As I prepare to go back to college for the fourth time, I’m still no more financially intelligent than I was the first time. Maybe because of my upbringing, maybe because of my lack of desire to learn it, or the people around me just didn’t care much about finances.
I knew I didn’t have the grades or the desire to apply to a university, and I didn’t want to spend 4 years in another college. I was already 26 and I had no career path with a boat load of debt. I even had to switch to a greeter at the restaurant I was working at to accommodate my school schedule. How absolutely mortifying!! The worst part is that I had to do it in a Hawaiian button down shirt! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I didn’t want to be 26 working with high school kids for minimum wage.
When friends would come into the restaurant, I’d be the first thing they would see. An underachieving 26 year-old making $8 an hour showing people to their tables. I was absolutely embarrassed. A lot of the time I would hide somewhere if I saw somebody coming in that I knew. Hahaha. Oh boy.
Although, it gave me the drive I needed to succeed in college this time. I picked a career that didn’t give me just one option for an employment. It was a growing industry with plenty of job opportunities in the future.
Hold up! Here comes another bad financial decision, I picked a trade school that was considered a for-profit school. The school was so expensive insanely expensive! $40,000 for the program. $20,000 per year! I didn’t care though because I was desperate. For those of you that have read my previous posts, the math now adds up to me being $80,000 in student loan debt. Eek!
I was deferring all of my other loans, or getting the monthly payments down to a minimum. The full brunt of student loans really hasn’t sunk in for me at this point. I just knew I needed a career and had to make something happen. So, I signed on the dotted line. I’m a college student, again, working as a greeter, sitting on fat pile of $80,000 student loans for which I still didn’t really understand what the obligations were. I chose the bury my head in the sand approach. Besides, I had 11 dollars. What could possibly go wrong?!