So, I'm not sure if this is an appropriate sub to post my story. By all means, remove it if I'm breaking a rule. I'm not a huge reddit person, so if anyone knows any other subs where this story would belong, please let me know. This story takes place in the USA.
I want to start off by saying that my story isn't particularly exceptional. There are absolutely people out there who have come into far more money and wasted it all. I have had people tell me that it'd be more surprising if I hadn't messed up as I did, due to my age and utter lack of guidance or foresight. But I'm not here to spout excuses, nor am I looking for judgment or any "You should have used it xxx way instead." This happened 6 years ago - it's far too late. I certainly do wish I had come to a place like this for advice back in the day, though. I am posting this to share my experiences - either for entertainment purposes, eye-opening information, or as a warning to others who come into any sizeable amount of money.
Let me be the perfect example of everything you DO NOT DO with a large amount of money. It has taken years for me to build up the courage to sign back into my old bank account and look at this information and these numbers. I literally could not bring myself to do it for a very long time. The first time I tried, I had to turn the screen off almost immediately. And that was 5 years after it was all over. I have spent a long time just trying to forget and pretend this never happened - even going so far as to omit this part of my story entirely when I share my life experiences with others. But, I am trying very hard to face myself and my problems lately, and this is part of it. I can honestly say that these mistakes have absolutely fucked up my entire life and taken my only chance away from me to gain a proper foothold in society and be on the same level as anyone else who was able to go to college and get a properly paying job. Now, my situation itself is fairly rare. But, I think universal lessons can be taken away from this. Hell, regardless of any of that, maybe this will simply entertain a few people at how fucking stupidly easy it is to waste this much money.
I won't get too much into my life story, because it's very long and complicated. But basically, I had slightly older middle-class white parents with good jobs. They both had type-2 diabetes and didn't manage it. So, they both passed away at different times once I turned 18 and had just finished high school. The rest of my family didn't give a shit about me after that, instead my half-siblings and my dad's new girlfriend (parents had divorced 2 years before dying) just vultured and stole away 1/3 of my dad's life insurance money that really should have went to me, because they were all financially stable and didn't need it, whereas I literally had nowhere to go and couldn't get any help since I was already 18. If there was anywhere I could go for help, I sure as hell didn't know about it since I grew up without needing social assistance or anything like that.
But in any case, my 1/4 portion of my dad's life insurance was $116,000. (Mom's was just 10 grand and I wouldn't get it until 1 year later and it was also wasted in the same way so I won't elaborate on that part) If anyone is curious about how it was so high, he was an airplane mechanic at a major international airport in Houston. He had life insurance through his job through MetLife.
I continued living in his house until I got the eviction notice. (It wasn't paid for and I couldn't afford the payments on it.) Then I just ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, staying at hotels at a weekly rate (the one thing I did right - use weekly rates if you need to stay for a prolonged period of time!!) and ordering pizza every night because I didn't have a stove to cook on and was too much of an idiot to just buy bread and microwaveable food or something.
You'll find a lot of that in this information I'm going to share - I was just a fucking idiot. I was 18 years old (turned 19 soon after getting the money) and I grew up in Texas where we have a garbage educational system even compared to other states. My parents never taught me anything about financing since they had so much damn money every paycheck that they never had to worry about saving or investing properly. I literally had no idea what to do and didn't even think of even asking online for advice, much less going to see a financial advisor. I didn't know they existed!
Now, I will let my bank account speak the rest for itself. The following is a video of me scrolling down my transactions on my bank's website. This account has been closed for years now, so I see no danger of anyone causing any harm. It's not like the account numbers are shown in full or anything. And yes, I used Hypercam to record because OBS wasn't working. :') It's a pretty long video, so it's probably easier to fast-forward it a bit. I open a text document and briefly explain some major purchases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52uLIr_A2I
The Too Long Didn't Watch version is:
The $116,00 was deposited on November 19, 2013. By June 30, 2014 it was gone.
- $33,000: old house in the slums of Toledo, OH that I did not realize was in the slums because I did not research the area beforehand and even ignored a warning from my real-estate agent's husband about the area because 19 yo me was an idiot. I lost $25,000 here because I only was able to sell it back for $8,000 due to vandals.
- $17,000: Two different overpriced used cars bought from dealerships that together did not last me beyond mid-2016.
- $5,000: Paying for the repairs of my car by myself after I swerved due to ice on the highway and crashed it. Did not know that auto insurance pays for repairs even if it's your fault. *facepalms*
- $2,600 on an Alienware PC that stopped worked after 3 months because I accidentally spilled water on it and thus was not covered under the warranty.
- Thousands on a big TV, furniture, and appliances that ended up getting left behind at the Toledo house because I didn't have enough money to move it to the next place I went to live at with my partner after fleeing the Toledo slums.
And the rest? Eating out/food delivery every day due to being too afraid to drive after the wreck and witnessing people driving like maniacs every time I went out on the roads in Toledo, ordering lots of anime figures and various goods of that nature, tons on digital entertainment like Second Life money, cosmetic items on mmorpgs, and currency for mobile games that I no longer play.
Combine all of this with earning no income from any sort of job, and that shit just drained riiiight on out.
It is now April 2020. I will spare the details of my personal situation and everything that had happened personally over all these years, but I have ended up homeless multiple times. I have type-2 diabetes that was diagnosed before my parents passed away, and all of that eating out has permanently ravaged my health and progressed the disease to the point where I now feel very lethargic from simply eating a few slices of bread. I have also been unable to afford health insurance to pay for medicine for years. And now that I finally moved somewhere (Michigan) that has a way for the poor to get health insurance, this corona shit just exploded and I can't go see a doctor to get any medicine because the bus system won't take anyone anywhere for a non-essential medical trip. If I wasn't working part-time at a grocery store right now, I'd be fucked and homeless. Again.
All that stuff I bought with the money? Yeah, I don't have any of it anymore. The ONLY thing I still have is the $2,000 Alienware laptop that I bought alongside the PC. It runs like shit now since it's been 6 years, and it probably will stop working at any moment. Being forced to move around a ton and ending up homeless caused me to lose everything else I had. (Which wasn't even that much - most of the money had went to eating out and making big dumb purchases that didn't last) I'll add that my mental state was actual garbage throughout all of this as well. I have often felt as though I'm living in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality that was caused by my mistakes. It has taken this long to feel comfortable looking at this bank information. I still wince. I have to laugh at myself to keep from plunging back into the sea of regret and despair. I've floated in that sea from the moment I started wasting that money.
And there that's my story. I saw my $1,200 stimulus deposit two days ago and just laughed at it. I'm going to pretend it doesn't even exist. I fucking know better. I walked through the fires of Hell to learn not to waste money, heck if I'm going to repeat the past even on a small amount.
If anyone would like me to send them my account statements (they're in formats unfamiliar to me like .ofx, .qbo, and .csv) in order to make any sort of compilation of data or even to study out of curiosity, just send me an e-mail. (I've got reddit messages turned off) You can find it in the About tab of my Youtube channel.
Thank you for your time. I am happy to share my experiences, no matter how idiotic and full of shitty mistakes, if it can help anyone at all, or even make a single person laugh.
Submitted April 23, 2020 at 08:38PM by Vhaagar https://ift.tt/2KwAe40
