Monday, October 18, 2010

Don’t Have That Luxury- Part 2


Ham-Strung 

Remember in the Introduction, I said one of my goals is to help young adults not make stupid mistakes that will ham-string them for the rest of their lives? Here’s why. I got myself into lots of financial trouble as a young idiot, buying a cute little sports car, that I didn’t really need, on credit. 

I was a 20 year old Air Force military police, with the maturity level of about a thirteen year old, and liked having cute clothes and eating at expensive restaurants, so of course, made only minimum payments. Then my very flat feet started crumbling, and I was discharged before I could pay off the car. The flat-footedness made me ineligible for any type of civilian police or prison work, or anything that required me to stand in one place, such as being a cashier or working in a factory. So, I ended up living with a boyfriend, and defaulted on the $4,000 car loan. 

Then I heard a radio ad for a paralegal school, which promised that paralegals were in high demand, I’d be able to pay off my loan in a year, and live a very glamorous life. Yeah, well, they sort of “forgot” to tell me that the area was super saturated with the five or six other classes who had graduated before me, and that the only way I’d get a job was to move or get a secretarial job and hope that the paralegal died. I found it much easier to just keep living off my boyfriend, and he was stupid enough to let me. 

To be fair, he did try to talk me out of signing up for a $5,000 loan, or at least look into the school a little better, and not simply take their word at face value.  He tried to show me on a calculator that if I’d find a twenty-five hour a week job, even at minimum wage, I’d have it paid off by the time I graduated. But I didn’t want to work at anything that wasn’t glamorous and fun. And I really didn’t have to. In order to learn this trade; all I had to do was sign on a dotted line, and the education was given to me on the proverbial silver platter; not a word was said about paying it back.

More Stupidity In Tomorrow

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