Suze Orman on Oprah

I had an epiphany about my financial illiteracy last summer. I had just graduated from college and had 5 weeks to bum around at home before I had to head to NYC for training. One afternoon, I stumbled upon a PBS segment with Suze Orman, where she was plugging her latest book, Women & Money. When she started talking about FICO scores, Roth IRAs, and 401K's, I realized that my knowledge of these topics was cursory at best. The next day, I went to the bookstore and got a copy of Young, Fabulous & Broke, Suze's money book for the twentysomething crowd. That book changed my life.



It's kind of ironic that I was financially illiterate. I have a degree in Finance and took so many Accounting classes that, by the time I graduated, I could recite all the line items on balance sheets and cash flow statements with my eyes closed. But all that was useless when it came to managing my own financial situation. I graduated with nearly $11,000 in credit card debt and nothing to show for it, other than material goods that rapidly depreciated in value after I purchased them. I can't blame anyone for my predicament but myself. I've always cared a lot (perhaps excessively) about how others perceive me and most of the money I spent in college went towards "dressing the part" - buying the bags, shoes, jewelry, etc. that my classmates had and that I absolutely had to have too. Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that I was always attracted to or dating preppy Southern/East Coast guys (you know, the kind who wear boatshoes and pants with critters on them). I was always scared that they or their friends/families would judge me, so I tried even harder to be someone that I wasn't.

Back to Suze Orman on Oprah. A guest on today's show really struck a chord with me. She and her husband were business owners who had done well in the past few years. They had become accustomed to the finer things in life and were spending every cent of their income (they didn't even have an emergency fund!). Their business had begun to hit hard times in the last few months, and they were forced to sell a lot of their possessions just to pay the bills. The wife described how she was depressed and ashamed after having to get rid of her car, which she considered an extension of herself. Suze's advice to her was that she needed to view her situation as an opportunity to discover her true self..the person that was hiding under all those "things".

I feel like I've been making a similar journey in the last few months. After quitting my job, I had a lot of time on my hands for self-analysis. I've been slowly selling many of my things on eBay to try and make a dent in my debt. It's been hard to let go of some of it (especially my jewelry and bag collection), but I feel happier because I feel like I'm finally being true to myself. I don't want "things" to define who I am anymore...I want to define who I am. There are days when I feel like my friends' lives are going on without me, and that I'm stuck in time. Those are the days when I remind myself that I needed this break to get a big reality check. Had I not quit, I would've still been living on autopilot - using retail therapy to ease my work-related misery, drinking too much on weekends, and hiding my head in the sand in terms of my finances.

Anyway, gotta run - off to NYC early tomorrow morning. Will update from the Big Apple.

-Bacon