I
spent my 20’s earning–and spending–a lot of money.
I earned money from being a Real estate agent, and I spent money on nothing. I had the ostrich head in sand problem for a long time. Have played at this, but never DONE it.
I’m not unusual. I have some cash in the bank, but when you take the IRS, the people I borrowed from to bail myself out of the IRS, and everything else, my net worth is -89,000. That’s negative. I’m 89,000 in the hole, and happy that I’m not in jail. In the last 9 years, I’ve only had 2 years that were under six figures. The bulk of the damage, the state and IRS tax bill that was once $170,000 is now down to $25,000. It’ll get knocked out. And it’ll make a good story.
I honestly believed it to be less till recently. I had made a $25,000 clerical error. A GIGO problem. A spreadsheet that I worked on had bad data. But it was interesting, I think.
I hid this stuff from people. Mostly myself. I knew how to earn money, and I paid some lip service to frugality, but it was a ruse. I didn’t care, I figured I’d be a millionaire soon. Phil Hodgen, International Tax Lawyer (and good friend) says, that the “second you don’t need a Mercedes anymore is when you’ll get one.” The dissipation of every bit of money I had on stupid schemes that would get me out of the last failed plan was kind of how I lived. I was grasping for whatever. When we got rid of the real estate and moved into a dive, things changed, our focus changed some. Hopefully it’s not too late.
I didn’t spend a lot of money on advertising, I pissed it away on restaurants, shiny tech gadgets, clothing for my wife. Oh, yeah, and rental properties that were a Bad Idea for anyone to own, that I didn’t care about. The whole time, I hated my job. There’s plenty to like to being a Realtor, I just didn’t have the passion for it.
Anyway, I lied to myself for a long time. See, I had income. Things are fine, I’m still a smart kid. I made money, so I can’t be failing. I’ll fix it later. Who cares, everyone has these problems. Thing is, they are preventable.
In the long run we’re all dead. That’s what Keynes said. But the thing is, how we lived matters. I can’t endure the stress of it. Deal is: I had all the means to have a good pile of wealth now. Somehow, my ego never let me feel this. I always find some excuse, some reason that everything was still OK.
It’s not OK. The debt is suffocating. I’ve taken it from $150ish (realmoney) to $89. Now it’s time to home stretch this thing and get this smoked forever. It’s all survivable, and it’s all a distraction. You can’t operate with debt, not like you can in reality. Think about this: At 10% (my average interest) I’m paying $9,000 a year, or $750/month to debt.
Think about that. That’s before I do anything, I gotta pony that money up.
It’s fixable, though. I’m earning at a good clip.
I’m pretty sure at this point that there aren’t going to be any other ’surprises’. I honestly had believed that the debt was down below $20k. And it’ not, and so this thing is going in a google doc. that google doc is gonna get iframed into the sidebar. And I’ll be updating it once a month. All the component parts of the debt will get added in. I’ll do this tomorrow.
I want to be transparent for selfish reasons. I’m not bragging. I’m currently doing pretty well. I collected up all my debts and spreadsheeted ‘em. I’m going to get rid of them one by one as fast as I can. The first goal is a $4800 loan that costs $200 a month and is at a ghastly 14% interest. I can do it.
Here are some personal finance bloggers:
The Simple Dollar – more consumerist than I’d like to be, but better than I am.
Five Cent Nickel – opinionated. Tough. And good.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
GC,
The fact that you’re taking your debt in the right direction – in light of a difficult economy – is to be commended. I took personal measures to lower my financial footprint last year and it’s making a huge difference in my overall happiness level.
Kudos on living your life out in the open so we can all learn from your experiences. The dude abides.
Mark-
Thanks for noticing, man. Anyway, the debt was wrong, now it’s $85,129. I want it gone in 18 months, no matter what. First is 100 days to $4200. Then plow the money formerly spent into other things.
But anyway, I’m making it all public. You’ll see some goodness in my sidebar shortly.
Chris
During he recession of the early 1990s we had a similar debt load. We ended up recovering doing much of what you are doing,- redoing the way we did business. When we recovered, and the recession was over, we ended up making a lot of money for several years. We never looked back.
Stay the course and you too will look back on this time in your life with thankfulness.
Thanks for your honesty. This was so interesting for me to read because I was just thinking today that I’m incredibly lucky and happy at this stage in life (a whole lot older than you!). Funny thing is I have very little money. I’ve never earned 6 figures — one year of that and I’d be able to cover my current wish list! But I’ve learned to enjoy the really little things in life and my work is my passion.
My husband and I just once got ourselves into debt that was too much for us. We vowed after that to not buy anything we didn’t have the money for and when you do that, things feel so much more solid and secure. Maybe our business has stayed small because we’ve never taken big loans, but it keeps life simple!