Dog Days of my Twenties...#3

This lesson brought to you by Nikki, age 23-25 and the cities of Boston and Manhattan.

Lesson #3: Credit Cards and Designer labels have no business being friends when you live paycheck to paycheck. (This lesson could also be classified under: You are not Carrie Bradshaw--she isn't real, wouldn't be able to pay her bills and probably has STDS.)

When I was 23, two things happened for me: 1) I got a fantastic job at a shi-shi boarding school with a faculty dress code, necessitating a move to a city whose cost of living was 33% higher than my current one and 2) I lost 85 lbs. throughout the course of that year, necessitating a new wardrobe.

My students were privileged, their parents were rich, my colleagues were much older and most married (which I now realize means two incomes, one house) and I taught at a school where students wore only designer their entire lives and went to NYC every weekend to catch Bway shows at $125 a ticket. I seriously took one of them to a Target for the first time in their life. (And for a Marshall girl, Target is something.)

Anyway, I maxed out my credit card in the first three months and got another one to be able to do Christmas in MN with presents and such. I signed a lease on an apartment way beyond my means, joined a gym and spent all of my money on clothes. I swear, the only reason I lost so much weight is because I didn't have money for food and had nothing to do but go to the gym. I was lonely and broke. But my shoes looked great. And while I was shopping Chinatown and designer discount outlets, I was shopping.

I moved home to Minneapolis at 25 with two maxed out cards and a ready-reserve at its limit. Two years out of college, I had managed to add to my personal debt enough to match my student loans. WTF, my friends, WTF...

No shoes look that good.

I paid off those credit cards finally last spring while going to grad school, NOT SHOPPING, and paying my student loans. At the end of 3 years of living on a stipend and side gigs, I left grad school with no credit card debt and half of my undergrad paid off, wearing Target clothing and my Boston leftovers the whole time.

And now, living gig-to-gig, all I know is the second I land some sort of extended gig, I'm buying a new pair of shoes. And they will be fierce...but moderately priced.