Screwing the Pooch

đŸ¶ - Say what now?

Fifteen years ago I would’ve told you that I was a newly minted college grad with soaring ambitions.

Finishing school felt like a huge weight off my shoulders; so much so that alighting from the commencement stage felt like prancing down the lunar surface at .16 Gs.

I had fought tooth and nail and that bitch finally paid off—I earned that pretentious piece of paper that cues to the world (of LinkedIn) that you’re now worthy of esteem and recognition.

The way I see it—you’re paying a pretty penny to read books, ask questions, and take tests, but hey—academics is nothing more than a societally imposed institution that we must observe in order to gain some kind of merit amirite? You gotta pay a high price tag to be somebody—sounds a bit like extortion IMO. đŸ€”

All jokes aside, with college life behind me, I felt empowered and eager to forge my path ahead.

Being the motivational quote whore that I was, I believed that anything was possible: wherever I walked success would follow, the stars would align themselves perfectly in my favor, and I would quickly establish myself as a mover and shaker.

The doors of opportunity that had remained in obscurity would finally reveal themselves to me, pleading to be blown off their hinges by the battering ram that was my fiery entrepreneurial spirit.

In hindsight, there wasn’t anything wrong with my ambition and die-hard zest for triumph, but my energies were misplaced, and my interpretation of life in my early twenties was skewed by youth and inexperience.

Even stripped of the comedic prose, it’s still funny to think about those times, and years later, I reflect in amusement: how life had a way of humbling me, a way of tempering my passions.

I went from floating in zero gravity to crashing down FAST. 

Ok—I know that sounds a little dramatic, but seriously, it’s as if all my life’s adversities had declared themselves triumphant.

You see, problems had started taking shape from the get-go, and out of fear and want of avoiding negative emotions, I ignored them, and naturally, they grew worst.

Instead of addressing them, I compartmentalized and squeezed them into virtual non-existence, convincing myself they were mere trifles that would run their course into oblivion.

Even with my head buried in the sand, the darkness still looked better through rose-colored glasses; I remained optimistic that somehow my troubles would simply vanish—poof. đŸȘ„

Spurning the gravity of these issues was a fateful decision.

The smoke and mirrors I conjured quickly faded as a sobering reality began to crystallize.

During the wee hours of the morning, the fears I had bottled up deep inside were liberated from my conscious constraints as they wreaked havoc upon my psyche.

Abruptly I’d wake—gripped by panic, my heart pounding and my t-shirt drenched from terror-induced perspiration.

I did my best to quell the racing thoughts as I counted up from one in tandem with each breath—everything’s gonna be fine.

This grim picture I painted must have you wondering what the hell was wrong. 

No—I wasn’t one mainline away from a dose of Narcan.

Simply put: I was buried alive in debt and paying dearly for my lack of financial accountability.

There’s no denying it was a trying period in my life. I had college loans to pay back that I had neglected and mismanaged, my career path was going around in circles, and I fell into a deep depressive slump as I found life’s burdens too heavy to bear.

The years quickly passed. I was a little longer in the tooth with nothing to show for my own expectations of myself. I just couldn’t shake the perpetual slump. 

I could hear the crocodile from Peter Pan furtively homing in on me, intent on devouring me whole as Captain Hook and his swashbuckling henchmen cackled in debauched revelry.

I was frustrated, life felt pointless, and everything I did seemed futile.

Needless to say, during the early stages of adulthood, I failed to hit the ground running; I made several mistakes that profoundly affected me and hampered any attempt at moving ahead in my own life. 

I was underemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck, and barely managed to keep my head above the water. I was held back by delusions of grandeur while the rest of my peers eagerly trudged forth.

I started to really feel the pinch when I was sacked from my first “real” job as heads were still rolling under the recession’s saber.

Barely affording to make ends meet, things only got worst:

  • My loans defaulted
  • My credit score sank to abysmal depths
  • I was browbeaten by the prospects of legal action
  • I was harried by debt-collecting stooges
  • I couldn’t save a dime to my name

I could hear the wolves gnashing their teeth and clawing at my door; I had slipped egregiously and the time to pay the piper had come.  

The situation was dire, and I felt like a deadbeat—a failure.

All my modest aspirations served as grave goods, buried alongside me to serve as tokens of dreams past.

I needed a way out, a hard reset, a do-over, but that felt far beyond the horizon.

Questions haunted me:

  • How will I ever afford a home? 
  • Where will I cough up the dough to tie the knot?
  • Can I afford to have kids?
  • When can I ditch my old clunker and buy a new set of wheels? 
  • Will I be paying all this money until I’m clacking my dentures?
  • Vacation? What? 

I was completely demoralized, like a pauper in a land of barons and kings denied of its bounty.

There were several instances where I should have said enough was enough, but I pressed on—willfully oblivious.

I should have sought financial help but was ashamed of my lack of personal responsibility, so I kept to my own counsel.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when the situation deteriorated to the point of wage garnishment. That was the single catalyst that prodded me to action.

I realized that yes, I’ve made some bad choices, but if there was one enduring quality I possessed, it was my willpower, and it would help me get through this quagmire. 

If I were bound to succeed, I would have to face my fears, take stock of my life, and maneuver accordingly.

The same day I received my “Notice of Wage Garnishment”, I scrawled some back-of-the-envelope calculations and drew myself up a mental game plan for my course of action.

Pep talks ran through my head as I realized—this is GO time—I was going to remedy this dumpster fire while learning everything I could about money management.

I was working at full tilt, learning on the fly, at one point moonlighting at the local package store for extra cash.

I absorbed every piece of information I could come across regarding money made, money owed, money saved, and money invested, painstakingly culling the good information from the bad and applying it to my situation. 

The benefits were tremendous.

Not only was I able to pay down my debt and build up an emergency fund, but I also was able to start investing my hard-earned money and gradually build up my wealth—cha-ching!

My credit score improved, and believe it or not, being approved for a line of credit made me ecstatic. It meant somehow that things were getting better. 

Through trial and error, I was able to learn how to apply what I learned to my own situation.

I went from a benighted novice to my own personal scholar of finance. From a deadbeat to what I call a  debt-beat, a pauper to a king.

I could now stick a feather in my cap, pour myself a whiskey neat, kick my legs up, and bask in the fruits of my labor.

I created Prosper Pauper in hopes that you can too! 

-Peter David