My Story Part 1
This might be a problem. We’d just written a $400 check for a deposit on our first place, but we didn’t have enough in the bank.
The deposit was for a crummy duplex that, unbeknownst to us, would experience two epic urban floods in the next 12 months, prompting fireman rescue by boat (twice). But we didn’t know that then. All we knew was that we wanted the place because the landlord would accept my fiance’s cat (for $50 more a month of course). So we handed the check over and walked out.
A panicky voice told the story as we walked back to the car. “Why did you have me write that?” she asked. “You know we don’t have enough, right?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I soothed.
My plan was simple; take a cash advance against my credit card and deposit it in the bank. But I wasn’t fast enough. My phone chirped when I was standing in line at a second hand store to purchase the nicest used interviewing suit I could find.
“The bank said you have insufficient funds on this check,” the landlord stated in a steady, if slightly annoyed, voice.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “I know. I was on my way to the bank next to take care of that. But you got there faster.” From there I launched into the same refrain I gave him an hour earlier. I just got an M.A. in English and was soon interviewing to be a technical writer. My fiance was a Grad T.A. on track for the same degree in a year. He could trust us to cover rent – we had job prospects.
It was a lie. After hundreds of job applications, I’d had a whopping single interview for a technical writer job. And they hadn’t called back. I was back to my summer job cleaning pools for minimum wage, wondering if I would have anything to show for the 6 years it took me to earn two liberal arts degrees.
I projected calm to my fiance and to the irritated landlord, but inside, I felt just as rejected as that check. Rejected from the job market. Rejected from affordable healthcare. Rejected from a shot at a middle-class life. Rejected even from my own blue-collar family who would never understand how someone with two college degrees could be dirt poor.
New suit, no interview
The second hand store didn’t have any suits from this century, so I had to purchase a new one, and took a second credit card to fund it. I didn’t even have an interview lined up. And what marketable skills did I have to sell anyway?
Sure, I’d just received a Masters in English; that was something. I was even the only student in my graduating class that passed comprehensive exams “with distinction.” “You have a bright future,” I was told. “Have you considered getting a PHD?”
But how to fund it? A well meaning but delusional professor mentor told me, “You could always teach a class or two at a community college.”
But to what end? So I could continue to live in poverty with no health insurance and take out more loans in pursuit of knowledge valued by none in the world except the institution? Academia may have been fertile ground for those with money or a family safety net at their backs; it was no safe haven for the poor.
And I couldn’t stand the thought of consuming hundreds of more Marxist, feminist, or racial deconstructions of works by famous authors. Academia accepted me, but I had already decided to move on. I was interested in life in the real world, but it wasn’t interested in me, it seemed.
But wait, I did look damn good in my off-the-rack suit. Who was that handsome devil in the mirror? “You look great. You’re going to knock ‘em dead. I’d hire you,” my fiance boasted.
Her adoration soothed my nerves a little. Maybe she was right. I could have looked the part at a lawyers office, a big business meeting, or a Wall Street high rise. Surely I could at minimum charm my way into some entry-level office drone job.
But without a job interview, my charm would only be shared with a fitting room mirror. It looked like this suit was going to be sitting on the hanger for a while.
Worth less than zero
That night, I felt a tightness in my chest: a persistent throb, a sort of squeezing pain where your throat constricts and breathing is difficult. The pain reminded me of how I felt when my brother called to tell me my cousin Juan fell tragically to his death on a dark pothole-strewn highway.
But this pain was not sadness; it was panic. That bounced check meant more to me than an unpleasant phone call; it was a symbol of my broken past and, apparently, broken future.
“You are worth less than zero,” the check seemed to taunt.
I should have been thrilled about my upcoming wedding, but I fell into a toxic fog of shame, anger, and self-doubt.
That night, I raged for hours about how unfair and cruel the world was to failures like me. There were no do overs in life. Unable to provide for my family, unable to even find a job, I could see nothing but my own misery.
My self flagellation wasn’t just lacerating me. I could see it in her understanding blue eyes; I was hurting her too.
After all, she had a nearly identical rap sheet as me: working class parents, mounting debt, and in a year the same worthless second English degree as me.
Racial and religious differences may have challenged us, but we were 100% compatible and fully united in mutual poverty and unemployability. We would marry in a month, doubling our debts, shortly before the job market would spiral into the abyss of the Great Recession.
We had nothing, it seemed, but we had each other, and I decided that must become our everything. Even with no money, we could live a life rich with love.
A steely resolve began to take root. I couldn’t fail her, and that meant I could not fail myself. I was overcome with gratitude and purpose to cherish the woman who had rescued me from my own darkness and loved me, even at my worst. She said she would follow me to the ends of the earth, and she meant it, even if that meant following me back to my parents, to live in my closet-sized, childhood bedroom.
A bounced check would not defeat me; I would turn my fortunes around, whatever it took. No job or wage was too demeaning. I would fight everyday to dig ourselves out of this hole. This, I vowed, would be the last bounced check I wrote in my life.
In just over 15 years, we would do that and more. We would move from poverty, to financial independence, to multi-millionaire net worth, all without ever landing “the” job or making “funny” money from real estate or buying Amazon stock before it exploded.
Stay tuned for Part II of my financial independence journey, where I’ll cover my plight working at a white collar sweatshop with no benefits.