debt
I was at a coffee shop with friends, drinking espresso and talking about how our summers had been going, when one of them said that she had some exciting news. Of course, we all jumped to the normal conclusions: either she was pregnant or getting married to that fool she'd been dating for a couple of weeks, or both. She quickly allayed our fears of her imminent pregnancy, but didn't say much about the marriage thing. I hoped she was just kidding. Anyway, she told us she was on the road to financial independence! Of course, we knew her idea of "road to financial independence" was a new credit card to pay off all the other credit cards she had. Her credit score was so bad that even the companies who say they don't care about credit rejected her. We had all assumed that her score had to be somewhere in the high...negative numbers. So when she said she had begun a program of debt consolidation, we were all surprised.
She had admitted that she figured debt consolidation was only for losers and lames with no money (in which case we had to remind her that SHE was a loser AND a lame for not having any money. I don't think she was very happy about that). She said, though, that when the bills started piling up and the collection calls started peppering her daily life, she had to put a stop to it. I'm not gonna lie, she sounded like something straight out of a Peter Francis Geraci commercial, and I get the feeling she's been practicing her little "rags to riches" speech for some time now. She said that when she had discovered the many possibilities involved with debt consolidation, she knew she had hit the road to success. I wanted to ask her just how many "roads to" anything she had decided to take in the past few days, but I decided to keep my mouth shut.
In all actuality, she sounded so proud of herself that it was slightly difficult to make fun of her (notice I said slightly. We, of course, did not let pride keep us from poking fun at her new outlook on life). And we all were proud of her for finally being responsible enough to realize that she had a true financial problem and that it needed fixing. She deserved a congratulations and maybe even lunch.
But as she began talking about the wedding arrangements she and her new fiancé had started making and flashed what looked to be a very inexpensive and fake cubic zirconium engagement ring, I began to realize that though she had proven to learn a little responsibility in her financial life, she still had the common sense of a 12 year old in her love life. She's taking baby steps, I guess. Really small, really backward, infantile baby steps. She'll learn. And if this guy doesn't work out (like the other 4 she's almost married), we'll be right back in this same coffee shop, drinking our macchiatos and lattes, and trying to rationalize how the power of financial freedom should overcome such poor judgment in men.