I have nothing to hide.
I have some consumer debt. About $38,000 $28,000 to date. and here I am. Go ahead – Google Me, I’ll wait.
Here’s a photo of me too:
Are you back? Good. As I start for the first time in a long time to manage my expenses and income and make a concious and concerted effort to get out of debt I am immersing myself in reading other personal finance sites and blogs I have noticed a trend: Some, not all, but lots of bloggers hide behind online personas when blogging about their personal finances, and I have to ask: Why?
Lots of bloggers are real people who had real financial issues who started blogging about their finances and ways to get out of debt using their real names and identities. J.D at Get Rich Slowly, or Trent at The Simple Dollar are two sites I’ve been reading that don’t hide behind made up pen names and are real people, who had real problems and started to write about those issues and how to troubleshoot them.
But other bloggers often hide behind pen names and I wonder what the reasoning is behind it? Is it because you don’t want your boss to know? Is it because they think people will think less of them? Is it they don’t wan their partners to know how bad it really is? Hiding just doesn’t just make sense to me. Is it so bad that if the banks or credit card companies got wind they’d call your debt and then you’d really be screwed?
Share Your Shame
I am in debt. I am Jim Fitzsimmons. That’s who I am today. Tomorrow, the plan is to be better with my consumer spending and I’m on day 26 towards that goal. I have 974 days to go, and I’m OK with that. The time’s going to pass anyway so I might as well do all that I can in my powers to work towards bettering myself financially. I’ve had lots less worthy and more expensive pursuits over the years. This one is a bargain in many ways.
If it’s because you don’t want your boss to know? Do you really want to work for somebody that would somehow penalize your career because of your current financial situation? I know I wouldn’t. The deal with working for the man is quite simple: You do the work that creates value for your boss, and they pay you. Your boss wants you to be profitable, so in turn they can be even more profitable.The company you work for doesn’t care about your debt load. They might worry about their debt load but that’s not your problem
I’m really curious. What’s the reason for hiding? Privacy? If you’ve signed up for pretty much anything online, your privacy is pretty much toast anyway, so what’t to lose? I know that identity theft is real and this is the only real reason I can think of that you might not want to write about your debt as an individual. But I’m going to assume you’re not going to write your credit card number on your site, but just the company you owe, and the balance. I’m going to assume common sense.
I’ve found that sharing the shame of debt has actually be quite profitable. If my friend and family didn’t know and assumed everything was just hunky dory I wouldn’t have been able to knock down my debt by $10,000 earlier this week. I shared my shame, not expecting a thing, other than perhaps some understanding. We’ve all made mistakes. Mine just happened to be paying for extras with ‘extra money’ that never ending showing up.
I’ve also found that writing about my debt and sharing it with you, dear internet, has been rewarding in ways I never knew existed. I found a love of writing. I’m having fun doing this, and it’s profitable. To date the financial rewards from writing on this site have been negligible to the point of not even mentioning. But the emotional, and creative rewards have been absolutely wonderful. And, the best part: It’s cheap! It cost me $9 for the domain name, and that’s it! The rest is just keystroke after keystroke as I tell my story day by day.
I’m happy to share my shame, name, and outstanding balances. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sacrifice of the Day
I know what you’re thinking: Yay! more cables!. At least that’s I was thinking, when I bought all these. Now I realize how silly it was. Maybe not to purchase them, but to purchase them on credit. I thought my future self would pay for these. What I didn’t think was that my future self would be taking what you can get for every item bought but I’m a man with a plan, and this is today’s step towards that goal.
Today I’ve got a pair of THX approved (which for the most part, is nothing more than marketing in my opinion). Regardless they’re a sturdy cable with firm connectors that will transmit the audio signal and that’s what you want these to do.
Updates
I have been paid for all three watches I had auctioned off and I will ship these first thing tomorrow. All total it comes to about $75 which is better than a kick in the pants as they were just sitting in my closet. I also have a fellow coming to pick up a pair of the monster cables I had for sale and that’s another $40 and he plans on paying cash. The challenge will be to deposit the $40 and not just sqander it at starbucks, which is so easy to do still.
I’ve earned over $100 in income from clearing out my stuff this weekend. I’m up to $813.00 of stuff sold on eBay to date, since my first ebay auction a little over 3 weeks ago. If I can keep up these averages, at $1000/month my debt will be taken care of in no time. Here’s hoping.
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