Silver and Gold(en): Let’s talk personal finance over petite flapjacks.
I paid off my student loans this week!!!
It’s something I’ve been putting off for years. It’s something that many people never get to do. Let me explain how I accomplished it, and lucked into it, at the bouncy baby age of 29:
1. My graduate program was fully-funded.
2. I received merit- and need-based aid for undergraduate.
3. I graduated a year early.
4. Since college, I have saved at least 30% of my income per year by living cheaply and not having a car.
5. When I was 18, my dad died and I inherited a grand total of $12,500, which I saved in its entirely.
6. I have never been unemployed since I was 16. I started saving when I was in high school, and entered college with $7,000 in savings.
7. Since graduate school, I have made $40,000–55,000/year.
My student loan debt was about $19,000 to start, and I began making payments in 2014. I’ve had enough money to extinguish the debt entirely for a while, but I always balked. Parting with that kind of cash felt deeply painful.
I was faced with two options. The first: making the minimum payments and saving everything else. I’ve been saving for a long time. But it seems like the heap of saved money got slowly larger but my anxieties never abated. It used to be that having a $10,000 rainy day fund seemed voluptuous. That can cover quite a few months’ rent, replace a whole wardrobe of clothing and a laptop and TV if the house burned down.
But now I have an order of magnitude larger than that, and it seems paltry. Yes, I could fritter it away slowly for a few years if I needed to, but if I got an aggressive cancer, it would be peanuts. And it just seems like I will be punished, cosmically, with an expensive aggressive cancer. Just seems like the kind of thing I’d walk into. People in my family die young after all.
The second option: pay off my loans and begin investing. But what to invest in? How do I balance risk with reward? What does asset mean? What’s the difference between an index fund and a mutual fund? Will putting my money in the stock market transform me from a lesser demon to the actual devil?
To help answer these questions and assuage my anxieties, I scheduled a breakfast meeting with my friend, practical-life-stuff supergenius Victoria Golden.
I wanted to learn what she does with her money. She’s about my age and preternaturally mature and responsible. I knew she’d have answers and could set a respectable, comforting example. She also has experience teaching actual children about finance and money matters, so I knew she could explain things in a way that made sense and wasn’t terrifying.
— — — -
As an additional support in this trying time, I have been reading a lot of Mr. Money Mustache.
Mr. Money Mustache is an example of one of my favorite things in this world, an eccentric crank with a very particular way of living. I love soft-spoken, utterly batshit dudes. Because I want to be one, and I am one, and they are my ideal symbol of what masculinity should be.
One of my other recent eccentric softboy loves is Ciscoe Morris, a Seattle-based apple tree grower who says “ooh lah lah!” to punctuate the most mundane of observations, from the spotlessness of a fresh apple to the refreshing smell of a newly cut tree branch. He also likes to stuff apple buds into pantyhose footies, to protect the growing harvest from pests.
Life hack.
Like Ciscoe Morries, Mr. Money Mustache has a particular way of doing things. Mr. Money Mustache retired in his 20’s. Mr. Money Mustache saved 50% of his income every year that he worked. Mr. Money Mustache only worked 7 years of his goddamned life. He took that 50% savings and put it in a Vanguard index fund with a low expense ratio. Mr. Money Mustache is a millionaire now.
Mr. Money Mustache believes that when you’re driving, if you use the break, you’re making a mistake (because it’s wasting fuel).Mr. Money Mustache believes that if you have to commute to work by car, you’re fucking up. Mr. Money Mustache moved as close to his workplace as possible, and to his wife’s workplace as possible, so they could both bike. Mr. Money Mustache never hires anyone to mow his lawn or clean his house or build him a garage, he does it himself. Mr. Money Mustache believes you should use your body’s natural fuel whenever fucking possible okay.
Mr. Money Mustache and his wife and child live on about $26,000 a year even though they are now millionaires. I know this because he publishes his annual budget on his website. Nobody in Mr. Money Mustache’s family bought any prescription drugs last year. Mr. Money Mustache is in his 40’s now and he doesn’t need health insurance because he is so virile, but he still buys it on the Marketplace because that is the morally correct thing to do.
Mr. Money Mustache believes that embracing positivity can help you save money because it will make you more physically healthy. Mr. Money Mustache works out on a weight bench in his back yard, even in the winter, because it’s cheaper than a gym membership. Mr. Money Mustache says that maybe you should move to a different city with a lower cost of living. Mr. Money Mustache lives in Longmont Colorado. Mr. Money Mustache now repairs houses for fun. He does make money doing that though. But he doesn’t need to, you know.
Mr. Money Mustache believes in working hard and letting yourself be uncomfortable. Mr. Money Mustache calls Jeeps “Lay-Z-Boys on Wheels”. Mr. Money Mustache believes we all live highly bloated consumerist lives here in the United States, and that our cars and furniture payments are choking us on the vine. Mr. Money Mustache believes it is cheap to have a kid. Just don’t enroll them in anything like ballet or Boy Scouts. Go to the library. Go to the park. Move around some dirt. That is educational.
And I am slurping this philosophy up with a spoon.
— — — —
A friend of mine got really into Mr. Money Mustache a few years ago. Next thing you know, he’s taking cold showers and putting chili powder in his socks because of the innate value of stoicism. Stoicism is the philosophy of enduring painful shit because it’s cheap. You can live a very long time off your savings if your life is just brutally awful.
I know I should be suspicious of Mr. Money Mustache. This guy retired at the age I currently am, sure, but he worked in tech and made way more than I make. And this fucking no prescriptions thing. How do you get to 40 and have zero medical needs? Like, no birth control? No anti-depressants? Nobody needs a blood pressure med? Nothing?! Embracing the power of positivity my gloomy ass. It’s easy to do that when you’re healthy enough to bike everywhere and you don’t need psych meds.
Of course, I don’t actually know that I need psych meds. I’ve never taken an antidepressant. They’re too expensive.
At least my low self-esteem makes it easy to save money. Of course I’m not gonna get a massive car loan for myself. I’m not even gonna buy myself a hot water kettle or take medicine that would make me want to die less.
— — — —
I worry so much. I think if I worry about something enough, I can control it. If I have enough contingency plans, I will be ready for all the bad things. If I imagine the deaths of everyone I love, I will not be waylaid when they perish. So my brain shows me everyone dying, all the time. It reminds me of every regrettable thing I’ve done to make sure I really never ever do them again. It treats me to images of myself alone, broke, and desperate in old age, whenever I consider purchasing something, to help keep me safe.
My crutches hurt me. My anxieties convince me that I need them. It’s cool.
The other day I was on the phone with my mom and she told me that people decide how happy they want to be. I screamed “WHAT” at her while standing on the street.
If thinking could fix the part of me that does the thinking, I woulda been sane a long time ago. I have tried to think myself out of depression and anxiety and trauma. I tried to think my way into being happy with an abusive relationship. I tried to think my way out of an eating disorder. I tried to think my way out of gender dysphoria. I tried to think my way out of jealousy and bitterness. I tried to out-think my own brain’s natural way of thinking. I tried to think about death so hard that it’d make me actually die.
It didn’t work. None of it did. I’m stuck with this weird brain, and I’m stuck alive, and I’ve found some solace in accepting that shit. Mr. Money Mustache might be rich through the power of positive thinking, but I’m gonna have to skim and scrounge and be angry while I do it.
— — — -
I bought the Silver Dollar Pancakes. They were good. They were very thin, but soft and full of delicious airy holes that sopped up the syrup like nobody’s business. I also sprung for a side of sausage because I AM WORTH IT DAMMIT and I had that anemia, you know? Maybe I am making self-worth progress. I didn’t feel that guilty about doing it.
All these cakes for under $6. This really is a wonderful place.
Victoria got a heaping hash and potato situation that looked salty and satisfying. She also gave me a sizable helping of peace of mind. Victoria is a sensible person. She spends money on herself in a reasonable way, it seems. She’s frugal, she has investments, she knows that you’re supposed to move your retirement accounts when you leave a job (which was news to me), and she invests with Vanguard like everybody else I know who invests.
She also took an amazing backpacking trip across Europe a few years ago, and is fluent in Spanish. She has a car. She showed up to breakfast looking like a gorgeous frontier nymph but apologized for looking like “a ragamuffin”. She did not look like a ragamuffin. That’s a real adult there. Her apartment probably has some kind of unifying decorative sensibility behind it.
Meanwhile I’m over here in a children’s ball cap and my bedroom is decorated with a card table from Aldi that has burn marks on it from when I was doing chaos magick with incense. I was trying to curse my ex and kill the President with my mind. It’s whatever.
Victoria’s also a deeply honest person. You know I am abidingly friend-horny for that quality. She currently works as a leasing agent, showing people apartments around the city. Unlike a lot of people in the biz, she is utterly forthright about every flaw a place has. She encourages young, glassy-eyed renters to check the water pressure, make sure their cell phones work in the units they view. She refused to let clients of hers rent out a ground-level unit that didn’t have security bars. What a sensible and moral angel.
— — — —
Victoria is not just chasing that paper. She doesn’t squeeze every penny. She’s just smart. I’m trying to embody that sensibility more. Trying not to over-save. But over-saving is a philosophy I’ve been addicted to since the day my dad pulled up to the Dairy Queen, told me I could order an ice cream, then screamed at me for getting a $4 smoothie thing instead of a $1 cone.
I was like, 9. I didn’t know shit. But inthat moment, I learned that money was something to be very panicked and stingy about, and I’ve watched it very carefully ever since.
I’m getting better. I went to the dentist last week even though I didn’t have an pain. I threw $13,000 or so on my student loan, snuffing it out entirely. After speaking with Victoria, that same day, I opened a Vanguard account and put $10,000 into an index fund. It’s time, as Mr. Money Mustache says, to make my money work for me. My money is an employee that can work way harder than I can. I don’t have to do it alone. Suffering is not always the path to wealth.
That $10,000 isn’t my whole savings. But that used to feel like a lot. It’s hard to get, 10k, but easy to spend. I have a lot. I worked hard and avoided a lot of expenses to arrive at this place. Lived in a lot of shitty apartments. Walked three miles both ways to work every day for years. Sat at the restaurant nothing in front of me, explaining it away to any friends who asked. Kept my pantries near-bare. Super-glued the cuts on my heels instead of buying new shoes.
That financial anorexia had just as much potential to damage me as my actual anorexia did. You have to spend money to live. That’s the fucked reality of our lives. And the money is not everything. So I’m investing. And I’m getting breakfast. And both are getting less scary every day. I’m very fortunate to be able to do either of those things. Maybe someday I’ll be able to find pleasure in them without a side of guilt.
