future. Certainly my mother instilled in me a sense of being upper middle class rather than blue collar once removed by way of Irish Catholic neighborhoods. And it isn't that I was an unhappy child, far from it. I was a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties--we made a lot of our own fun. And it's not like I wasn't amply provided for in terms of food, clothing, fun, and affection--I was. But the unhappiness of my parents regarding their financial situation was a constant presence in our lives. The year Cabbage Patch kids were the it gift of the century, we didn't them for no reason as would have been the case in the pre-struggling to stay solvent days. We got them for Christmas, which was the best. Until I heard a snippet on the radio about knock-off dolls that were highly flammable, and I was convinced that my poor parents had probably purchased that version of the coveted dolls and I felt terrible that not only did we have dangerous Preemies but that my hardworking parents had been so duped simply because they lacked enough money to go around. Our dolls were the real thing, but I worried for weeks that they weren't. Not that I ever said anything. But I examined my precious present over and over again for signs of inauthenticity until Easter.
As I grew older and entered high school, I was suddenly confronted with lots more people in the world who had lots more money than us. And ironically, I didn't even go to the private school I always assumed I would go to which was a far richer place because the tuition was too high. I went to the parochial school instead, which was immense and full of kids from wealthier areas whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and chemists and who always had the latest everything--things I didn't even know existed, and things that bought you entrance into the cool crowd. I didn't care about being cool. I didn't care about having things. What I did care about was being myself, and that self need different things in order to flourish. Things that cost money. I don't recall being denied very specific items--and again, my parents did the best they could by me and for that I am very grateful. But the inner child of my teenage self always felt it was sort of second-best, and not what anyone had led me to expect, or what my mom had told me I could be. And always the shadow of the poorhouse hung over us like a phantom menace.
College came and things got even worse on many fronts. Once again, it wasn't about what I wanted and worked to get, it was about the best that could be afforded. And once again, I was confronted with even more kids who had even more diverse backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I got into almost $1000 worth of debt the very first day of school on my brand-new and wildly ill-advised credit card, paying for a phone hookup and books and renting a fridge. I don't know who my parents thought would pay the bill since a 17-year old full-time college freshman with no job and no way to get to one was likely to be making monthly payments, but that is how it happened. And as I needed more and more things that my peers seemed to have the means for--late-night pizzas, a school wardrobe that twelve years of uniforms didn't prepare me for, the occasional dinner out and birthday presents and trips into the city to shows and museums and art galleries--I just used my crazy-high limit credit cards to pay for them because no one else was going to.
Very unhealthy, fiscally speaking, Suze Orman would have a field day with this tale. It's not one of irony and pity, it's one of ignorance and timidity. Being raised in the solid white suburbs of the middle class, what else could have happened? I worked every summer. I had two scholarships to school and still needed to take out insane amounts of money on student loans for an education that prepared me to do very little that would entail prompt and easy payback. I spent so much of high school in a dream world of my own making about what would happen after graduation that I found myself wholly unprepared to have to choose outfits to wear to class every day and attend frat parties with $5 keg cups and go on spring breaks and plan to study abroad. I was taught to be scared of everything and everyone even though I had been half-raised in the city and had street smarts instilled in me from birth, so it never seemed possible that I could get a job off-campus, or better jobs in the summers, or just sit down and try to reason with my increasingly unreasonable parents about the realities of being a college girl in the early nineties. Once again, not a top shelf time. I rebelled later than most teenagers and took matters into my own hands at some point, and did the best I could with the best I had going for me, and I didn't get to go abroad or do three-quarters of what I really always wanted to do in college. And it was fine. College was amazing for me nevertheless. And I was very, very lucky to have been able to go and have the fun I did, get the education I wanted. I was very, very stupid to graduate in heaps of debt with no job recruiters in sight, no friends to room with in new places, and a home life that was completely wasted.
And on it went. At some point it isn't anyone else's fault, but at some point it become impossible to shoulder the blame squarely on one's own shoulders. And the mountain of debt grows ever higher until it is less a mountain than a volcano of ashes.
The point of this tale was less about the money though, than about the pay-it-forward-ness of credit in life. Because it occurs to me that I think I have been pretty generous with my love and my time and my affection to a fair number of people I have been blessed to know in my lthirty-odd years. Family, friends, lovers. My loving people well, if not always wisely, has a credit limit never maxed and always increasing. And the APR is locked down at a crazy-low rate. But the return on my investments is suddenly looking like it's at an all-time low. I swipe my debit card over and over and wipe out my account again and again only to realize that it isn't being replenished really. And like an eight-year old with what was probably an unhealthy sense of dreamy entitlement, taht just doesn't seem fair.
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