I always find it strange when a simple off hand comment from someone you barely know sticks around. A guy who you worked with about a dozen times over a decade and a half ago lives rent free in your brain. And the weird part is that you’re better off for his comment, in fact it has shaped a lot of the views you have on life.
It was 2010. I had just spent 11 months on the road doing internships across the country. Everything I owned was packed into the back of my 2004 Buick Rendezvous. After crashing with family friends, my parents, and in a trailer provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs I was living on a futon mattress on the floor of my friends’ storeroom. Walgreens didn’t have a pharmacist position for me so they cut my hours and I had quit before I starting job at Kmart. I was ostentatiously training to spend 2 years as the pharmacist at Kmart in Plattsburgh, in reality I was just biding my time and using this job as a liferaft to float to my next position. This is where I met John, the pharmacist at the Kmart in the Rotterdam Square Mall. If you are looking for sage life advice I don’t recommend searching in Kmart, or in a mall, and certainly not in Rotterdam. But sometimes the best advice comes from the place you least expect it.
After 2 weeks of training I was about to get my first paycheck, and I had even conned them into playing me Grad Intern pay even though I hadn’t graduated. I mentioned how much I really needed the money since I hadn’t been paid for 6 weeks, and John stopped me. He made me sit down and calculate my net worth, its ok we had the time, Kmart wasn’t busy. It was pretty easy. Assets were my car (+$7k), bank account balance (+$250), newly purchased class ring (+$1k). Debts owed on car (-$8k), rent and utilities owed to friends (-$240), credit card debt (-$8k), student loan debt (-$248k). -$255,990. I started at the paper and for the first time it all came together and John said those famous words. This is the poorest that you will ever be.
Ok so maybe he was wrong, or at least used the wrong terminology. I have been lucky enough in my life that I have never been poor, this was the brokest I will ever be. But John, the guy who drove a BMW and owned part of a race horse wouldn’t have had that type of nuance. He knew how to be rich, and he was doing his part trying to prepare me for that reality. Part of knowing that light was trying to appreciate the darkness of the worry about a negative bank account. The next day my paycheck hit. I have never really worried about money from that day on, and in that case he was right. I moved a few weeks later, and haven’t seen or heard from John in 15 years, but the first thing I would do if I saw him was to thank him for the lesson on perspective that pays dividends on a daily basis.
It took me 6 months to pay off my credit cards, I haven’t paid a dime of interest since then. 6 months after that I paid off the rickety car and drove it into the ground for several car payment less years. The loans took a lot more time, I just knocked them out last month. I suppose I could have lived like a pauper and paid them off in about 7 years, but instead I prioritized saving for retirement and living a good life full of travel and enjoyment. In about a week my monthly due date will come and go without $1590 being auto withdrawn from my bank account. For 15 years student loans have been the villain in my story and I don’t know how I am going to adjust to life without them. They are the reason why I own a 1980s condo, and drive a 2016 Subaru, and pay ridiculously close attention to my bank balances. But on the flip side, the bank only owns 40% of my condo, and my car is paid off and fully functional, and knowledge is power when it comes to finances. The key is that I don’t worry about money, I may plan and obsess, but I don’t have to worry and hopefully will never have to again. Now I just need to avoid lifestyle creep and try to push forward living within my means while trying to save for early retirement.
Whenever I have interns that are graduating I try to teach them a lesson like John taught me. I always encourage them to buy some financial planning books and plug their net worth into a budgeting app. I do encourage them to blow their first pharmacist paycheck, or at least the difference between that and grad intern pay, don’t live like a pauper forever, but live the way you have been living for 2 more weeks. I did it, bought a nice DSLR camera that I used regularly for almost a decade, zero regrets there. When it came time to address life without student loans I thought I would do the same thing, the leading idea was to buy a wheel of Parmesan cheese (only $972 on the Costco app). Unfortunately I haven’t been able to follow through. I got excited when I paid off my loans and bought a new grill and a yeti cooler and a fancy new frying pan. Practical upgrades that I have wanted for years and a much needed visit from a housekeeping company wiped out the full amount that I was going to blow.
But its ok, sometimes you don’t follow through on all of your dreams. There is plenty of time and life for me to do stupid things with money. For now I am focusing on upgrading a few things around the house, increasing my mortgage payments and socking money into savings. After all those years of feeling broke I have found some extra abundance in my life and I’m feeling excited about it. Instead of spending 30% of my take home pay for a long outdated education I’m just glad to have the opportunity to do something else with my money. Who knows, maybe someday soon you’ll run into me in the airport living my best life and pushing around my emotional support wheel of cheese.
Owen Foley 