I tried to purchase something on zulily today, and my credit card was declined. I knew that we had been inching toward maxing it out, but I didn’t know how close we were. I had been burying my head in the sand. I had been using that card for everything that I wanted to buy but knew I shouldn’t. *cough cough starbucks cough cough* And no, I did not rack up thousands of dollars of credit card debt at starbucks. But the coffee habit didn’t help matters.
For a hot second, I felt extremely guilty and ashamed. I still feel a little of both, but I’m working on turning that guilt and shame into a resolve to do better, fueled by some righteous anger about “the system”.
There are so many angles I can take on this. So many reasons and back-stories and pressures and ingrained cultural habits that make up “the system”. Rich kids grow up into rich adults, and poor kids grow up into poor adults. yada yada yada. Well, I was one of four girls to a single teenage mom on welfare. So we know what side of the rich/poor equation I come from.
The odds are stacked against me in so many ways. By the time I was graduating from high school, my mom was married to a man who could not keep a job. But when he did have a job, it was a high-paying (what I considered high-paying- like $80k or so) job. Because of that I got zero financial aid for college. Another story for another day is how I was able to slip through the cracks of my wealthy public high school, but know that that also contributed to my financial situation. I married a man who had student loan debt and credit card debt, and we spent a good six years paying off that credit card debt (still working on the student loans).
By the time we started to come up for air with the advent of his new job last fall, I think we were feeling pretty purchase-deprived. Things that needed to happen but hadn’t (home repairs, car repairs, etc) came at us in an overwhelming rush. Things we wanted to do/buy/have dangled in front of us, tempting us to reach out and take them. And we did. Oh, we did. We ARE. We are still actively making purchases that we do not truly need and that are not helping us work toward financial stability. It is HARD to stop. Even facing the consequences squarely in the eye, it is hard to deny the pleasure of a purchase. There is always a way to rationalize it. Always a way to frame the want into a need.
I pulled up a few money blogs after my zulily transaction was denied. It fueled my fire of anger for how I got here. It is so incredibly unfair. All of it. I’m not saying I’m not to blame for being where I am. I know I’m responsible for my own money. I also know that there are lots of reasons why I am in this financial position while, for example, my step-sister-in-law lives in a half million dollar house (that’s a lot in this area) with her partner-at-an-accounting-firm husband, putting sparkly quartz countertops in their four-year-old’s private bathroom that is bigger than my kitchen.
Unless I win the lottery- the BIG lottery- I will never be in that place. BUT, I know that I am the only one who can take my financial future by the reins and drive. I do not have a partner in this- my husband will not help, and may, in fact, hinder financial progress. Because of this, I have easily given up in the past. I ask for help, he says okay, he does the opposite. We make a budget together, he completely ignores it. But instead of just throwing it all out the window because it is HARD to get ahead, I am just going to have to be PERSONALLY better. I can only control my own actions. I cannot control my husband. I cannot change my past. I cannot overhaul the entire American system. I can only do me.
Hiker Cora 