the girl and the money and the shame of life

I have confessed a vertiginous range of seriously private matters here on my pretty dumb things (and said confessions serve only to underscore the applicability of this blog’s name). I have narrated sexual peccadilloes aplenty; they blow like burrs in the wind, they are that light and insubstantial. I have recounted loves lost, and I’ve recounted loves won and then lost. I have described the most painful moments of my life with the dutiful, if poetic, precision of a most dedicated and passionate analysand.  Freud’s Dora had nothing on me and my enthusiasm for the talking cure, though my form of the cure has been a near-steady stream of gut-wrenching writing.

I’ve related bodily functions in Ifochromatic hues. I’ve bared my emo breast and told of my laving in self-pity, my dipping into depression, and my retreat into suicidality. I’ve talked about being a stripper and bearing that job’s humiliations, as well as its triumphs. I’ve talked about menstrual sex, filing for bankruptcy, losing my will to dissertate, going on a makeover show and why I love Wookiees. I have not, however, ever shown you the horrors that lie below.

For I’ve never shown you my bank account.

On Sunday, I went to the bank to withdraw money and discovered I was $2.12 overdrawn. By Tuesday that amount had swollen to an impressively turgid $223, of which $175 were overdraft fees. Waking today, I found out that I was $315 overdrawn, of which $245 were fees. That is one solidly priapic number. That’s a number that causes a girl to go a bit faint in the solar plexus. That's a number so big it's hard to swallow. It’s a figure that will do the figurative number on a girl’s lifestyle when a girl recognizes that she really only takes home $450 a week. It’s a number that makes a girl stop and ponder how exactly she got into this economic freefall in the first place.

Looking at my transaction history (figure left, click to embiggen), I realize that there were many small, stupid straws that broke this fiscal dromedary’s back. There were the two automated payments totaling $100 that I’d forgotten about, ditto the $46.13 for anti-depressants that I realize now I should have bought a long time ago; maybe they’d have saved me some of this anguish. Those are the items that I knew I needed to account for but just slipped my mind like it was coated in Teflon.

There’s also the food. Three purchases at gourmet food purveyor Balducci's totaling around $121. Which is just stupid. Trader Joe’s is not that far away. Still, I can forgive myself the food, likewise the $10.00 for subway fare. The real problems are everything else. The Neil Gaiman print I bought from Neverwear.net ($51.95): even as I pushed the happy “purchase now” button, I knew I ought not to buy.  The treats for my pets ($23.89). The two books I inexplicably had to have (Parallel Lives: Four Victorian Marriages and Serenity: Better Days, totaling $19 and change). The subscription to The New Yorker and Portfolio I bought because Sasha Frere-Jones helped me out with that rejected piece and I felt badly that it hadn't been accepted and I forgot that Condé Nast isn’t a charity ($30.00). The rental of Star Wars parts IV-VI ($12.97) because I had to see them and not any of the 78 DVDs festooning my shelves. The DVD set of Battlestar Galactica, season 1, ($16.89) that I absolutely needed for no discernable reason. And let’s not forget the two songs I downloaded from iTunes, “Single Ladies” and “My Life Would Suck Without You,” which I bought to allay the deep suspicion that my life sucked without them.

I admit I generally suffer from a kind of magical thinking surrounding my bank account. It’s as if despite all logic and experiential history, I feel that I have the everlasting gobstopper of checking accounts. Somehow, in my mind my pitiful, rocky debit card acts like the mythical stone soup and nourishes every being living in this united states of me. The cold, hard fact that I need to realize—yet again—is that it doesn’t.

To be perfectly fair to me and my shameful overspending self, last week presented the psychological and fiscal perfect storm. I was reeling in the unpleasant blowback of three rejections in one week. I had chosen that week to go on a diet, and this fact is important both because “real” “food” is expensive and because denied of my usual comfort of cookies I went somewhere else, and that elsewhere was apparently Half.com. Add to that fragile emotional state the knowledge that I had recently gotten a wee raise and that I’d chosen to relinquish my dizzingly expensive gym membership. I felt positively deserving as well as completely well-funded. This feeling was, in both cases, complete fiction.

Let’s look a bit further, because really, why stop at a cursory point in this spelunk of shame? Stopping would have the disappointing denouement of the final shot of Thelma and Louise, unfulfillingly forever frozen above the Grand Canyon. I went to the bank. My very much beloved bank manager, Carl, took pity on me and did away with $105 in overdraft fees, leaving me to pay the remaining $135. Right now, after Carl worked his managerial mojo, I am $177.83 overdrawn. Which means that I overspent only $42.83. That’s all. Less than fifty bucks. At almost any other time in my life going on a $50 shopping spree would not have pushed me off the financial cliff. But it does now. That is how fine my finances are. It’s a freaking sobering thought.

Reviewing my past week, my feelings of wafer-thin vulnerability, my spiraling feelings of loss, my cringing self-doubt, and my choices on how to take care of myself, I wonder what it is I think I’m worth—or not. I feel a tremendous burden of shame over screwing this money poodle so badly, a burden that’s probably disproportionate to paying $135 in overdraft fees. That’s because money, how much there is, how easily I make it, where it comes from, and what I spend it on is such a potent symbol for how I view myself. I’m probably not much different from anyone else in that respect. It’s one of the reasons why we are so reticent to share the crunchy numbers with others, and why we ask what something costs in lowered voices, the voice we usually reserve for talking about sexually transmitted diseases and madness.

I’m going to be a Pollyanna and see my willingness to show my shameful pecuniary panties in public, my choice to air them out and scrutinize my financial skid marks, as a sign that maybe I’m starting to change. Maybe I’m becoming someone who can see herself as being both worth more and more worthy of better care. Maybe soon I’ll earn enough that my suffering won’t seem as dire, and maybe I’ll even make enough that I can treat myself to Battlestar Galactica, Seasons 2-5. Maybe both I and things will change, or maybe as I change myself, I will change things. A girl can dream, right?

Comments

[Bearfree]

Check your tip jar...

[Kismet]

If it makes you feel better, you are not alone...

My paycheck comes but once a month. By the 17th of every month (for the last 6 months, at least), I am overdrawn. My bank will spot me $600. I draw that out, and try to live on that, doling out sadly insufficient amounts to my 17 yr old son. I feel your pain, CG. Living expenses seem to go up and up, but the salary doesn't.

I sure would send some help your way if it was possible. Keep your chin up...you'll always get by somehow!

[drea]

I dont know what it is, but as soon as I found out Im out of a job on the 15th - I went on a spending spree (well not really a spree, but I shouldnt have been spending at all...). Denial/defiance I expect...

[Katie]

I have two thoughts:

1. You should read up on how one mom makes $800 for groceries and toiletries last for an entire year: http://jane4girls800dollarannualbudget.blogspot.com/

2. If you are looking for an easy way to bring in extra money, you should look into http://www.odesk.com

3. It might be illegal, but instead of downloading music or going to blockbuster, you might want to check into bit torrents, and downloading your music, movies and even your TV shows. It's a big money saver. Not, of course, that I do this myself. ;)

And no, I don't get paid to advertise for either of those. I just know what it's like to live on a shoestring budget, and these are things that have really helped me reign in my spending and boost my income.

[Arlen]

what a brave piece to write

[cody]

materialism has to go
maybe this economy will spawn a new breed of penny pinchers?

[minstrel hussain boy]

i think the hardest thing with finance is facing (not even telling the truth as you have done) the truth.

i've had to go into my own accounts, the wreckage of the economy has been hitting me hard (and a great number of my collegues in music). things i figured were safely invested turn out to be at risk. things i thought were handled are in danger of becoming more goddamned trouble than they are worth.

it's distasteful. also very revealing. like you, i had stuff that i was simply letting go which kept clicking out of my account monthly.

that said, i was overjoyed to land a gig in a pit band for a musical production.

the leather miniskirt's a little tight, but it polished up nicely and i'm back on the stroll...

yoo hoo! sailor!

[m]

One of those things that's always irked me is how we women are taught that financial irresponsibility is glamorous. Going into debt for shoes or a wedding is sold as part and parcel to our very femininity. I'm not saying this is the case with you. Your post just made me think of it.

[Karl Elvis]

I decline to add up all the money I've paid in overdraft fees over the past ten years.

Between pay pal, auto-debit for my car loan, check cards, on-line bill pay, and my own habit of paying bills only now and then, I crash my bank account at least three times a year.

I need to pay someone to take my money away and give me an allowance.

Point being, it happens all the time to some of us; we're not made to manage the tiny sums of money that are the difference between income and outgo.

[Lilly]

You could always go radical and use a cash budget! More and more of us are doing it because you just can't overdraw when your wallet is empty. You can use separate envelopes for each thing, i.e., food, spending $, healthcare. (Won't help the online stuff of course).

Good luck with the overdraft woes, and I know it's possible to live on that amount, I've done it before and am doing it again.

[m]

I came back to say that Quicken has recently made its online service free. I just started using it, and love it.

[Alana]

CG,

I do think our finances reflect our feelings of self worth, but more importantly, our sense of honest independence. Seriously, how much do we truly desire that independence? We think we do. But our actions often argue a conflicting desire for rescue. I specifically speak to women here.

Financial independence is my Holy Grail in which I only half believe in.

My grandmother, a financially flush woman, has bailed me out countless times. I'm not sure is she's shrewd or if she just got lucky. I'm convinced my grandmother is both shrewd and lucky, and she is also generous, not just with me but with all of us.

Unfortunately, my father did a good job raising me to believe I couldn't do anything right, including manage my own money. Therefore, I fucked up on the financial front more than once as a young woman and didn't experience financial fortitude until I became a stripper; but then, that was fleeting because I spent every last dime of that money. No savings. No CDs. No investments.

Nothing.

I started all over financially speaking as a single mother in college, and it's taken me years to recover, and still, I struggle like a half wit half the time. Part of that is how hard it is to catch up once you're behind, and certainly the cost of living, sheer survival these days, is ridicules; but also I'm a living example of financial folly.

I'm been dumb, a real idiot.

This past year I've made some progress, which began when I sacrificed having a vehicle to get out from under the financial debt associated with having one: the car payment, the insurance, the upkeep and price of gas. The sacrifice allowed me to pay off other debt and catch up. Baby steps on a slippery slope.

Peace,
A

[1st Republic 14th Star]

I just put a little something in the tip jar too. Put it to good use.

[John]

I used to have much the same problem. For me, it took being laid off and having to spend just about every cent I have on basic bills to finally realize how much "stuff" I could do without.

[Arlen]

re: the last thought in your piece-
when I finally DO SOMETHING difficult, something that i have been putting off -and have been punishing myself for 'not doing'- very soon thereafter many great things happen for me. i discover this over over. in my humble opinion, this is a result of the law of 'the Universe rocks'.

[chelsea g.]

Thank you one and all for your support and advice. I appreciate it, even if I devour the former and only occasionally help myself to the latter.

I am, however, a bit surprised that no one got the song reference in the post's title. Are none of you aficionados of late-nineties irony-inflected California alterna-rock? Because if not, I think my surprise may have just morphed into dismay.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[Val]

Don't be too hard on yourself. I've been in a disgustingly shameful free-fall cycle of impulse-spending which typically draws my acct down to its last few cents each month... It's like some sort of sick game of "chicken", but the only one I'm hurting is my own self.

[David]

My daughter experienced exactly the same problem this past week. Several small purchases on her debit card led to hundreds of dollars in overdraft charges. This is happening to a lot of people, and the Fed is currently considering changing the rules to help people avoid this sort of trap. See this article.

You might consider doing what I suggested my daughter do: ask the bank to remove overdraft protection on your debit card. Some will do it, some won't.

One downside, of course, is that you will have to deal with the embarrassment of having the transaction denied if you try to buy something when there's no money in your account. Worse, your creditors might charge you their own fee if their automatic debits are rejected due to insufficient funds. But at least a $5 movie rental won't turn into a $40 movie rental.

Good luck.

[Lesa]

Aww, yah! Butthole Surfers. I make $70,000 a year, take home $50k, and of that $14,400 goes to rent. Recently had this moment: On way to lunch with friends. "Hey, I gotta stop at this ATM." And ATM informed me I had NO MONEY to withdraw. I have shamefully started clipping coupons and hope to stop smoking. Bah.