If I could cash all the financial reality checks I got this year, I’d be rich

An open letter of frustration from my first year of adulting by Giana Milazzo

This is a story of actions (or lack thereof) and consequences. During my first year out of college, I lived a series of blunders that can only be chalked up to experience. I lost hundreds of dollars to processes I didn’t fully understand, or paperwork I didn’t fully read. After a year of learning things the hard way, I find myself asking: how the f*** did this happen?

Below, are a few of the doozies I took down the tunnel of financial frustration. May they be lessons to you. While I can’t take back my mistakes, I can complain about them on a Medium post and hope that someone else out there reads this and can respond with a sullen, knowing “same.”

I paid twice for my health care.

And yet I’m not twice as healthy. Turns out no one ever really teaches you how to properly examine your compensation and benefits package at your first full-time job. Being under 26 years old, I was still cozily insured under my parents’ plan when I was first hired. Without deliberately waiving my company’s plan within the 30 days provided after a “life event,” they enrolled me automatically. When that magic enrollment window opened up again in the new fiscal year, you better believe I sent a buckshot of emails to HR ensuring that I waived that bimonthly reminder of my ignorance.

I paid as much in student loans as I did in New York City rent.

My lack of understanding about loan subsidization and interest is akin to my lack of understanding of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. I never felt the full weight of my student loans until I saw the bill for my first loan payment, showing me how much interest I had accrued during my deferment period (which, of course, I milked until the very last minute). Now, the idea that I can pay hundreds of dollars and still not see the total principal drop more than a few dollars a month is a very particular, slow-burning kind of pain. The disappointing comedown from the promises sold to us in Welcome Weeks and Study Abroad Tours at colleges across the country includes debt. And lots of it.

I claimed 10 dependencies on my taxes that don’t exist.

Filling out paperwork electronically might seem like the right move in the digital age, but make sure you don’t get lost in all the ones and zeroes (and no I don’t mean The Matrix — that’s an existential crisis to discuss another day).

With the help of my mom, I submitted my first W-4 when I worked in a little Italian grocery shop at 16. Evidently, my understanding of that document hasn’t evolved much since — and I probably should have asked my mom for help this time around, too.

“I want to make sure you meant to claim more than 10 deductions on your tax form — when a colleague does this, we need to inform the IRS.”

“No! I was not aware I put that. I wanted to be 1. And then I filled out 0 for the next line.” — excerpts from actual e-mails

I’ve got a lot of (in)dependence, but somewhere along the way, our communication wires crossed and imploded. Before I knew it, it was Tax Day and I was getting scolded by my family accountant for incorrectly filing taxes for 6 months. There’s always next year?

I got totally ripped off by a moving company.

“Hire movers,” they said. “It’ll make your life easier,” they said.

Wrong.

As a distracted twenty-something, I probably skimmed the fine print of whatever official documents were handed to me the morning of my move. I gleefully tucked dozens of memories away in boxes and even packed my car to the brim to help the move along. Four hours later, the movers showed me a piece of paper with hourly rates, transportation fees, the extra cost of tape, boxes, and flights of stairs, with the number $1,335 circled at the bottom of the page even though I got a quote for $550. Shell-shocked, I called my dad to talk me through the tangles and one dramatic tear fell from my eye that day.

In each of these instances, nothing stuck until I actually saw the money missing from my Bank of America account or my already meager pay stubs.

Spending six years in higher education in English, I thought my literacy and comprehension skills were up to par, but I quickly found out my financial literacy skills were terribly insufficient.

No one holds your hand through these sorts of life lessons. There’s no required class taught in universities. At best, you might have been lucky enough to have mentors, parents, or colleagues advise and help you through these (what could be financially painful) reality checks — but not everyone stepping into the post-grad working world is so lucky.

Until the powers that be decide to prioritize financial literacy, my advice to post-grads entering the working world: do your research, ask more questions, download a financial planning app, read the fine print, and expect the unexpected.