How to find yourself Teetering on the Edge of Financial Ruin in 25 Easy Steps
Step 1: Start off poor. Here’s the basic set-up: middle-class single mother who works as a teacher. Upper middle-class father who could probably pay my school tuition and everything on his own, who looks at the equation “Pay money to ex-wife to support children” and only sees the “pay money to ex-wife” part, and therefore is not good with the whole “child-support money” thing. It doesn’t help that when they got divorced the law was that child support only had to be paid until the child turns 18 or graduates high school, whichever comes last. (It was later changed to ‘until 21 or graduates college’, but this doesn’t apply to our situation.) Now that I am over 18, he has decided that $300 a month “allowancecoughaboutathirdofwhathepaidinchildsupportformealonecough” is sufficient. Now that I am living on my own with bills to pay and groceries and gas and EXPENSIVE art supplies, he has not seen fit to give me any more than that.
Step 2: Instant poor-person, just add college! College is expensive. As is living in this town, and since my (completely awesome) school is too small to have dorms, I have to get an actual apartment of my own. I like my little place, and living on my own has been mostly good, but of course someone has to pay the bills and the rent. Most of my expenses are paid out of a parent loan my mom got through the financial aid office. While this works for now, my mom is eventually going to have to pay all this money back, and the fact that she is paying for pretty much everything when my dad is financially capable of paying for so much more is not exactly fair. So: Rent, cable, electricity, groceries, gas, medication (particularly Adderall, without which I cannot be expected to function), art supplies, fabric and sewing supplies, …and being able to buy something for myself every now and then, as in, a game I’ve been waiting three years for, or you know, at the least, a haircut.
Step 3: Choose to do something absolutely insane like actually spending money on something other than the bare essentials. Like the trimmings to finish an art dress. And the stuff necessary to finish the Kairi cosplay I’ve been trying to finish for years (which only cost about $15 in total).
Step 4: Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: About $60 for the game and the guidebook.
Step 5: Go to an anime convention you’ve been wanting to attend for a very long time but have never logistically been able to attend. It was frickin’ AWA, y’all. Anime Weekend Atlanta. It’s like the Harry Potter of southeastern cons. As one guy described it, “You go to AWA, and then the rest of the cons throughout the year are just leading up to the next AWA.” I’ve been wanting to go ever since my best friend April and her family first started going and she came back and told me how awesome it was. And the people she was going with said there would be room in their hotel room and that all of us together would mean that it would only be $40 a person for the hotel, which is fricken’ great prices for a nice hotel that was within walking distance of the con. I don’t think $70 in tickets and accommodations is too much for frickin’ AWA. And that glorious con was worth every cent I paid for it. We had so much fun, I managed to finish my Queen of Hearts inspired art dress in time, along with my Kairi cosplay (it turned out really well, all except for the temporary red hair dye, which failed miserably. I just had to go as a brunette because I can’t afford a wig), and I had a blast at a KH photoshoot where I was the only non-Organization member who showed up. I remember hearing “Everybody attack Kairi!” being told to sprawl on the ground, and then looking up at about 10 people pointing various weapons at me.
Step 6: Spend money when you get to the con: The thing is, I didn’t really spend that much while we were there. I got a crown that went freakishly perfectly with my QoH art dress. I’d already made a crown that went nicely with my dress, but this one was coincidentally perfect. There’d been a place on my dress where I’d had hanging from a chain the Queen of Hearts playing card with an Ace of Hearts card glued to the back, and this crown had a Queen of Hearts card in the center with an Ace of Hearts card on the back. I couldn’t NOT get it. It had been forever since I’d really spent a good deal of money on myself, and I figured I deserved it.
Step 7: Don’t keep adequate track of how much money you’ve got in your bank account. I’d been checking my balance all weekend, but I’d been taking out more money from the ATM then I’d realized. It didn’t help that my online balance wasn’t listing the full amount I’d spent the last time I’d bought gas. It only said $1, but the payment was still pending. I trusted it would show the full amount deducted from my balance when the payment went through. Even taking that into account, I thought I had more in my account than I actually did.
Step 8: Sell stuff on Ebay. (And forget that they charge you for listing.) I sell artisan jewelry on Ebay, and it’s about $12 monthly in listing fees because no one buys and I keep forgetting to take it all down. It’s set up to automatically pay through paypal, which means that that 12 was deducted from my already-shrinking balance automatically in the middle of my Atlanta weekend.
Step 9: “I’ve got enough gas to get from Atlanta to Chattanooga to Franklin. I don’t need to ask Mom for any money when I stop in Chattanooga. And surely I’ve still got a little left in my account if I DO need to get money. It may only be like, 30 bucks, but it’s something. And I’ve still got like, 20 bucks in my wallet.”
Step 10: Apply dramatic irony to Step 9. I made it past Murfreesboro before I realized that I was low on gas. I stopped at a station, thinking I would only put a few dollars worth of gas into my car; just enough to get home. That’s when I opened my wallet and realized that I only had 7 bucks in cash. And I wasn’t sure how much I had in my bank account, as the mental math began to give me a very different number than the one I’d been deluding myself with earlier, I realized I was risking a negative balance putting more than 10 bucks in my car. I think I settled on twelve dollars of gas, paid for with my debit card because I didn’t know how much was in my bank account, but at least I knew how much was in my wallet and I didn’t want to risk spending my cash if it was all the money I had to my name.
Step 11: Arrive home. Check bank account. When I checked my balance online later the next day (I wanted to give the two gas purchases time to go through), I had an outstanding balance of $2.98.
Step 12: If you want to teeter on the edge of financial ruin, make sure you get Comcast. These events culminated on Monday, September 20. I know this, because I got my Comcast bill on September 20. It said it was due on September 20. I freaked, and of course attempted to call my local Comcast people and demand to know why my bill, which had a billing date of August 28, was just now arriving, and why I was getting a completely new bill two weeks after I’d already been billed (I’d just made a payment on the fifth). I kept getting the ‘line busy’ beep.
Step 13: College billing office=not my friend. So I’m living off a parent loan, right? It all goes to the college, I get a credit balance, and when I need money I go get a partial refund check from the billing office. Simple as this may sound, it only works when, you know, the billing office lady is there to give me a check. I get up super early on Tuesday morning so I can rush over to the school and get a check (I had something I had to buy for my Textiles class that day, so I needed money NOW) so I could get to my bank when it opened at 10am, so that I could get it deposited and maybe get some money in time to rush back to school for my class at 10:20, so that I would then be able to run to Hobby Lobby and Home Depot in between the end of my class at 12, and the beginning of my Textiles class at 1. And then I get to school and find out that the billing lady won’t be there at all that day. FML. FML FML FML FML FML FML.I ended up so panicked that I got a migraine and missed my textiles class altogether, along with my fashion illustration class the next morning. Did I mention she wasn’t there on Wednesday either?
Step 14: I cannot stress the importance of the Comcast part. Their customer service is friggin’ stellar.
(I did eventually get money, but it was Thursday or Friday by that point, and I’d been panicking and starving for several days. Never did figure out the Comcast deal. I just paid it and figured the first bill had been for my first month when they installed everything, and then the second bill came so soon afterwards because they charge you in advance of the month of service.)
INTERMISSION (otherwise known as the time when things weren’t crazy and I had money for the basic essentials in life like groceries)
Step 15: It helps if none of your bills come at the same time, so you always get a bill right after you’ve just gone to get a check to pay another bill, meaning you have to go back and get another one practically every week.
Step 16: “I’m down to 35 bucks in the bank! Well, that’s okay. I’ve gotta go to the billing office and get a check so I can pay the electric bill and get my Adderall prescription refilled. I don’t need to get much more money than what I’ll need for that, because I can go home this weekend and get money from dad.”
Step 17: Add some fun dramatic irony to Step 16.
Step 18: Not only can Step 16 apply only to weekends when it turns out that my dad will be in colonial Williamsburg for who-knows-what reason, but it can also only apply to weekends when my little brother will be very sick and at my mom’s house when I get there.
Step 19: Complete immune system failure. Sure, mom comes into town and takes care of me, goes and pays for my adderall, goes grocery shopping, and leaves me money so I can buy fabric and stuff for my next project in my sewing class. But after she has to go home, and I am finally capable of remaining in an upright position long enough to make it to a CVS minute clinic, I’m the one having to pay the 30 bucks, and then another probably 15-20 in various groceryish things I pick up while I’m at CVS because of course, it’s after mom leaves that I think of more things that I need right now to live because I can’t stand up long enough to cook anything, and that only leaves microwave mac and cheese, but of course dairy just makes the mucus thicker so I don’t want cheesy noodles right now.
Step 20: Responsibility bites you in the butt. So remember back in step 16 where I got money to pay my electric bill? And remember how I only got enough for that and for my adderall and how I basically had no money prior to this step? Well, see, all the non-bill money was pretty much spent up on the a. various medicines and stuff I bought at CVS the day I got sick before the worst of it came on and incapacitated me; b. at the doctor’s office; c. at CVS the day I went to the clinic in food-to-eat-when-too-sick-to-cook. Well, I set it up way back in Step 16, nearly two weeks earlier, to have my bank automatically send the payment to the electric company on Tuesday the 11th. What I didn’t realize was that after that payment went through, that I would have only about 13 dollars left in my bank account.
Step 21: “20 dollars a yard? Holy crap. But it’s so perfect. And I only need a little more than a yard of it. And the main skirt fabric is cheap, and altogether this shouldn’t be more than forty. I’ve got forty in cash; I should be fine.”
Step 21 a. Would you like some irony with that?
Step 21 b. (of course you would)
Step 22: “Your total is $63.27.”
Step 23: Try the MasterCard anyway. You put enough in your account back in Step 16 that you should still have enough left after electric bill and immune system failure to cover this.
Step 24: Your card is declined. Realize the electric bill went through yesterday. Ask if they can try charging 30 dollars. You’ll pay the rest in cash.
Step 24a. Your card is declined again. Not knowing how much you’ve got in your account, and completely humiliated, you begin to panic. You’ve got to have this stuff before class tomorrow. I admire the patience and understanding of that employee. The fabric had already been cut, and I had to have it for the project, and for class. I could at least afford to get the main cotton fabric for the skirt, which would be what I would most need before class. I had to put the fancier fabric on hold until I could get more money.
Step 25: Go home and vow to keep better track of your finances.
So far, I am not doing very well at this whole “being an adult” thing.
(I’m too sick to care about editing at the moment. I apologize if typos are rampant.)