No one ever really taught me much about handling money. What I knew about it as a child was that we didn’t have much of it. I grew up believing we were poor, although I don’t remember ever going without anything I needed. I remember being told things were too expensive and I remember working for my “allowance” which was not a bad thing. It did instill in me that if I wanted something I had to work and save for it, and sometimes do without.

As a young adult, I didn’t handle money very well. I opened a credit card that I maxed out and never paid the balance on, obtained a loan for car repairs that I never finished paying off, left behind unpaid balances on utilities, rent, a landline, and probably a lot of other things I forgot about. Assuming my credit was ruined, I didn’t try to do anything about it, nor did I care at the time.

Over the next several years I used my paystubs as credit to obtain payday loans. Once I realized just how much interest those loans cost, and how hard it is to get out of that cycle, I never got another one. At one point I had to stop making payments, let them take me to court, and make a payment arrangement to settle the debt. I ended up adding unpaid medical expenses to this list of unattractive items on my credit report and assumed I would never be able to fix it. I gave up, and decided to ignore it. “You can’t see me if I can’t see you.”

Then came the ashes in the form of addiction. It was a problem from the beginning. I see that now. From the very first drink, something changed in me. The empty feeling I had carried throughout my life was gone. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like an outsider looking in and it no longer mattered if I didn’t belong. I had found a way to fill that void and I chased it with a passion that was anything but normal. There were times I sobered up for a little while, only to go back again thinking it would somehow be different this time and that I could control it. Inevitably, each time was worse than before.

My life went up in flames. I burned every bridge I came across. Relationships, family, marriages, friendships, jobs, bank accounts, cars, opportunities… nothing was safe from being consumed by the fires I set through my disease. I went from one toxic relationship to the next, each time convincing myself that I didn’t deserve any better. My whole world was all but destroyed by the love affair I had with alcohol. I created disaster after disaster and lost all sense of direction and purpose.

I was lost. I was tired. I was hopeless. I was broken. The flames had finally died down to despair and there was nothing left but the ashes. I knew if something didn’t change quickly, I was going to die. I began to wonder if the world would be better off without me. And that was the thought that sparked a change inside me. Enough of a flame to give me the slightest hope that there might be a way out. Enough to give me the courage to ask for help.

I spent the next several weeks with my mother who took me place after place, made call after call until finally, she found a place that would take me. I wasn’t a resident of that state, I had no insurance, and I was not suicidal. For one or more of those reasons, every place she tried denied me services except the last one. They welcomed me in. I knew I needed a medical detox. I had tried to suffer through the withdrawal symptoms before and ended up having seizures when my body went into shock because of the lack of substances. I only had intentions of being detoxed and sent home, but they convinced me to give a 28-day rehab program a try.

This was a turning point for me. I knew I couldn’t go back to anywhere I had been before. I needed to change everything about my life if I was going to stay sober this time. So I chose to stay in a new state, in a new city, where I knew no one except my mom who didn’t live too far away to visit. I moved into a sober living house, started attending recovery meetings, got a sponsor, and worked a 12-step program.

In that first year I learned how to budget, manage a checkbook, started building my credit which was a hot mess from all the collections, and saved enough money to buy a cheap car. At this point I felt I was doing fairly well. Never in my life had I really been responsible and now I was, or at least I thought so. I paid my bills on time but I didn’t save money unless it was for a specific purpose, like the next thing I wanted to buy.

In 2020, when the world went inside to hide, my steady full time job forced me to part time status, so I made up the difference by delivering groceries on my days off. This was a big milestone for me because I had to learn how to track business expenses, mileage, and keep impeccable records for tax purposes. I learned how to use excel and fell in love with spreadsheets. I learned how to manage a small business. I learned about write offs.

By this point I had built my credit up just enough to be able to walk on to a car lot without being laughed at when they ran my credit. For the first time in my life, I bought a nice car without a co-signer (which is a good thing because I did not have one) with a normal bank loan, not a buy-here-pay-here place.

I fell in love with a good man (now my husband), was offered a job in the field of recovery, moved into a 2 bedroom apartment which was huge because I had been living in a sober living house or with my mom for the past 2 years, had a bank account in good standing, and even had the beginnings of a retirement fund through my employer, to which I contributed the exact amount of their generous match.

I was also contributing something positive to the world by volunteering to speak to the patients in the treatment centers, and even asked to teach basic money skills to members of a sober living house run by fellow friends in recovery. Me, of all people, asked to teach others about money.

I’ve made more money mistakes and learned from them. But I am dedicated to educating myself and sharing what I learn with others. I read a lot of books, which I will recommend in future posts. I read blogs, listen to podcasts, and am continually seeking out people who know more than me as mentors, whether they know it or not.

This is is the abbreviated back story of the ashes I came from and the beginning of my spark of hope for the future. I am no expert. I can only share my experiences. I will talk about how I learned things and the methods I used, what failed and what succeeded, and acknowledge that there are other ways to reach goals than the ones I chose or choose.

There are plenty of resources out there and so much information. And it has been my experience that I learn new things as I am ready to. We can’t jump into a bigger place without learning how to navigate the one you’re in. We have to learn to manage what we have before we can handle more.