My Experience With Money

I was a kid until a few months ago! I was being supported by my dad until the day I graduated from college. I never tried to experiment with money because I never had much of it of my own to experience with. I never worked while I attended college, partly because the course-work was too heavy (that’s an excuse), but mostly because my parents did not want me to work (because they were concerned that I would not do well in my studies if I worked). I had a very vague idea what money actually is and how exactly it works: “Go to work, get paid after each month and spend all the money before you get the next month’s salary: only old people save for the future!” I was so wrong!

Shopping spree

When I joined graduate school I started getting paid and I stopped asking my parents for money. After I got my first pay-check, I jumped into a shopping spree. I bought a new cell phone with features which I did not need and there was not the slightest possibility that I’d use those soon. Along the line came a TV, a DVD player, a music system, three cameras, a piano keyboard, a guitar, a desktop and a laptop PC, and before the end of the semester – a car.

Once I had a car of my own paid from my own pocket, the world seemed to lie under my wheels. I would be out driving my car in a speed which is way over the posted limit all the time except when I had to be at school. I did not care much about the gas (‘it’s just a percent of my salary’). I would soon get bored with the things that I possessed, for example, I did not know how to play a guitar but I bought it with the hope that I’d learn it someday; I practiced the basics for first couple of weeks then just gave it up, and it has been just hanging there on my wall since then. I bought my second camera just because my roommate was planning to buy one which was better than my first. After a year, I saw a deal for a canon which was going at a rate of 20% off of the original price and I just bought it immediately (my third camera). After another month I learned that the price of the same dropped to another two hundred dollars. The same thing happened to my laptop too: I first had a desktop PC, but since all my friends had a laptop, I convinced myself that I too need one. I bought a dell, and after two months I found that the price dropped to half.

Taking vacations

I used to go out almost every weekend for a vacation (as if my work was so hard that I needed a break every weekend!). It was hard for me to stay in the university town after the school had closed at five. I would pick up some friend, stay in motel, drink in some good restaurants, and come back very late on Sunday. None of my friends offered to share gas and sometimes I had to pay for their lodging and meals as well. I was too shy to ask the the money back!

Eating out

I lived just within a 15 minutes walking distance from my school, but the distance seemed insurmountable at the time of lunch. So I would eat either in the university cafeteria or nearby restaurants and often pay for the friends who accompanied me. Some days (which would be very often) at night, I just felt not like cooking at all: I would ask for pizza delivery or go out to eat in a restaurant, and since I would not feel like going alone I’d take my roommate or some other friend(s) (whose dinner would be paid by me).

Credit cards

By now, you might be wondering how I could manage those with such a meager salary of a grad student! The answer is very simple: I have ten credit cards. Whenever I received a mail with an offer for %0 APR, I would have to take that offer. I would keep buying stuffs against it until it was maxed out and then I’d go for the next card. If I put a five grand in a card I would convince myself that it was not big enough because I could pay it off in less than five months with the salary that I would get! It was partly true, but I forgot the fact that in order to be able to do that I had to restrain my spending habit.

Love and life

I met the most beautiful girl in the whole universe last year. She lived in a different country; so when she was not with me I would call her and we’d talk for hours – four to five hours in an average in any given day. Soon we decided that we should get married. Wow! But when I looked carefully into my whole financial situation it did not look like so wow: I had about fifteen grands of debt and I had been paying about a grand each month to make those phone calls! Moreover the credit card companies took a vow to nail me down by increasing their APRs. I know that fifteen grand may not be too high a debt to some of you, but it is super high for a grad student (and it’s way over the national average of $8000).

The salvation

I realized that before I got married I had to restrain my ways because after marriage it wouldn’t be just me! I took a day off, sat down with an excel sheet and figured out a plan. I am good at math and so it did not take a long time to come up with a nice plan that would suit a married grad student’s salary. I tracked every penny that I spent for a month, and then adjusted my plan in accordance with that. I did not tell her every detail of it, but I let her know my actual financial position. We got married soon. We have been living a happy married life since then. But it would have been happier had I been more careful with my money earlier. It should be another year before we are debt-free, but the plan that I chalked out seems to work fine. I’ll never make such mistakes again. Never ever!