How My Personal Debt Tripled My Income And Changed My Life

What can you do with your hands? You can use them to build homes from the ground up, compose music that will be remembered for centuries, and pet all the good dogs in the world. As for me, I’m using my meat mittens to spin you a yarn about how my catastrophic relationship with credit altered my life trajectory for the better.

I want to first discuss the evolution of my career aspirations since it brings to light a recurring pattern regarding my decision making process.

Growing up, I never really had a solid idea of what I wanted to do for a living. I knew I liked money and that I would like to be in a position where I could afford the toys of my choosing. My first dream career was being a pizza delivery boy/man/elder statesman because think about it — are you ever unhappy to see a pizza delivery person at your door? I would have loved nothing more than to deliver smiles and get paid for it.

Somewhere along the way, I fell out of love with that dream at the same time I grew enamored with video games. That eventually evolved into me wanting to become a game developer. To prepare myself for this career, I attended a D-rated public school in South Florida because it had excellent Performing Arts and Robotics programs, the former of which touts 🎵 Jason Deruuuulo 🎵 as an alum. I figured the robotics program would help me hone the analytical and technical skills I’d need to develop video games. It didn’t, but it did get me involved in the world of video editing and digital visual effects, which inspired another career pivot. I ended up enjoying that kind of work in After Effects quite a bit, to the point where I decided I wanted to be a VFX artist instead.

You may be noticing a trend at this point, where my ‘dreams’ are subject to change at the slightest inclination. This trend may upset you. If so, I must apologize for I am about to strike once again. During my senior year of high school, as I prepared to apply to a few trade schools, my video production class teacher said that my propensity for writing and speakin’ real smart-like would make me a good fit for the wonderful world of public relations. Days later, I applied to Florida International University and got in.

For the next three years, I didn’t feel any strong inclination to chase a new golden rabbit, but I slowly grew out of love with my major after working in the field. I went through several internships, half of them unpaid and offering little more than writing Facebook posts about local plumbers. Even my dream internship at a tech PR agency, where I got to write about the latest and greatest products, grew rote and repetitive enough that I was one latest and greatest Bluetooth keyboard away from stress testing every glass wall overlooking the city on the 25th floor. It all felt so meaningless.

Before long, I’d satisfied the requirements to graduate with a public relations degree, but I decided to pick up a second major in a related field — marketing. I considered it similar but a bit more engaging and creative, so I engagingly and creatively went to Indiana University’s MBA preview weekend to consider engagingly and creatively drowning myself in more student loans. Thankfully, I ended up getting a marketing internship that turned into a full time job at an ed-tech startup, where I worked for a little over two years.

Here’s where my credit journey begins. I’d gotten my first credit card as a college freshman and managed to max it out a few times. Thankfully it had a $1,400 limit, so I was generally able to get it paid off within a few months. As a student with no consistent income, I wasn’t able to get new sources of credit, so my absolute spending limit was $1,400. Having a full-time job changed that. I started applying for credit cards like it was a game, and the sign-up bonuses and 0% APR offers did little to dissuade that mentality. The plan wasn’t ever to actually use the cards, I just wanted to see how high I could get my total available credit. I was making regular deposits into my Acorns account, living at home and commuting in the Corolla my dad had gotten me. I was living and spending smart!

That’s when I decided to attend a part-time coding bootcamp. The price tag was $12,000 and thanks to all of my new lines of credit, I didn’t qualify for financing through the school’s lending partner. In hindsight, this was the first sign that I should have stopped going for gold at the Goofy Olympics. I should have decided to wait a year or two until I was in a more realistic position to attend the program. Instead, I shot right past gold and went for platinum — I withdrew the entirety of my Acorns balance and charged the remaining $10k to my credit cards. I know you’re likely staring at your screen in anguish upon reading that. 2016 Christian’s justification was “hey, I have a 12 month 0% APR offer on these credit cards I just maxed out, I’ll just pay them off with my new developer job!”.

Except that didn’t happen, because all I’d developed was a half-assed strategy and full-assed myself into five figures of personal debt. I attended the bootcamp in order to code just like I’d dreamt of all the way through high school, and I actually did it! I’ve actually written quite a few posts about that journey, and you can read them starting here. I had no plans to monetize these expensive new skills and was quite content to stay in my current position. That was stupid. That was moronic. That was the prime example of self indulgence at the cost of fiscal responsibility.

But it gets worse.

A few months before I was set to graduate the bootcamp, I got a small raise at my job which had me on Cloud Nineteen because Cloud Nine wasn’t cloudy enough and this is my story not yours. Anyone with a pulse would have put that extra money to work by paying down the credit card balances and getting out of debt as soon as possible.

I instead decided to celebrate by moving away from home and trade my lack of living expenses for an apartment in downtown Miami and a monthly rent of $1,100. I struggle to think of a more destructive action at a worse time.

But it gets worse.

Between my roommates, I decided I wanted the master room, which meant I had a bigger room that I felt the need to fill with stuff. And I did. I bought the biggest TV that would fit through the door. I bought three video game consoles and stacks of video games, but don’t worry — I saved a ton of money by buying the consoles and games used. I started purchasing popular sneakers that cost for hundreds and even thousands of dollars per pair. Did I pay for all of this with my raise? No, I paid for all of this with my credit cards. 0% APR, remember?

It’s at this point that I feel the need to expand on the self indulgence I’d mentioned earlier. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had the 7 Rings approach to things that drew my eye — I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it. This proved frustrating as a child since this is how things generally went.

Me: I see it. I like it. I want it.

Parents: You have five seconds to pretend it doesn’t exist.

I never threw any temper tantrums, but I resented the fact that my desires wouldn’t be fulfilled until Christmas. I’d never taken the time to un-learn that mentality, which takes us to the shiny new apartment filled with shiny new things obtained with my trusty collection of money rectangles. I was already deep in debt from the bootcamp so I figured why not see how much farther my credit shovel could take me? Let’s have some 0% APR fun along the way! I’d bastardized Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball method in pursuit of building the biggest debt snowman the world had ever seen.

The problem with snowmen is that they eventually melt. In my case, those promotional rate expiration dates were coming fast, and my ludicrous credit utilization rate meant I didn’t stand a chance of getting any new cards. It was at around this time where I learned about the concept of deferred interest and that failure to pay the entirety of the balance on the cards before the expiration dates would mean all of the interest I had ‘avoided’ for 12 months would now be added to each card’s balance.

I wasn’t able to pay off the balance of a single card in time. I had spent so much time with my credit shovel that I’d failed to realize that my money ladder I was going to use to climb out of the hole I’d dug had dwindled to the size of a stout gnome. I was spending lavishly but not earning at a matching rate. Every single dollar I earned was going towards rent, bills, and the minimum required payments on my credit cards, which didn’t even cover the accrued interest. I’d spent so long climbing the credit mountain that I didn’t realize I really shouldn’t aspire to get to the peak. I’d gotten so proficient surfing in the debt snow that Shaun White would be better off walking. I’d spent so much time coming up with new metaphors that I didn’t understand that it’d probably be best to move on to the next paragraph.

This is the next paragraph. The next year of my life was miserable. I literally couldn’t afford to not work or think about my ruinous situation, and after the emotional high of graduating from the bootcamp I realized I wasn’t a huge fan of working in marketing either. I found some semblance of salvation within the depths of debt through means of consolidation. American Express loaned me $9,000 to help roll a few of my balances into one monthly payment, but I was already about $40,000 in debt with interest accruing monthly. This brought me to a sobering realization: given my salary, I literally couldn’t afford to stay at my job. I had to do something dramatic and I had to do it fast.

So I went back to my high school and enrolled in the Performing Arts program.

What I actually did was sell everything that I didn’t need or wouldn’t fit in my car, quit my job, and move to Austin in hopes of becoming a software developer. For those of you counting at home or wherever you’re counting but most likely home because ya’ know, COVID, that makes this my fifth career pivot. However, this is the first one where there were actual stakes; I was eschewing the only profession I knew and pursuing a new one in a city where every bootcamp was filled with students trying to beat me to the punch. I’ve written about that experience as well, and you can check those three posts here, here, and here. In short, I landed a developer job after three months of applying, living out of Airbnbs, and paying for a coworking space membership and living expenses with my credit cards.

I applied for another debt consolidation loan after a few months to roll all of my balances into one hefty monthly payment. Upstart saved the day with the best interest rate of all my available options at 18.62%…I never said it was a good rate. I took the offer and spent the next year and a half attacking that balance with every cent I had to my name. I ended up paying it off early, only to further embroil myself with the wonderful world of automotive debt. Even though I’d taught myself how to make more money in a new career, I still hadn’t learned how to not pull the trigger whenever the desire for new stuff struck. I’ve written a bit more about this part of my debt journey in earlier posts, which you can check out here, here, and heeeeeeere.

I’ll summarize the car-related portion: I bought a car at an 11.49% interest rate, spent thousands modifying it, and then sold it at a considerable loss months later. I replaced it with two $2,000 beaters and committed myself to focus on buying a house. This is the part where I tell you those cars served me well and made the dream of home ownership come true right as the unfortunate events of last year established an ideal buying position. I hope you like this part, because it’s actually an exercise in writing fiction I’VE FOOLED AND DECEIVED YOU ONCE AGAIN.

That didn’t actually happen. No, instead what happened was that a red light runner caused my life to flash before my eyes, frightened me out of my beater cars and right into the exact same model car I bought before because I never ever forever learn my lesson. For what it’s worth, I did my research before pulling the trigger on the purchase this time. I’d found a low mileage example with the rare manual transmission and more desirable modifications than you can shake a stick at assuming stick shaking is one of your hobbies. I financed through a credit union at a decent interest rate, negotiated a lower purchase price with the private party seller, and flew out to Colorado to drive my new safe and reliable ride back to Austin with a low monthly payment of $311.

A week later, I found out the transmission was thrashed due to janky work done by the seller and had to be rebuilt at a cost of $3,600 🤠. A few months after that, the front suspension components gave up the ghost and were rusted together to the point where they had to be cut off the vehicle, prompting me to go whole hog into a five figure overhaul of the entire setup 🤠🤠. It was also recently at the shop for a full month since part of the transmission snapped off and took other components out with it to the tune of another $2,300 🤠🤠🤠.

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By this time I’d already paid off my longstanding personal debt and worked some balance transfer magic to pay for these repairs and modifications interest-free, but it came at the cost of extending my home-buying timeline at a time where homes in Austin are selling within literal hours of being listed. To offset the mind numbingly stupid decision to upgrade a financed vehicle, I decided to search for a new job with a sizable salary increase. After months of interviews, I’m happy to say I was able to accomplish just that.

That sequence of events brings us to now. I reached out to a mortgage agent in February to determine what I need to have saved and paid off to make a home purchase happen. I’ve established a monthly budget and savings timeline for the next year and a half and have set my purchase timeframe between next April and July. I’ve got my eyes on the prize.

Since I don’t want the title of this story to be clickbait and because I don’t ascribe to the notion of keeping my salary a closely guarded secret, here are the numbers you care about: I made $30,000 per year at my first full time job in Miami, and I’m making $90,000 per year in my current role. This would have never been possible without my staggering personal debt; that first fateful swipe of my Wells Fargo student credit card inadvertently began the worst journey i’m glad I embarked on.

My parents consistently drilled one principle into my soft doughy skull: don’t count dollars that aren’t in your pocket. I’d interpreted the lesson as not living off an expected income that’s the result of ideal circumstances, like getting the maximum raise or bonus every time at your job. Though that involved some painful swallowing of my hubris going into my first job, I ended up missing the point entirely and only now understand what they meant.

I’ve spent over seven years willingly borrowing against the bank of my future to procure the latest New Thing™, always expecting it to be the last time, only for that to not be the case time and time again. This self-destructive behavior, unassuaged by the well meaning advice from friends and family, caused me to spend myself into a position where I was forced to adapt or d̶i̶e̶ declare bankruptcy at 24. Whereas some people are pushed to better themselves through motivational videos or inspiring literature, my dumb ass was shoved face first into innovation by means of necessity.

And innovate I did, though the interest incurred by the loans to myself was more meaningful than mere dollars and cents. It was opportunity cost; the nonstop borrowing meant that once I found something I genuinely wanted and couldn’t procure with the swipe of a card, I was nowhere near being in a purchasing position since I still had to pick up the tab from the years prior. That’s where I’ve been from 2019 until today with my desire to buy a house, and the regret burns twice as hot now that the Austin real estate market is in a veritable feeding frenzy.

Had I moved out here of my own volition to switch careers without the burden of debt weighing me down, I could have had four walls and a roof to call my own three years ago. Then again, the point of this post isn’t to talk about what smart and reasonable people could have done, seeing as how I clearly start my mornings with a tall glass of dumb bitch juice. Rather, it’s to posit how my plastic-induced plight put me in a prime position to learn some painful lessons and consider those squandered possibilities the tuition paid at the school of hard knocks.

Nobody slithers out of the womb with good financial literacy. A quick search on Reddit or Dave Ramsey’s YouTube channel will prove as much. Some people learn as a result of their upbringing, classes in school, or personal research. For others, life experiences end up being the strictest teacher. Whether it’s buying a car you can’t afford, tripling your lifestyle after doubling your income, or receiving a financial windfall and understanding it can be made to either last the rest of your life or a few weeks, impulsive or unexpected events involving money do a great job at searing lifelong learnings into your brain.

Though my money mistakes have been frustrating, I’ve come to realize that they’ve instilled some helpful habits. I became so used to living off a sliver of my income thanks to debt that I still live with that mentality. Whereas I was once luckily to have a net gain of a hundred dollars in my bank account after a few paychecks, I’m now putting away several thousand dollars monthly. I give myself a $150-$250 buffer every month to cover necessary, non-recurring expenses like Peeps, the closest thing to being classified as food that you’re allowed to put in your body. No matter how much money I make in the future, I don’t anticipate changing my spending patterns dramatically — I’m a cheap date that gets by just fine with dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

So, conclusion time. Was racking up all that debt in Miami pointless? Not at all. I could have gone to grad school for something I wasn’t passionate about and ended up twice as indebted, gotten three times as many gray hairs, and having learned zero financial lessons. Preemptively jumping into the coding bootcamp planted the seed in my brain that would eventually blossom into a flower that got up real close to my ear and whispered “hey there broke boy, how about you leave all this behind and come spend some time in the land of the nerds”. I do regret buying and modifying cars instead of focusing on the house, though. That was me delivering an encore performance of idiocy.

Thinking back on every time I’ve refused to stay the course, I can safely say I don’t regret being inconsistent with my choices from childhood up until now. I’ve found that I’m at my best when I find a new spark of inspiration and follow it to the next. That’s what drove me from wanting to deliver pizzas to wanting to write code and it’s what quite literally drove me from Miami to Austin. It also drove me to the end of this post, which is now. If you’ve gotten to this point, thanks for staying on the roller coaster. You are pretty neat.