Confessions of a PF Blogger: $1 to My Name

It's been a while since I've posted in my Confessions of a PF Blogger series. In the last installment, I shared some deeply personal information. As was my original hunch with posting something of that nature on a public blog, the lack of comments made me wonder if I'd gone too far with my sharing. But then I realized that the entire point of creating this series was to share my financial experiences, no matter how wild, sad, silly or serious they may be. No matter how I slice it, all of these stories help form who I am in addition to laying the foundation of my rocky financial journey. So awkward moments of comment cricket-chirping aside, it's time to bring these posts back to life.

For a while after the wedding plus-one experience, I continued along in some sort of haze. While the emotional pieces eventually fell back into place, I found myself becoming quite accustomed to my new spending sprees as well as the type of life they brought with them--even if it was only an illusion of a life that I thought I wanted. I began to think of myself as a hard-working person who "deserved" to have new things, expensive dinner tabs, vacations, etc. Despite my aptitude for clearance sale navigation and affinity for bargain-store pricing, I still managed to spend an exceeding amount of money on needless things such as clothes and shoes.

I also developed an aptitude for shirking financial responsibility--I was the Queen of the Shredder, the Princess of Interest. I charged and charged and charged some more. I began playing balance transfer roulette when I started to have a hard time paying the minimum payments on my sizable credit balances. I also applied for new cards like a child tears through a Halloween candy stash--I was out of control and nobody knew the difference because I lived on my own, made my own money, and "paid" my own bills.

That was until I lost my job for reasons very much out of my control. It's a long, convoluted story that I'd rather not share here. Regardless, there I was: deceived, penniless, in a mountain of credit card debt, and the rent was due in one week.

As I packed up my things in my office, I realized that I wouldn't have enough money to pay my rent. After I put my things in my car and drove my final drive out of the parking garage, I went to the ATM to check my account balances:  I had $27.32 in my account and my electric bill was set to pull, which was $26.44 (thanks to my trusty Excel sheet, I could look up exact figures..haha!). Essentially, I had $0.88 to work with. Add in the pennies and dime in my pocket and I had a whopping $1 to my name.

Enter PANIC.


This post is part of my Confessions of a PF Blogger series.  Other posts include:

• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  The Series 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  No Happy Meal for You 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  $0.25 per Quart 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger: 16 Candles 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  $5,500 in Cash
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  A Slow Slide into Credit Card Debt Hell
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  $1 to My Name 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger:  Homeless 
• Confessions of a PF Blogger: Powerless