It’s Shockingly Possible

When I was in college, I was annoyed by anyone who said anything to me like, “get ready for the real world!”  When you’re already working hard at a job (or two) and going to school, it’s irritating to have someone imply that you’ve got it easy. I work among students who really do live in a college bubble.  They attend incredibly expensive universities and never see a single bill, because their parents cover everything.  That wasn’t my experience.  My parents generously helped me out, but I saw every bill and no one contributed more money to my education than I did.  While I still think it’s obnoxious to say condescending things like that to young people, there was a lot about post-college life that took me by surprise and the biggest was the real weight of supporting myself.

Of course, my story is not typical in that I went straight to graduate school (it’s not exactly rare either).  It didn’t hit me right away.  I’d spent the Summer obsessing over my budget and I realized almost immediately that everything was going to cost a great deal more than I’d planned, but even still, it wasn’t until my second semester that the responsibility of it all landed like a weight on my shoulders.  It probably took another semester after that for me to grow bitter.  Then I started looking around, thinking, “how does anyone support themselves?”  It started to feel impossible to me.

I mean, there’s rent, which was costing me almost $1000 a month.  And then food, which it turns out you need.  I had a car payment for a while and then there’s always car insurance.  Toilet paper and cleaning supplies and shampoo also seem essential.  I had minimal health insurance, because it was required by my school; it suited me fine until a year in when I actually had some health issues and that’s when it hit me just how good I’d had it under my parents’ plans for so long.  After the bills passed through my insurance company, I had to pay almost everything out of pocket.  I had no dental insurance, so my pearly whites which had had the privilege my entire life of being seen my a dentist every six months received no treatment.  Glasses and contacts I also paid for out of pocket.  And then there was the million other things that come up in adult life, like licensing fees and tires that need replacing and missed wages because you went home for Christmas to see your family.

I was stuck there for a long time, feeling pessimistic about money and adulthood.  Then I was lucky enough to land the perfect job right before the economic crisis hit (anyone else looking for a job then knew that it had already hit California).  I hugged that benefit book tight and marveled at a thing called Paid Time Off.  I started earning my biggest pay checks ever. But, it was still so hard to even keep up.  By then I had significant credit card debt (a result of a deficit I’d been running those earlier two years) and even the minimum payments were becoming hard to manage.  Of course, that habit I had of going shopping to make myself feel better wasn’t improving matters either. That year was particularly difficult, because I was a less-than-halftime MA student just finishing my thesis, so I was making big student loan payments every month.

When I started my PhD this Fall, I had the weird optimism that things were going to magically get easier money-wise.  I would still be working full time, but I wouldn’t be paying on my student loans.  Sure, I still have huge amounts of credit card debt, but no bother.  Of course, things got worse.  My car broke down and I had to wait a week to get it fixed, because I had no money.  After a week, I had barely enough to get it fixed, but I ended up overdrawing my checking account–for the first time in my life–by $2 and there was nothing I could do until the end of the week when I got paid.  I wish I could say that’s when I hit bottom, but it took me at least another month and a half to finally, after three years, get serious about paying off my debt.

I’d wanted to believe for a long time that the problem wasn’t me.  Supporting yourself is just really hard, so of course I was struggling.

When I stopped avoiding my finances and took control instead, I realized that I had been the problem and that, excuse the cheese here, I could be the solution too.  I stopped spending money on anything I didn’t need.  I couldn’t believe how much money was disappearing from my accounts every week, going to nothing I could remember later. When I looked closely, not only did I have enough to pay all of my bills, but I had hundreds extra to start putting toward by debt.

I’m now working a second job to speed up the debt reduction, but I could support myself with my measly full time salary, and once I no longer have to make payments to credit card companies every month, I’ll be able to do that easily.  It’s true I don’t live an extravagant life.  I drive a car from 1997, I live in a nice apartment the size of a small box, I don’t eat out often, and I don’t travel much, but it’s a nice life anyway and when I’m not on a war path to destroy debt, it will again include luxuries like belonging to a gym and buying music and books.

Supporting myself was never impossible, but for a long time, I made it seem that way.