Well, Reddit, I’ve gotten myself into a bind yet again and finally have some clarity on why this keeps happening.
About me: I grew up poor and as the oldest of 5 kids, shouldered a good amount of the stress and anxiety that really belonged to my parents. I dropped out of high school at 16 to work full time to help out my parents. Started taking classes at my local community college, working as a housekeeper cleaning toilets for barely minimum wage to make it through. After I got my associates degree, I went to state schools to get my bachelors, masters, then PhD. After I graduated with my PhD I had about a year of underemployment, making about $40K combined with my husband (which was about average for us while I was in school and he worked a minimum wage job). We always got by with what we had, making sacrifices whenever necessary. We shared one beat up old car before it died, we rented a tiny apartment, we were super thrifty with food, etc.
Then, in 2015, I got my first white collar job making $75K which I’ve now increased to $103K in just 3 short years. Combined with my husband and some rental income from family members living with us, we have a total income of about $150K.
Here’s the problem: I’m still broke. In that short period of time of going from low to high income, I’ve taken on an unhealthy amount of responsibility. We bought a house, two cars (with payments), and racked up credit card debt furnishing said house. I have a pathetic amount of savings and am lately finding myself just treading water with paying off the credit card debt. Some might call this lifestyle creep, and maybe it is, but I think there’s something deeper.
The epiphany: I crave the struggle. A lifetime of it (29 of my 32 years) has left me incapable of relaxing. Had I maintained a similar lifestyle to when I was making $40K a year, I would not be in this situation. But honestly, I think I’m scared to let myself become comfortable financially. Any time there was more money coming in, I found a way to commit that money to a new debt or payment, maintaining the struggle. It’s honestly not about materialism, I don’t think I really care about these new things I have, I just can’t keep my money sitting in a bank account because having a financial cushion is somehow scary to me.
Since having this epiphany, I’ve realized it’s the same at work. I can’t handle down time at work and really apply a blue collar work ethic to a white collar job. This is not meant to be offensive—I just mean that in blue collar jobs you are used to “pounding the pavement” every hour that you’re working. If there’s no work, you go home and don’t get paid. Meanwhile, in many white collar jobs, there’s downtime where I’m still getting paid an ungodly amount of money to do nothing (by comparison to my former life of cleaning toilets for minimum wage). And so, I continue to take on new responsibilities—and associated stress—that I’m not asked to do nor compensated for because I can’t take it. I’ve noticed many of my friends and coworkers who grew up middle class do not have this issue. I think settling into a comfortable white collar existence, even though it’s what I’ve worked towards for so long, is actually terrifying.
Anyway, thanks for listening if you’ve made it this far! Besides just getting this all out for the sake of accountability to take action (the first step is admitting you have a problem!), I would love to hear other people’s stories about similar transitions from a blue collar to white collar life and anything they’ve learned to help overcome financial mind sets that were designed for a different existence. On that note, I know that many others who have had that experience have the opposite reaction, saving everything and being terrified to spend. But unfortunately that’s not me! So please be kind :)
Edit: I did not mean to imply that this isn’t lifestyle creep, just that I’m realizing my motives for it are more complex than the average bear. The implication is the same, but I’m hoping that getting to the root of my problem will have a better long term impact.
Submitted November 12, 2018 at 07:47AM by BeagleOfDoom https://ift.tt/2PVv8CN
