At 49, after years of making plans, getting derailed, pushing it off, thinking/hoping/praying the whole thing would somehow resolve itself (nope), I'm finally getting my financial life together.
Yes it’s late and yes I’m very behind.
I have over $200K in student loan debt (more about this in a future letter) and although I'm in forbearance for payments, the interest is compounding at $1,200/mo. A few months ago I started making monthly payments above that with the goal of paying off the interest completely as soon as possible. Still working on getting there ($8,444.98 to go), but this goal has forced me to face my money mess and assess everything.
Monthly payments are a struggle (already live paycheck-to-paycheck), but at some point soon the student loan folks will be turning payments back on, and making those plus the interest will be impossible. So I'm trying to beat the clock to reach the principal. All of this alongside paying regular bills, rent, kiddo's college tuition, medical bills, and trying to put something, anything, into a retirement account that is nowhere near where it should be for someone my age.
I don’t expect you to care about my money woes, clearly I haven’t until now. Still, I’ve decided to make this public for self accountability. It feels embarrassing, shameful and scary. How could I have fucked up this royally? I’m smart, made good salaries and have had opportunities. On paper I seem like someone who should have her finances figured out. The gap between what my life looks like from the outside and what's actually happening in my bank account keeps me awake at 3am wondering if I'm going to die stuck like this (3am is very convincing that you will never not be here. She has a lot of charts and graphs and none of them are encouraging).
And yet, I'm hopeful?
I don’t have my money (experiment) plan mapped out yet, but I'll be sharing the details and learnings here. I'm great at taking things apart, finding patterns, building systems, and solving problems I don't have the answer to at the start. I've done it in my careers across transportation, entertainment, health, and tech. But finance is the one area where I've never turned that part of my brain on fully. It’s time.
Right now I'm auditing myself and gathering intel from "money experts.” Most are speaking to a younger audience with a much longer runway for compound interest, and not to folks 49+ with dependents, debt, a complicated financial picture, and barely any retirement saved. That's ok. It just fires me up even more. I'm going to figure this out, or document exactly why I couldn't. Either way, there'll be lots to learn.
Solvency49: where I’m starting and where I’m going.
— J