11.11.02
Once upon a time, when I first worked at Younkers, there was this girl named Kristy working in the lingerie department directly outside the salon.
Kristy had a friend whose name I can not remember, but we'll call her Stacy.
Stacy had managed to spend herself into about $30k of debt, and was planning to declare bankruptcy at the age of 21 to get out of it. Since her Express card had a ridiculously high limit, she hadn't maxed it out yet, and they hadn't taken her to collections over debts, she decided to do her best to max the card out before she had to give it up forever, or for at least the next ten years.
This made me sick, but I accepted it because she was in for a big surprise about how easy and fun the bankruptcy process can be for a person, and was generally an idiot that was going to have shit for credit for the next 10 years or so.
Honestly, I don't know what ever happened with Stacy. Kristy quit working at Younkers before the bankruptcy proceedings began, and I never really cared enough to try and find out anything else about Stacy.
Once upon a 1993, I screwed up my credit.
And I am just now to the point where all of the bad things are almost completely off of my credit report, a copy of which I just received in the mail. I'm even contesting a few things on the report, which should make my credit score go up a bit -- maybe even into the good, instead of almost--but-not-quite good range. But I am getting away from the story here.
During the "bottom of the bell jar era," I lived off of my credit cards.
At first, I had just enough money for rent, but was charging utility bills, groceries, and assorted sundries. I did a little bit of regular shopping, like for new sheets and some bath towels, but for the most part it wasn't for luxury items.
Somewhere in here while I had decent enough credit, I opened up two more credit cards, transferring the balance of a higher interest card to both of them, with the intent of cutting the expensive card into tiny bits. Instead, I kept using it.
When I ran out of actual cash rent money, I relied upon cash advances. Eventually, I ran out of those, so I would go out with a bunch of friends for dinner, and then pick up the check and collect money from my friends.
But those cards got maxed out, so I started using store-specific cards to buy things at stores for people, in exchange for the cash. (Kind of like in Reality Bites, where she uses her dad's gas card, and an afternoon of pumping gas for people, to make enough cash money for rent and huge telephone bills.)
Somewhere in here, I needed a new watch, and apparently a new boom box, as my watch had broken, and my old boom box needed replaced. The only card I had left where I could get these things was from the Spiegel catalogue, but I did get the least expensive Fossil watch (back when the priciest ones were like $50).
I couldn't pay on these cards anymore, so I quit. I was hounded by creditors. The University even came after me for tuition that I never should have had to pay in the first place -- years later, through paperwork appeals, it was arranged so that I didn't ever have to pony up the cash.
I worked a little bit in here, and still managed to always have enough money to keep a roof over my head and the utilities on, but food was another story. I got reacquainted with the wonders of ramen noodles, and lived off of snackmaster sandwiches of lunch meat and spaghetti sauce. I got a job at Subway for a month, and lived off of free meals from there the whole time. I also ate a lot of moon pies (10/$1 at Quik Trip) and refills of flavored fountain iced tea. (This was when flavored things like nestea peach and raspberry came out, so there were promo cups that had a "return this cup, and get another cup of tea for only 5¢. We always made sure to get another one of these cups, and repeated this process for at least a coupla months. It's kinda like the time where someone gave me a bottle cap for a free sprite, and for the next ten bottles of sprite, managed to not have to pay for a single one because all of them were winners.)
And the end result of all of this wanton spending -- living the high life, eating fine gourmet cuisine -- was that I ended up with a lot of creditors calling my house. And sending me letters threatening to get me, and my little dog too.
About a year after this all began, I entered a credit repayment program through the United Way, and they helped me spend the next six years paying off all of the debt I accrued.
Which is why this woman makes me so angry. She racked up over $20k in debt on shopping trips, actual fine dining and drinking, and getting her hair cut and body all spa'd up.
Okay, I can appreciate that it is fun to spend money. It is nice to have pretty clothing and accessories, eat fabulous foods, and only swill beatific beverages. I admit that Bloomingdale's is a fantastic store. But if you don't have the money to buy that stuff in the first place, much less may payments on the cards for, don't do it.
And then she had the chutzpah to solicit donations from the public to repay her debts. I'll give her points for creativity, but STRANGERS paid off over $13k of that for her, and she raised most the rest of it by auctioning off the pretty clothing and accessories on eBay.
She has an online diary recounting the struggles of saving money by riding the subway instead of taking a cab, cutting up a long $300 cardigan into a more fashionable shorter version, schmoozing people into buying her food and giving her free stuff out of pity, not being able to wash her sheets from her cat constantly vomitting on them because she can only afford Friskie's instead of Science Diet.
Eat moon pies, stale bread sandwiches, and ramen mixed with salsa for a month, and then get back to me about how bad you feel about accepting a free salmon fillet from a neighbor, or taking an apple off of a co-worker's desk when it had been sitting there all week.
This girl doesn't know a goddamned thing about what suffering is like. She shopped herself into $20k's worth of debt, all of which was repayed in 20 weeks. Her penance? Having to eat wilted brown lettuce, doing interviews for articles, making television appearances, getting a book deal, and having her story optioned for a movie.
You know how much I had to repay, from living off of credit cards for most of a year?
EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS.
And it took me 6 years to do it all on my own, paying as much as I possibly could afford at the time. I also managed to put myself through beauty school, college, pay student loans, and maintain a functioning household while in repayment.
I've still got to repay about $40k's worth of student loans over the course of the next twenty years. Any random strangers out there want to cut that down to 6 months for me?
What's in your head?