LearnVest
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In our Money Mic series, we hand over the podium to people with controversial views about money. These are their views, not ours, but we welcome your responses.
Today, one 32-year-old woman tells us how she went into five-figure credit card debt by footing the bill for her parents’ expenses and why she now lies to them about her $70,000-a-year salary so she doesn’t have to continue to bail them out.
I love my parents dearly and will always be grateful for the love they’ve shown me. That’s why lying to them about how much money I make — and resisting the urge to bail them out of the financial messes they continually find themselves in — is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
When I was growing up, I wasn’t really aware of the fact that my parents weren’t very smart about their finances. My dad is a member of the clergy and my mom is an executive assistant. While they never made a ton of money, it always seemed like we were fairly comfortable. My parents could afford to send me to summer sleep-away camp and to sign me up for extra-curricular activities, and they always portrayed this image of us being a we-can-keep-up-with-the-Joneses kind of family. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I realized there were some holes in the well-woven story that my parents had spun.
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My Parents’ Money Problems
When I was in 12th grade, my dad lost his job, so my mom, dad, brother and I moved to Colorado. When we got there, my mom was suddenly out of work as well. Money-wise, things went downhill very fast after we moved. I sensed that my parents were in financial trouble; I could see that they weren’t working, but they were still spending, and the numbers just didn’t add up. I guess I just assumed things would work themselves out.
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When I left home for college, I was grateful for the distance from my parents. Then, I began to get phone calls early in my freshman year — from my parents asking me for money. They weren’t requesting cash, but they wanted me to put a utility bill on a credit card. Plastic seemed like an easy way to fix our no-money problem, so I ended up opening a ton of credit cards. It was so easy to sign up; there were tables everywhere with simple application forms to fill out. Suddenly, I had a ton of credit cards and was charging everything — both my own living expenses and my parents’ bills that they couldn’t afford to pay on their own.
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In the spring of my sophomore year at college, my dad called with especially bad news: My parents had filed for bankruptcy. Neither of them were on track to find new careers; they were taking jobs here and there to help pay for stuff, but nothing was enough. They sold their house and started renting. I was afraid I was going to get another call, and that this time my dad was going to tell me they were homeless. I knew the situation wouldn’t improve any time soon, so I started helping them even more, paying for whatever they needed by putting it on one of my credit cards.
The Never-Ending Debt Spiral
I continued bailing out my parents in this way for years, and it went on after I graduated from college in 2003 with a degree in theater performance. But my first job out of school (doing administrative work for a nonprofit) wasn’t in my field and only paid $15,000 a year — and I had $25,000 in student loan debt. My income was barely enough to support myself, let alone two other people, but I always used credit cards to make up the difference. Even though I was scrimping, living in a tiny place with a roommate in a bad neighborhood of Denver, I still helped my parents financially, getting into even more debt. I even footed my parents’ bill for extensive medical and dental work. In fact, I got another credit card — The Care Card — which I used exclusively to pay for medical procedures that my parents needed. My parents promised to pay me back before the 0%-interest-for-one-year promotion expired, but they never did give me the money.
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In January 2011, my debt hit an all-time high: I had $90,000 in student loans (which included loans for graduate school; I earned my master’s degree in marketing and communications in August 2010) and $10,000 in credit card debt. I couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t know how I was going to get myself out of that financial mess.
For the next year, I tried to pay down my debt, but I didn’t feel like I was really getting anywhere. Then, in March 2012, I was set up on a blind date with David — the guy who’d eventually become my husband. After a few dates, I knew I was going to marry him. And while I was so nervous to talk to him about my debt, I sat him down and spilled the beans. I told him that I had a ton of debt, but that I was working on it. I also told him that I had recently read a LearnVest article about a woman who didn’t spend money on clothes or other non-essentials for a few months and that I was starting a similar kind of spending fast. I told him that I didn’t want to hold him — or us — back with my debt.
I put myself on a tough financial diet, spending money only on the absolute essentials, and I started aggressively paying down my debt. Within eight months, I paid off about $4,000 in credit card debt. David was impressed and soon after, he proposed. He helped me pay off the rest of my family-incurred debt, though I was against him taking it on at first.
David and I were proud of the progress that I’d made, and I felt like I was finally breaking free of the financial hold that my parents had on me.
LadyRomp 
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