it makes the world go round....

when i was young, i got pre-approved for a bunch of credit cards my first semester of college. well, 2 or something. i did okay with those for a little bit, but then my dad got laid off. we had an agreement, as long as i made the grades he'd pay for half of my tuition. well, i felt like i couldn't ask him for the money after that, so i put it on my cards. i was still doing okay for a little while, but then more cards came and it kind of snowballed. the bad part was when i got engaged to a girl ten years older than me. before we met, she'd applied to get her master's degree at harvard divinity school, and not long after we got engaged she got the word that she'd been accepted. the original plan was for me to head out there and get a job out there, but after she got out there, she realized that she needed to be alone. she got married immediately after high school, and stayed married until a couple months before we met. i think i was the third guy she'd dated.

anyways, getting dumped kinda put me into a funk, and i spent a couple months drifting, didn't go back to school and decided to enlist. that was a huge pay cut, and that was the beginning of the end. i didn't realize that there were programs to protect your credit when you joined the active duty military, i just started getting behind on bills and it kept getting worse and worse.

i realized it was getting bad, i just didn't know what to do and spent some time ignoring it and hoping it'd go away. fast forward 10 years and i finally just decided i had to fix it. at this point it had gotten just about as bad as it was going to get, but it wasn't getting any better. i've spent the last couple of years seriously trying to improve my credit. paid off the debt, took alot of money out of my 401k plan to pay stuff off, got the secured credit cards, etc... and it's worked. i can buy a house or a car or whatever on credit now. i've got normal credit cards. today amex sent a letter that started "because of your excellent credit history, we'd like to..." those are words i never thought i'd see again...

so how/why did it get so bad? i dunno all of the factors. alot of it was the fact that my parents grew up dirt poor. so they saved and cut every corner they could. so when we were growing up it was k-mart clothes all the way. the flip side to that was they sent us to exclusive private schools at different points in our lives. going to the local public school where everyone is wearing sears jeans is one thing.... going to a private school with a kid who's already got a $million trust fund is another. then there's a basic lack of impulse control. then the weird thing is a parent's urge to provide nice things for their family. my dad got us the nice t.v., stereo, vcr, etc... which was cool, but when i was out on my own, i felt i NEEDED those same things. i didn't take those for the luxary items that they were. and alot of it was just the stupidity of youth. i got out on my own, got those cards, and just bought stupid, stupid stuff with them.

a couple good things came out of the experience though. my parents have paid for none of my schooling. while it's taken me a long, long time to get to the final two courses for my undergrad degree, the degree means a helluva lot more to me now that it would've if i'd completed it in four years. i've taken alot of weird roads to get where i am now. roads that i might not have otherwise taken had i not gotten myself into the situation. i've got a definate appreciation for the possessions i have now (not that material items are everything... but i'm kind of in the same boat my parents were in. i've experienced a little poverty, even if it was a self inflicted wound), i've got an understanding of the importance of not running up debt, of having savings in the bank and of showing some fiscal responsibility. i've got a weird sense of pride for climbing out of the hole that i dug for myself.

here's hoping that i can keep the self destructive urges at bay and maintain the tiny bit of impulse control that i've gained over the last decade....