But They Have Comic Books...

What was your childhood like? Often we go back to the earliest part of our life to figure out why we are the way we are. Growing up my family didn’t do too many things. I didn’t know what a vacation was because we never took one. I didn’t know what a mall was because we never went. And I didn’t miss any of that stuff.  We never talked about money, how much we had or didn’t have, what it got spent on, how to manage it, track it, etc.

As I got older though, I got to see what other people had. Most of my friends had the appearance of being better off, stuff-wise, than I was. They had video games and comic books, better clothes, more clothes, better toys, more toys. And I wanted at least a semblance of what they had. Early on as a teenager I began to get an allowance for doing chores around the house. You couldn’t buy much with that though, so I began to take money from my dad’s wallet for the things I wanted, the things my friends had. 

Once I was old enough to have a job I worked every moment I wasn’t in school. I didn’t really know why I did that other than to get money. I didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do with it. I just knew that whatever I wanted to do, I would need money for it. I began to become self sufficient in terms of acquiring and maintaining my stuff. However, I totally ignored responsibility for the stuff I thought my parents owed me. The things I thought I deserved. 

As I got older, through college, and when I started my first job the belief that I deserved some stuff, that I was entitled to things, began to grow.  My first paycheck was the most money I had made at any one time. In fact, I made in two weeks what I took me a whole summer to make when I was in school. With that amount of money I felt like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do or anything that I couldn’t have. So in the span of about 2 months I had accumulated and surpassed the standard of living it had taken my parents 30 years to acquire. The problem is in order to do that, I had to go and get some debt. And this was debt that I owed to companies, banks, not to my parents or people I knew. And they wanted their money. So I had to pay them and try to maintain what I just created for myself, which meant I had to get some more debt. I didn’t know what I was spending. I didn’t know where the money went or how much I had. I made decisions based on if I felt I had the money for it or if I just wanted it badly enough. I bought a new car. I bought a house. Not with any kind of planning, just decided one day I wanted one. And then came the time when I was going to marry this girl I had been dating…

 

~Kevin