My Year of Fear
Life is made up of highs and lows, which are often mitigated – or exacerbated – with money. 2016 was a year with some great highlights, but the monetary lowlights make it so remarkably bad that I now call it my Year of Fear.
The Start to the Year of Fear
Let me paint you a picture. I entered 2016 with a little money in my new Boston bank account. I had more money in my hometown Fearsville account, but no way to access it unless I stopped by the bank in person*; because I lived a thousand miles away, this wasn’t exactly convenient.
That January would be my final January spent working towards a degree, as I was slated to graduate that May. I wasn’t excited about it because I felt like a failure already – I had failed at my fall internship AND my paid scholarship role because I failed at juggling a full course load with four jobs.
No, that was not a typo.
F O U R jobs.
This didn’t even include the leadership position I had in an arts group, which I also failed at. There was nothing good or sustainable about running myself into the ground like that, but it was done because I was terrified of running out of money. Terror that compounded going into my Year of Fear because I took two of those jobs off my plate, which was better for my health and schedule but made my financial anxiety worsen.
So no, things weren’t great.
The burnout I was under did not abate by lightening my load, as said load was still pretty fucking heavy. It didn’t help that the final courses I was taking were ones required for my degree, the same ones I kept putting off because they were of zero interest to me. Being so uninvested in my coursework added to my fears of the future – if I so disliked the very thing I CHOSE to study, what does that mean for my career satisfaction? Will I just never find a job I enjoy if I can’t even pick a major I enjoy??
This was a different type of fear than what I grew up with. I call my hometown “Fearsville” for good reason. A big part of that was fearing my parents throughout my childhood, who didn’t believe in providing a warm, safe, or welcoming household. Growing up I’d have scathing remarks, things thrown around, and the constant threat of physical harm to contend with. Most of the time, though, I could get away from it by only going in the house to sleep.
This new fear, this new danger, wouldn’t be so easily outrun.
As if school life wasn’t bad enough, my apartment life was also affected by my fears. Because I was that afraid of running out of money, I was living in the cheapest abode I could find in that Year of Fear. Said abode was a mouse-infested apartment with six other people; that number fluctuated depending on if saner people moved out after realizing what a dump it was.
Sure, I saved money by not living somewhere, you know, decent, but it did nothing for my happiness or quality of life. Its only saving grace was offering me some assurance I wouldn’t be in the red, some validation that I could make it on my own without crawling back to Fearsville with my tail between my legs. There was no support system. Because money was such a taboo topic there was no one to turn to. It was just me with a stiff upper lip pretending everything was peachy keen.
I don’t like remembering those first five months of the Year of Fear. When I do it’s recollections of piling my laundry on top of my bedspread because I didn’t have enough blankets to stave off the winter cold. It’s declining invites out because I felt I literally couldn’t afford to enjoy myself. It’s feeling so exhausted it was a fight to stay awake, yet feeling so anxious and afraid that I couldn’t let myself turn off the light and try to sleep.
No, the first half of 2016 was no fun at all.
Post-Graduation
I was falling apart near the end trying to keep up with it all, and feeling like I was failing everyone around me. I couldn’t even enjoy the two trips I had taken during winter and spring breaks; my mind was constantly a-worry elsewhere. But there was light at the end of the tunnel! It’s now May 2016 and I was going to GRADUATE!!!
Which was a short-lived hallelujah sequence when I remembered I had zero job offers. Knowing it could be worse was not a consolation. I had just spent most of my time stressed and nervous and trembling over my future, and there was no easy relief at this tunnel’s end.
So in late May I had my graduation ceremony, officially going out into the world with a diploma in one hand and no job in the other. While relieved my time in academia was over, the Year of Fear was time to face facts: nobody wanted to hire me and I couldn’t see how I’d dig myself out of failure.
Here it wasn’t just fear I felt. Joblessness doesn’t just give you fear. It gives you shame, too. It hurts. You feel rejected by the world at large, because it’s not just one or two places that choose not to hire you – it’s all of them. Most seem so insulted you applied that they completely ignore you, refusing to respond to my increasingly-desperate inquiries. It has to be something wrong with you, something so rank and off-putting that no human wants to work around you. These were just some of the thoughts I had in that Year of Fear, thoughts that convinced me I was destined to fail.
Why? I had a five figure debt and I was terrified my parents emptied my Fearsville bank account (which should give you an idea of why I did not have a family support system). I was an idiot when it came to money and didn’t know how to transfer money between banks. Yes, I was that financially stupid. Without access to that account it seemed like I had nothing to my name. Failure was NOT an option, because I could never move back to Fearsville and a family that would demolish me.
But I did do something good for myself and moved out of that apartment, which, to my surprise, did wonders for my worry. I still lived in a place without AC or heat, but this place only had ONE roommate! It also wasn’t infested, unless you count the rat that sometimes showed up under the kitchen sink.
This place was also super cheap by Boston standards at $600 a month all-in. This, too, was cold consolation when my previous rent never reached above $400. Adding hundreds of dollars to my monthly expenses is maybe not the best move to make when your employment prospects are up in the air.
The only work I had through June of that Year of Fear was a waitressing job, which meant I wouldn’t starve and that I was at least somewhat employable. This also meant, in my eyes, that I was a confirmed failure at life, because it didn’t fit my definition of success. It was like all that hard work the last eight years of my life was for nothing. I moped and slept and worried my first month after graduating, picking up what waitressing shifts I could to get by.
It’s around this time that I finally threw in the towel and went into temping. I didn’t do this earlier because I (falsely) believed I’d find work that would pay me much better than temping would. After all, I had this nice shiny college degree to show for it! Everybody knows that’s what you need to get a good job! There’s no way the job pool will remain dry when they could hire ME!
Except that job pool did, in fact, remain dry. 🤷♀️
So I gave up trying to find a “well-paying” job and took on a role that would at least pay my rent. In June I reached out to the temp agency I worked for in the past, and by July I was working as an office temp.
Small beginnings, but you have to start somewhere.
I’m Finally Employed!! But Still Miserable
This role was as a receptionist with some marketing responsibilities. The company was a new client of the temp agency’s; they trusted me to be with this new client of theirs because of my great work with them in the past. That was another relief. But I was still scared.
Honestly, the job itself was a good fit for me at the time – the office was laid-back and quiet, my co-workers were friendly, and it was in a great neighborhood. I excelled at the paltry amount of work they gave me and always had a smile. But I was still afraid, so overall it was misery.
I knew it all had to do with my issues around money, or lack thereof. I was making $15 an hour and terrified of running out of money. Despite making at least $2,400 a month (pre-tax) I still obsessively monitored my bank account and bills lest I fall into a hole I’d never escape from. Reading my notes to myself from this time strikes me now as… bleak. Like, I was calculating the cost of a single slice of BREAD to so I’d know the cost of making myself a sandwich**. The Year of Fear was not done with me yet.
Something had to change and I knew it. To help myself I turned to education, using my down time to read personal finance forums for help. Around this time was when I came across Reddit’s Financial Independence forum that was related to the personal finance one I was lurking in. Both gave me an incredible amount of guidance and, eventually, peace.
I viewed money as the tool needed for survival, like a cavewoman needs a bow and arrows or wood and flint. In my case, I only had two arrows (the job and waitressing) and knew I needed to make more. That can be done one of two ways: spending less, or earning more. I decided to do both. I kept my waitressing job on the weekends for added income and made my expenses as bare bones as possible. This didn’t stop me from obsessing over things like the cost of one egg and two bread slices, but I wasn’t panicking anymore.
By the end of the year I had managed to save $9,000 in my bank account. The math at this time is fuzzy because I didn’t know if I could still count on my Fearsville bank account. I went back to my hometown for Christmas that year unsure of what to expect.
December of 2016: The Holiday Reckoning
Now, remember I had no way to access this bank account of mine, which was another incredible failure on my end. All of my high school and college paychecks went into this account, which was also in my parents’ name. I went into Fearsville Bank unsure of what I’d find.
A minute later my eyes were stopped in disbelief on the bank receipt showing my amount.
Ten. Thousand. Dollars.
I was so scared my parents had sucked the account dry that I didn’t think about how much I’d have if they didn’t. When I asked my dad about it he dropped another bomb on me: he’s paid off my student loans so I’d sail off into adulthood without this albatross around my neck.
So poof! All of a sudden I didn’t have to worry about loans ever. Oh, and I now had an extra $10k to my name that I didn’t count before because I was a massive idiot, as was mentioned.
The Christmas spirit of 2016 sure as HELL delivered. Just like that I was in the green financially, WITHOUT debt, and with a working knowledge of how to not murder myself with consumer debts. That was a RADICAL new feeling, especially in such a small amount of time. I was expecting to work two jobs for at least another year to pay off those loans myself.
And THEN life smiled on me again: I got a raise!!! My temp role was now a perm one, and my new pay was $20 an hour. I gleefully quit my waitressing job and had my weekends to myself again.
And just like that, I was celebrating the end of 2016 and the start of a new one.
My Year of Fear was officially over.
Now
The months after that still had fear, but nowhere near the level 2016 did. The more I got a handle on my finances the lower my fears got. Once I hit a $30k net worth in 2017 I let my shoulders relax from a burden I didn’t notice I was carrying. My life was finally normal – still underpaid, don’t get me wrong, but things were no longer such a struggle.
My Year of Fear got my ass in gear, pushing me to learn about financial strategies that led to me being worth six figures in 2019. I just spent 2,000 words telling you about that year so you’ll understand where I came from, and why I started this blog in the first place. I’m not writing because I’m a bleeding-heart child of fortune. I’ve had to live with the stress of having nothing, and even that small amount of time means so much when it’s lived in fear. I know there’s others like past-me out there, and they need to know how to get themselves to a better place like I did. After all, no one gets there alone; we all need to share the wealth and lift everyone around us.
Are you still living a Year of Fear, or are you getting yourself out of that hole?
*That’s what I was told, anyway. Back then I didn’t know better and took their word for it, unable to close my account with them for a much longer time. Other bloggers touch on why some banks aren’t entirely truthful with you.
**The sandwich in question was two fried eggs between two slices of potato bread. Total cost was 48¢, FYI. Other calculations included how much eating baby carrots for lunch would cost (50¢) and how much two oatmeal packets for breakfast would cost (34¢). I never want to feel that way again. No one should in this day and age.