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Not About the Payoff: My Problem With Debt Normalization as a People Pleaser

Welcome back to my guest post series, Not About the Payoff. Today my friend Daniella talks about what taking out loans at such a young age did to their mental health and her relationship with money – and debt – now. Grab your favorite hot beverage and curl in for this wonderful article.

You can see the rest of the articles here.

I have always had an unhealthy relationship with money. 

 When I was in high school, I spent entire paychecks in one weekend and then looked for coins in my car and house to get me through until the next. When I came down to my last $20, I thought to myself, “It’s fine, I’ll go to the thrift store and sell more clothes.” 

That’s toxic side hustling right there. 

I was actually quite a mess from the ages of 16 to 25. It really wasn’t until my late 20s that I started caring about my financial position, my life and my debt. 

My student debt wasn’t much on paper, but it was a lot in my head. 

Debt Normalization

Debt normalization is so weird. How do we raise our children and tell them all these requirements for a “successful” life? Who is anyone to tell someone else that they must do x,y and z in order to be anyone in life and do anything? 

And if you don’t have the means to get x, y and z done, you need a loan. 

You have to go to college, get a loan, get a good paying corporate job preferably, pay back the loan and live happily ever after. Then the car, house, whatever, whatever, more loans. Who cares, everyone has them!

Does that make sense to you? Because it never made much sense to me.

Going into college, I was somewhat confused about what I wanted out of life – and my degree. . I was only 16 when I started applying and 17 when I went off to Missouri State. I was bombarded with these images of what my life should look like, classism and pressure from others for what I should do.

And then mix that with an unhealthy relationship with money and you have…a lot of anxiety.

Hello My Name is Daniella, and I’m a People Pleaser.

I have been a people pleaser all my life. 

As an only child with strict parents, I was always looking to please and not get in trouble. I treated going to college the same way – I had to make them proud. If you also come from immigrant parents, especially hispanic parents, you know my struggle.

I wanted to go to college for fine arts, but my parents told me they wouldn’t help me pay for college if that is what I wanted to go for. They said there would be no way I could make money from that degree. 

I had a lot of anxiety around college and what I was going to do. Especially since what I wanted to do wasn’t good enough. 

So I picked a safer route –  Computer Science with a minor is Web Development. They paid half, and I took out loans for my half. Then I worked toto stay in college because I already took out loans, and what would happen if I wanted to leave? 

I couldn’t let anyone down.

More Uncertainty 

I did state school and community college for my first 2 years of college,the state school didn’t work out for me. So, I transferred to Webster University. I was back home and at a school I actually liked, but it was pricey, so I took out my student loans.I honestly didn’t even know what it truly meant to take out student loans when I was at the bank with my parents. 

My parents said they would pay half of the tuition, but the other half would be on me. They recommended that I take out a loan, and I believed them because I didn’t have $15,000 in my bank account at that time. And between my part time jobs, I wasn’t making near enough to be able to pay my own half without that loan. 

I didn’t even know why I was at school, to be honest. My goal was to get my Bachelors, that was it. I was good at coding and had been doing web development since grade school for fun. It was something that I enjoyed and would at least make me money. So I majored in Computer Science, cranked out those credits and graduated right on time in May 2011. 

My Worst Job Gave Me The Strangest Realization

I jumped on the first opportunity I was offered – an unpaid internship. Two weeks later, they hired me on full time. It was the worst job of my life. 

I worked 80-hour weeks trying to build entire customized WordPress themes and plugins by myself on short deadlines, while also teaching myself most of it as I went along. On top of that, I was being pulled in on app development projects. But I just kept popping adderall and staying up all night working and drinking because they had free beer in the office and Alcohol Friday’s.

If you are not sure what Alcohol Friday’s are, they are exactly what they sound like. Startups who have them supply unlimited alcohol, and you can drink all day and night Friday. The idea is to keep workers in the office longer heading into the weekend. It is as much of a trick as you think it is. Especially to a startup full of 20-somethings right out of college.

As for the job itself, it’s not that I hated the actual coding part, that part was fun. It was the pressure of the short deadlines, the constant pushing for more productivity and my inability to say no that made the job untenable. I hated who this job was turning me into. This was not what I envisioned when I graduated. 

I already had addiction issues, and this job wasn’t helping. I hated every second of it. 

Ironically though, I learned more at that job where I was getting paid than at school where I accumulated loans I was still working so very hard to pay off. 

It’s weird when you realize the system is rigged and you a part of it now. Or maybe the program I graduated from didn’t give me all the necessary tools. Who knows. I know I’m not the only one who has expressed this. 

I realized I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere. To everyone else I was doing great – already graduated, working at a startup and super busy at the age of 21. Who cares if I am miserable because I look busy and successful? 

I quit that job shortly after the first year. I didn’t care that I didn’t have a way to pay my loans when I quit, I had to get out of there.

Also, I stopped relying on adderall at about the same time. I haven’t taken adderall for 5 years. Btw, that stuff is just legal meth. 

Forbearance

I didn’t have much debt, but the way that $15,000 debt balance kept looming over my head, it might as well been $100,000. It actually ended up being closer to $20,000 due to the stupid decision I made after quitting that first job at the startup. I put my loans into forbearance. 

If you aren’t familiar with forbearance, it is when you delay your student loan payments because you are temporarily unable to pay the balance. Let me say this really quick: whatever you do, don’t do this!! When you put your loans in forbearance, they continue to accrue interest which ultimately get added on to your balance. 

Yes, forbearance is stupid and sucks. I wish it didn’t exist and more importantly – I wish the student loan rep never recommended it to me.

Other Jobs and My Debt

I took about six months and worked at my old waitressing jobs while also doing freelance development projects with one of the old clients from the startup. I didn’t steal them, I swear. 

Then I started another corporate job where I lived and worked downtown for four years. Looking back, I should have never moved downtown. It was expensive and once again, loans got put on the back burner. 

My loans were out of forbearance, but they still weren’t on the top of my mind. Any time they popped in my mind, I’d push them to the back in a fit of anxiety. Unless my autopay failed and student loan reps once again blew up my phone like loansharks, I kept my loans as far away from me as possible. 

I was horrible with money. I never thought about that student loan as ever a real concrete thing until those reps started harassing me. It was a wake up call. I finally got my head out of the sand and faced my fears of paying off that loan in a more responsible manner.

A lot happened in those 4 years where I learned to manage money responsibility. For starters, I actually loved that job. It was where I met my wife. And it was where I finally started making some good payments on that loan. 

Eight years after graduating, in MAy 2019, two jobs later, and two layoffs later, I paid off that student loan. Let me tell ya, it was a great feeling. But it wasn’t over yet.

New Debt and a New Outlook on Life

A year before I paid off my student loan, my wife and I bought a certified preowned 2016 Toyota Rav4 Hybrid for $26,000. That price is almost the equivalent of my salary at my first job at the startup (it was $30,000). 

But this loan was different. I knew what I was doing this time and had a completely different relationship with money. The car loan doesn’t stress me out, and it is crazy how perfect that car is.

I always drove beaters and we still own one as our second car. We bought the Rav4 when my remote job turned into a 50% work in the office and 50% work from home, and we needed reliable transportation that wasn’t my beater 2002 Camry with the engine light always on.

We needed something that would last us a while, and it is literally the perfect car. It meant a lot to buy that for us, our first real purchase together on something that we were so in love with. Something that holds true sentimental value to us. It is weird to think a car can be that meaningful, but it goes on all our road trips and has seen a lot. 

I went into this loan with my eyes open, so it doesn’t stress me out, and I am not struggling to get out of it with high interest charges. 

It is crazy to think about the difference between the way I looked at money then versus now. Before it was such a huge source of my anxiety. I still get anxious with certain aspects of money but it isn’t a source of the anxiety anymore.

When debt stresses you out as much as it did to me, remember there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You can get out of it and there is life after debt. 

You can do this! 

Daniella (she/they) is a software engineer, serial side hustler and creator of iliketodabble.com. She has has been featured on sites like Business Insider, CNBC, Refinery29 and Bustle. But really all she cares about are her animals. Her wife Alexandra and her take care of 5 cats and 2 dogs that are a mix of special needs and rescues (plus a couple of tarantulas but they aren’t special needs haha). They are working towards a future of financial freedom where working with animals like these could be their main priority.

Moriah Joy

Moriah Chace founded this site in 2018 to narrate the money journey she and her husband were on. After their divorce, she pivoted and is now tackling living well on a low income budget. She is currently the editor at Poorer than You. And she has words in Live Better, Deal Taker, and EcoFrugals. As part time barista and a full time coffee addict, she currently attends UTA for a master's in Civil Engineering and wants to change the world one high speed train at a time.

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  72. Caroline at Costa Rica FIRE on October 25, 2019 at 5:35 pm

    Love the candor about how money feelings change with time. I had the opposite issue with debt. I was very much an over saver and eschewed debt, which really closed me off to getting into real estate till much later than I should have. I had to learn to be okay with debt and not so strict about not spending.

    • Moriah Joy on October 26, 2019 at 1:48 pm

      Me too. I think that was one of my favorite things about this piece. Her perspective shifted and changed as she got more comfortable owning her money choices.

      And I’m in your camp too. I was taught to avoid debt at all costs and that it was terrible. And now, I’m starting to see how to leverage it more and to look also at the cost benefit analysis of things.

  73. Daniella on October 24, 2019 at 6:54 am

    Thank you for sharing my story!

    • Moriah Joy on October 24, 2019 at 8:07 am

      Thank you so much for writing it! It was awesome to have you on this series!

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