Being Normal: Buying Things We Didn’t Need, With Money we Didn’t Have, to Impress People We Didn’t Even Care About! Part II
Part II: Know Thyself
If you are coming across this post and have not yet read Part I, "Digging the Hole," click here to check that out to set the stage!
All of those purchases, as described in Part I of this series, made us feel good about ourselves, or at least it created that illusion. Each time we made these purchases we felt like we were big people, in some way more important or better off than those around us; it was simply showing off.
We were making these purchases we simply did not need, with money we absolutely did not have, all to impress people that we not only didn’t care about but would likely never even see again. I had placed more thought into what someone would think of us as we pulled up next to them in our new Camaro than my own family’s well-being. We had literally found the bottom; we had become the Joneses.
We trickled along like this until early 2014. At this point I was serving an unaccompanied tour in Okinawa, Japan and Nelli was back home, a few months into her pregnancy with Sasha. Perhaps it was the impending birth of our first child but this was about the time we really began to focus on our financial status; things were not looking good.
Nelli and I had an impressive income at this time. I share this with you not as a means to brag or boast, rather as a way to point out just how foolish we were. Nelli and I had a combined annual income approaching $160,000, adjusted to reflect benefits and allowances. Despite this large income, when Nelli and I sat down to get an initial snapshot of the catastrophe that was our finances, we were shocked to see that we had amassed approximately $85,000 worth of consumer debt.
Now just to clarify, what I know as debt today is very different from what I knew back then. Today I realize that debt is owing any amount of money to any person. Before this 2014 realization, I only considered credit cards as our debt. I never once considered that our auto loan balances were debt as these were normal… Auto loans were how you got cars; everyone knew this. I never knew just how wrong I could be!
In realizing that I was just shy of $100,000 in debt I felt sick to my stomach. I remember wondering “how the hell did I let this happen?” I was saddened, ashamed, and embarrassed by my ultimate failure in my ability to manage my own household. The worst feeling came when I even began to question how two adults who couldn’t even manage themselves, could raise a child. Nelli and I realized that the only way to change this cycle was to change our behavior, fast!
