The road to my doom was paved with half a life of triumphs. My older brothers never finished high school, so naturally my mother encouraged me to apply to a fancy-pants magnet school. So at the age of 13 I forsook everything else in life, video games, my one and a half friends, and the chance of kissing a girl before I was 20 and began to buckle down and hit the books. At 14 I was accepted, and resigned to a much different path than my brothers who had just opened a small plumbing business.

High school was a hell of freaks and misfits (myself included). Having sacrificed all the rites that television and movies told me were a part of high school I felt I was entitled to some kind of reward. I felt entitled to go to the best college I could get into regardless of the financial cost. At 17 I knew nothing of the real world other than what my hippie guidance counselor kept telling me about college, and how certain schools made a life of riches and glory a virtual guarantee. We’ll call that my first 100k mistake.

College. Good times. Unfortunately high school severely retarded my social skills so I wasted a year and a half catching up but I increased my total number of friends from 1 and a half to upwards of six, so yeah it seemed like the life. Then one summer I was interning at an engineering firm and, in addition to finding it boring, I also realized that a starting position there would not yield enough income to pay the minimum amount on my future loan payment…I mean, there must be some mistake!

Time out. The correct answer in this situation was “well, I better work nights as a bar tender.” If I had done that, I calculate I could have gotten my debt down to a reasonable level by the time I was 25, 26 tops. That’s not what I did. I borrowed more money…*sniff* went to Law School. We’ll call that my $150k mistake.

We’ll leave Law School to later posts, but there were a few recurring themes. I was socially behind adults who had spent time in the real world and had come to school with both eyes open and I modestly increased my number of friends to eight and a half. Surprisingly, my starting salary was just enough to live in a filthy, expensive city and make my minimum debt payments. I even had enough to augment my Ramen soup with a dallop of tomato sauce or condensed cream of mushroom soup (that’s a cooking tip kids, might want to write that down).
Then the legal market collapsed, I was out on my ass and I racked up $30k in credit card debt (we call that good debt because a little bankruptcy clears that right up). At this point I applied to PhD programs…but only because the new tuition which I know pay out of pocket is LESS than my MINIMUM student loan payment. My PhD program is also at a glorified community college whereas my previous degrees (and I skipped a few) were all of the Ivy League variety. The highlight of my day is watching O.C. reruns on soap net. My brothers of course are richer than Tiger Woods, but as Mom’s favorite, they have never given me a penny.