I did not have the greatest financial education, or any, really. I remember once my aunt sent my mother money for groceries and my mother instead bought a stereo. Both of my parents struggled, when they were together and after their divorce, with how to handle flush times and lean times. I never recognized how this financial flux affected my sense of wellbeing until I came into FA.
When I was 18 and had just starting out with a clean credit report, I remember some young-20s friends telling me that they had already destroyed their credit. With no knowledge of how such things worked, I felt perfectly justified in condemning them in my mind, and telling myself that it would never happen to me.
Then I began borrowing. I borrowed with impunity—for school, clothes, trips, and food. I felt no shame in putting a $15 binge on an 18% APR credit line. I didn’t just accrue debt though, the money I made quickly went through the drive-thru window. I don’t remember buying groceries at all for years at a time. I ate every meal in my car or at a restaurant.
On top of the credit cards and expenditures, I was stealing as well. I worked in hospitality and easily ate the equivalent of my salary in kitchen inventory. My employers had no idea what they were actually paying me to work for them, if they had taken how much I ate into account. This job and its unlimited access to “free food” brought me over the 300-pound line.
I also stole from myself. If I had $50 left in my bank account and had an electric bill due, that $50 represented five trips to the drive-thru for me, and the electric bill would go unpaid. Many times I added up the money wasted on perfectly good groceries that rotted in the fridge. Pounds of produce sat untouched as I stopped for my “fixes” before and after work, and often later in the evening. If I had known then the financial mess I was creating for myself, would it have curbed my behavior? I am confident that the answer is “no.” Our disease is one of instant gratification. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow there’s more to eat and drink!
In FA, I have taken steps to clean my financial house. The nature of the work I do, however, does not provide a steady paycheck. In lean times, I sometimes feel I am holding on for dear life, even when everything is fine. But the bills are paid and I have a fridge full of food that is on my food plan. I know this sense of dread comes from my experience as a child from a financially insecure home, and I know that eating over those feelings makes the problem worse in every imaginable way— physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially.
Most importantly, because of this program, I have a higher power who I know takes care of me. My higher power also knows, better than I, what I do and don’t need. I am grateful each time my checkbook balances, even if it is a “squeaker.” I believe the promises, that feelings of financial insecurity will leave us if we trust and work the program. For me, that means having to be as weighed and measured with my money as I am with my food.