Poor (1-14-13)

I’m poor. I’ve been poor my whole life. I wonder if I always will be. Why am I poor? There are reasons, many of which I have to own. I own it because I’ve made mistakes. I own it because I get satisfied too easily. I own it because my fears and insecurities limit me. I own it because of where I’m from. Yes, that matters. When you grow up poor in the inner city it affects you. If you don’t figure it out early the struggle shapes you. My mom never worked and whether or not she grew up lower middle class was irrelevant, she wasn’t the type of person to give or retain lessons. My dad was basically forced into retirement by the time I started kindergarten and because he was already in his mid 50’s and had developed health issues from a life spent smoking heavily and over a decade spent working in the steel mills, he wasn’t reaching for any brass rings. We lived on my dad’s pension and social security. We barely got by. We had food stamps and waited in line for free cheese. Sometimes we had a family car, sometimes we didn’t. We lived in apartments with roaches, in neighborhoods with hoodlums and drug dealers and one apartment even had plastic curtains for bedroom doors.

Going through that stuff shapes you. Which way is relative. Sure, it makes you tougher and it motivates you but sometimes it disheartens you. Sometimes the struggle wears you down and kicks your ass. I’ve seen a lot of people get caught up in it. There are psychological elements, behaviors learned, tastes shaped. This might seem silly to you but growing up poor in the inner city… among other things I’ve seen, you develop a taste for cheap, awful food, you tend to only worry about the short term and when you do get some money it’s like it’s burning a hole in your pocket. You want to treat yourself, and usually whoever is around you. I mean, you gotta enjoy that shit… you only live once! That’s the poor culture. Basically you develop several bad and irresponsible habits that you can rationalize away by being poor. You live in the moment. You trade potential long term satisfaction or security for momentary but definite short-term bliss. There’s no better time than the present. Sometimes you feel like you are so far down at the bottom of the hill that you can't see the top. After a while of not being able to see it you start to believe it's not really there... and that's when you've limited yourself. Whether it's racism, sexism, hate, poverty or just bad luck you can feel like you can only make it so far. It's unfortunate but it happens to a lot of people. I’m not saying its right, nor am I defending it but I understand it. It’s a part of me, for better or worse. If you want to escape that “poor” mindset, you have to find a way to rise above it. In some respects I have failed.

No, I didn’t join a gang, have 3 baby mamas or chase drugs. No, I didn’t break the law, live scandalous, alienate friends and family, let my emotions define me or drop out of high school. But I don’t think I should be applauded for that. I think those things are no brainers… common sense… bad juju and dramas you are supposed to avoid. I’ve made mistakes and I’ve learned plenty along the way but sometimes you make mistakes and they haunt you for more than a weekend. You can't sleep them off like hangovers, or simply apologize and make it all better. If you are not careful you can make a mistake that really haunts you. They don’t seem significant at the time but some of our blunders chase us for years and when they find us after all that time they are bigger and scarier than they ever were when we first ran from them. Then you feel like an idiot for ever running… and then they can make you feel helpless.

 

Maybe my story will generate sympathy from some, scorn from others and maybe a combination of the two but I hope that at least 1 person out there reads this and avoids the same mistakes I made. Perhaps for some of you, it’s too late. For those where it is not, times have changed somewhat so maybe it’s harder to repeat them but one thing is true… it was true for me then and it’s true now: people who don’t have money will always want some and many will take advantage of a system that is taking advantage of them to get it. That’s where I made my mistakes, with money… specifically with money I didn’t have… with credit.

To get to the lessons and the dilemma I now face I have to reveal the full story. So I have to take you back to the 90’s.

When Bill Clinton was president I could have gone to school for free, I didn’t but I could have. Unfortunately I didn’t take it seriously. When I first started at Buffalo State everything was being paid for, even my books. If I had stayed the course, worked hard and grew up fast I might have never had to pay for school but I took it all for granted. I was young beyond my years.

I loved my inner city high school for all the lessons I learned outside the classroom but I hated it for the lack of lessons learned inside of it. Today, people who went to suburban and private schools tell me about the wonderful teachers and the exciting things they studied. I swear half the time I felt like we were at day care instead of school. Many of my teachers were either intimidated by some of the kids or had given up on trying to reach them. Everything seemed half-assed. There were so many white, middle aged or older teachers trying to connect with a student body that was 75% black and Hispanic. Of the remaining 25% most of that were white kids from the West side or Riverside and some were foreign kids as our school was starting to become Buffalo’s “international” high school for those where English wasn’t their first language. We had kids from Africa, Russia, the Pacific Rim, Poland, South America, you name it. But they were only a small portion of the student body and didn’t have classes with the other 90-95% mostly English speakers. In those English speaking classrooms most of the teachers couldn’t relate to the modern students. They couldn’t understand where they were coming from and conversely most of the students were perfectly happy that the teachers generally underachieved or gave up. I became one of them although it would later cost me.

My first two years of high school were terrible. My first year was a bitter, forgetful year as I was angry at the world for not getting into Hutch Tech, instead having to attend lowly Grover but it was no one’s fault but my own. I was a consistent honor student until the 7^th grade. That year my attention shifted from my studies to chasing girls, trying to be cool and having fun. I started getting into trouble for the first time. I would get detention occasionally and would neglect paying attention in class because that wasn’t a cool thing to do. It wasn’t the first time I tried a little too hard to fit in and it wouldn’t be the last time but it was definitely the worst time.

My goofing off dropped a 96 average to the high 70’s and cost me a chance at the high school I wanted. So that first year I was bitter and annoyed. It didn’t help that I was thought of as a dork and I had few friends. My 2^nd year was worse. I missed 60+ days, usually pretending to be sick to avoid the bullying and hate that often came my way as some loser, mutant, loner heavy metal loving guy at an inner city school with no friends and no chance. People were relentless that year. Before my 3^rd year started a good friend came back from Texas and enrolled at Grover. I had a growth spurt. We both tried out for football and made it. I cut my hair, cleaned up my appearance and found my way back into rap and soul music, which nearly everyone else was into. More importantly I started to have real crushes on females who were older, intelligent and beautiful. I decided I could never impress them as a younger, goof off football player with no motivation or ambition. I buckled down and went in just 9 months from a kid who the truant officer advised to drop out when I was legally able back to the Honor roll and one of the more visible people in school. It was the first time I wrote poetry. It was the first time I ever began to have real opinions on things. My mental growth was finally starting to catch up to my physical growth.

While my grades improved dramatically, I admit it wasn’t terribly difficult for me. Now that I was showing up for classes and paying attention, it was cake. That’s how unchallenging the curriculum was. Those people who went to suburban and private schools tell me about required readings, big projects and classic books they had to read. I don’t remember ever having to read any. I didn’t know who Dickens was except at Christmas time. Mark Twain? Ernest Hemingway? The Great Gatsby? Never heard of any of it. We never really went anywhere but I remember watching Les Miserables on videotape once. Most of our time was spent doing things that bored me… vocabulary and essays. It was real basic stuff. Other classes were similar. We memorized words, dates, phrases and formulas but I doubt we really knew them. We’d study hard for that week’s test, but since everything focused on memory instead of comprehension most of the information would usually be lost within a week as we began a new pattern of memorization for the next test or quiz. When we had cumulative tests (they were rare) there had to be a curve because so many faltered. No one could remember much of what we “learned” only a month prior. Basically, inner city high school taught me how to memorize things on a short-term level. I was never taught how to actually comprehend. Plus if you didn’t cause any trouble, didn’t rock the boat for these overburdened teachers, they gave you perks. They’d let you get away with small stuff. They’d let you slide. As long as you didn’t make life hard for them, paid attention, did well on the tests and showed them common courtesy (most of the time) you were golden. Going to a poor school in a relatively poor neighborhood meant getting it easier. In hindsight I feel like they didn’t challenge us because we were poor kids. It was like we had to have our hands held or had to be spoken to carefully, for we were not quite equipped to be treated normally. This continued in college, in the EOP (Equal Opportunity) program at Buffalo State. I was assigned to it because I was Hispanic. They wanted to let me know they had tutors available to me from the get go. My advisor wanted weekly check-ups on how I was doing, what I needed help with and made me feel like I was being patronized. My pride and ego prevented me from being an adult about it and I strained my relationship with my advisor and the program by refusing any help, not listening to any suggestions they had for me and acting like I was going to breeze through college the way I breezed through high school. I remember thinking they had some nerve trying to tell me that they knew what was best for me. I was so very young and so very wrong about all of it but like many people at that age, I thought I knew everything. 

I went to college cocky, arrogant and completely unprepared for the realities that lie ahead. I had no work ethic. I was not used to having to work hard to achieve success in school and as stubborn as I can be, couldn’t easily be taught to do so. I never thought I was wrong. Even as I was heading towards the end of a lousy first semester I was still in denial. I’ll just try a little towards the end of the semester and ace the finals and that will bring my GPA up. I never put forth that effort I talked to myself about and my grades were dismal. I missed too many classes and never tried much so I deserved what I received. I believe I ended the semester with a 1.0 GPA. You’d think it would be humbling.

My second semester wasn’t much better as instead of hunkering down and fixing the mess I was causing I made it worse. I actually started to fail classes that had attendance requirements or gave up on other ones when something I didn’t like would happen. My grades were puzzling to my advisors: A, B, E, E, E (E is an F at Buff St.). They would ask me why I would do so well in some classes but so poorly in others. It was simple, if I liked the class, I generally did well but if I hated it, I put forth no effort whatsoever. It was an immaturity that hurt me deeply and it should have sent forward a very honest message: I was not yet ready for college.

If I could have done it over again I would have a taken a few years off after high school and gotten a real job for a while. You know, gotten myself submerged into the real world learning real lessons. I think that would have helped me to grow adequately and then when I did go to school I would have taken it seriously. I would have better understood what was at stake. Instead I went straight to college because that’s what everybody wanted me to do. And it was especially what my father wanted me to do. He didn’t always say it but I know that’s what he wanted. He wanted to be a proud father of a college graduate, something many parents want but it was something poor parents take extra special pride in. Every child that they can watch cross the finish line, the better. One thing was exacerbating the circumstances… his health. My dad had emphysema and was approaching 70. His life expectancy wasn’t the greatest at that point. He used to say going back to when I was little that he “wasn’t going to last forever” and that sooner rather than later “he wasn’t going to be around anymore”. I think I heard it the same way my mom heard it- when someone tells you they could die soon constantly for 15 years you tend to take it for granted. You think, he’s been saying that from as far back as I could remember. After a while, it loses the shock value and you kinda tune it out but after that first year of college I could see his health was starting to deteriorate little by little. Unfortunately by then I screwed up college heavily.

When you get financial aid, you get because you are poor first but also because you are deserving of it. You need to keep up your end of the bargain, which means, you have to maintain at least average grades. After my lousy first semester, the college put me on academic probation but after that lousy second one, they were just about through with me. I wasn’t taking this gift seriously. They mentioned to me that my financial aid was going to be affected by my poor grades. I was going to lose some or maybe most of it if they allowed me back in the fall. They warned; I might have to pay some of my tuition. I can’t believe that person seated at the table talking with the probation board was me. I was arrogant, immature and completely unappreciative of the chances I had been given and the final one they were willing to extend to me. My attitude sucked and because of it I was kicked out of school. I had a free ride but I was too much of a child to realize just what I had. It was a decision that would affect me financially for many years to come.

While I was pissing away free money for school that first year I was also finding other ways to hurt my future checkbook. That first week of freshman year the campus was full of advertisements, student groups and offers that seemed too good to be true. Among them were the credit card people. You couldn’t walk 15 feet in the student union without someone trying to get you to sign up for credit cards of every kind. You didn't even need to have a job then. It was so easy. It was like they were giving away credit cards like they were part of the orientation package. At first I didn’t pay attention but after several days of walking past I began to think about it. I’m poor. I don’t have a job and I want cool things. I see guys all over campus with money, cars and great clothes. I’m still wearing high school stuff. I felt small time in this big place.

Before taking the plunge a friend warned me. He was a little older and was currently dealing with his own credit card mess. He strongly advised me not to do it. I remember his speech. I even remember where he told it to me (driving east in his car down Kenmore Ave.). I remember all of that yet none of it registered. It’s one of those stubborn things where I guess if I were going to make any mistakes, I wanted to make them myself. I scoffed at his warnings and told him I’d be able to manage it just fine. As you might suspect this would not be the case. Again, I thought I knew what I was doing.

A few years later I was once again attending Buffalo State. I had earned my way back after spending almost 2 years in Community College exile. I wanted to show them they were wrong for getting rid of me (even though they were right- it was what I needed) and I also wanted to do it for my dad who had died 6 months earlier. I felt guilty I couldn’t give him the satisfaction and pride he wanted from me, the college graduate. When I went back it had been 3 years since I had been there last and a lot of things had changed. I was a little more serious than I used to be, although looking back, still not quite enough, and it was harder to get the financial aid I needed. My old GPA that got me that first class ticket to ECC was still active and it was terrible. I didn’t qualify for any aid because of it. I had to take out a student loan just to take a class or two that semester and get back into the groove. By the next year I had raised my GPA but it was still below the threshold. The way it worked then was at the beginning you were given more leeway with your GPA. All you needed was a 2.0 and you were fine during your first year of school. After that first full year mine was below 1.0. There was a catch. As you progressed and accumulate credits, the requirements would slowly rise. I think by the time I was a sophomore in college I needed to maintain a 2.4 to get the financial aid I needed. Well that low GPA was moving up but not fast enough to rise above and meet the threshold. So that meant another year taking out student loans and then another and because I was taking out loans I was wary of taking out more than 1 a semester so that meant only taking a few courses and not a full time course load. 

I was trying to go to school but I was also trying to work odd jobs, or jobs that paid under the table just to have a little spending money. It wasn’t enough. With my father now gone, I couldn’t just live at his place and not incur expenses. In the aftermath of his passing, my mother received some benefits through my father but it was less than we received when he was alive and with me still in my early 20’s and trying to figure this college thing out, I was struggling to pay for basic stuff. Some semesters I was literally living on student loan money while mooching off my mom, who wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams with money. In a way we helped each other. I helped her and my younger sister, helped with budgeting and making decisions because they were completely lost without my dad. They constantly needed my advice and help and they would always get into some kind of mess if I wasn’t around much for a few days. I was conflicted about it but they always tried to be there for me, especially my mom, and we’re talking about family, so I had to be there for them. It was more stress and pressure and it made me feel like I was stuck and not evolving as I felt I should have been. But the more I was around, the less messes I had to to clean and it meant less headaches on the home/family front but the more it made me feel like I was missing out on life and my own development and enjoyment. I had to make sacrifices. I had to work less so I could be around more. That meant having less money.

As the 90’s progressed my credit card faux pas of the early to mid 90’s were catching up to me. I had maxed out at least 5 cards between 1993 and 1996. There were 2 Visas, a Discover, a Kaufmann's card and a Bon Ton. They were all maxed out and I didn’t have the means to pay them… so I didn’t. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I felt taken advantage of and was angry at the world, angry at the credit card companies but at the same time I was angry at myself for being so stupid and careless. As I’ve gotten older I reflect on how many times my naïve and innocent nature had been preyed upon in those years. Someone like me shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near those things. Nowadays I’m cautious, probably too cautious most times but I’m always wondering what someone’s angle is? What’s their true motivation? It’s a paranoia cultivated through an early life full of rash mistakes that have come full circle with consequences.

In 1999 one of the mistakes went from big to downright massive. One of the credit card debts, that was purchased by a collection agency came back to haunt me. The collection agency took me to court for the debt. I thought the whole thing was absurd at the time. I knew I owed them money, they knew I owed them money but I was a student in school with no real income… how was I supposed to pay them? Taking me to court wasn’t going to get me to magically come up with the money which had grown from $1,000 to just over $3,100. Part of me didn’t want to pay because I didn’t think charging that much interest and all those fees were fair. I mean, there were loan sharks out there who wouldn’t add that much “interest” to your debt! Predictably I lost the judgment and for a brief period of time that lingered over me but eventually, after a few years, it went quiet. When you aren't working and have no possessions, there's not much they can do.  

By 2001 I had accumulated quite a bit of student loan debt to go with the credit card debt and I had only just become a junior at Buff State. I began to think long and hard about whether to continue taking out student loans to go to school. By this time, “W” was president and let’s just say he didn’t think education was as big a priority as his predecessor did. Even though I was just about in “good” academic standing as far as financial aid went, the amount of aid given to students was greatly reduced from just 5 years prior while the cost of college skyrocketed. Then was no way I could conceivably go to school without taking out more student loans and getting a job on the side, no matter what my grades were. I couldn’t do it. I’ve never been able to juggle working 20-30 hours a week with a full-time course load. I simply need too much decompression time. I need to relax, reflect and reload on almost a daily basis. It can’t be all work with me nor can it be all play. If I don’t have balance in my life, then I get really anxious, really tense and not myself. I need downtime to re-energize my batteries and I need tasks and organization so I’m not useless.I need balance. I’ve been to both extremes before and it’s not pretty. I don’t want to be there again. I’ll work hard half the time but when the other half comes… when its play time, I’m gonna enjoy it... I need to enjoy it. 

So with that in mind, knowing I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of pushing myself to the brink, wondering how it would play out on the home front and because of the looming stress of even more student loan debt and my failure with the credit cards I decided to get a real, full time job and not go to school for a while. Not some under the table, seasonal kind of thing but a real job at a company or business. Besides, I had switched majors a few times and still wasn’t exactly certain what I wanted to pursue. I had finally become a junior in 2002, and once you get there they kind of expect you to get serious about your course of study. Even though my last 2 semesters were some of my best yet, I decided I needed to stop hiding behind my student status and be an adult. It was time to grow up.

Within a few months of leaving school I picked up a full time job and a short time later began to pay back my student loans. The amount was about $10,000 and seemed daunting at first but I became pretty responsible about making payments, albeit the minimum one. Some months I sent in a little more because when you are making minimum payments against an interest bearing loan you aren’t making as much of a dent as you’d like. I haven’t gone back to college since. I will never say never but it’s just not as important to me as it is to other people… and it’s not as important to me as other people think it should be for me, lol. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll go back but for now I’m all about surviving and chasing dreams. It was then I said goodbye to a chapter of my life full of tough lessons and difficult choices.

I definitely learned from all those experiences. I no longer spend money I don’t have. I have no credit cards. I have a bank debit card so what I buy, I must pay for immediately. I don’t even know the pin number on the card so I can never use ATMs. I plan and budget and have for a long time. I haven’t had a credit card or taken out a loan in nearly 15 years. I can’t tell you the joy I felt when I finally paid off my student loans in full in 2009. It was like losing 30 pounds in one moment!

As for now I make enough to get by but that’s all. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m too wedded to logic and practicality but I hardly ever strive for extra. I'm a simple guy. I generally only want as much as I need. Perhaps my past experiences with credit and debt make me fearful of money and the problems it can generate. I know how much I need to get through month to month and that’s pretty much the amount I make. Sounds pretty ambitious huh?

People always ask me why I don’t do more with myself. Or more simply, why don’t I work a better job that pays more? I’ve had customers at my job even ask me why I’m not someplace bigger, someplace better. Sometimes I ask myself this. I probably still have some maturity issues to deal with plus the aforementioned fears, anxieties and insecurities make it difficult for me to become one of those people who are always looking for more money and better use of their professional time. Between you and me, I’ve always hated working for other people. I’m an intelligent guy, organized, quick thinking and I can lead but I’m weird. People annoy me, sometimes a great deal. I’m a natural rebel and non-trusting loner who doesn’t always work well with others. When I was younger I was more inclined to take people’s shit but as I’ve gotten older I don’t have time for it. I don’t care and won’t humor someone who I have no respect for. If that makes me hot-headed and difficult so be it. I don’t want to deal with people’s drama, nor will I. I realize that’s a “me” problem in the workplace but if I find the right kind of job where either the people are mostly cool or I can just get absorbed into the work, then I guess I could work at many places. Maybe it would be better to make more than just enough for once. 

In fact, this making “just enough” approach has backfired on me recently. Remember that lawsuit from 1999 I told you about? A law firm bought my debt of $3,165, probably for pennies on the dollar, and jacked it up to $7,300. Not only that, they are serious about collecting it. How serious? They subpoenaed my bank and my employer to learn every detail they could about my finances, assets, employment and who knows what else. After that, they sent me a legal document from the Erie County sheriff’s office saying that I needed to start handing over to them 10% of my pre-tax gross income within 20 days or they would garnish it through my employer. I always thought living dangerously close to the poverty line, living check to check and being pretty much working poor exempted me from such things, but apparently I wasn’t poor enough. What a ridiculous thing to say… I’m poor but not poor enough. I don’t make enough to go on vacations, to go to big shows or events, to afford a vehicle, a fancy restaurant, have expensive toys, habits, health insurance or really do anything other than just get by but I can have 10% of my gross stripped away? It’s a frustrating ordeal.

I’m not sure how but I am going to try to fight this because being down almost $200 a month is really hurting. I moved to split a comfy 2-bedroom place with a friend and that is saving me $120-$130 a month from when I was living alone in a little box of an apartment. With this garnishment, I’ve now lost all the savings the move provided plus I’m down more money on top of that. It has me feeling angry… angry at the system… mostly, angry at myself and how foolish I was. This debt disappeared for years and years and suddenly out of the blue has re-emerged bigger and badder than ever.  

As I said earlier when you run from something it chases you and when it finds you after all that time it’s bigger and scarier than it ever was when you first ran from it. And I am scared… scared that I’ve dug a hole too deep to ever escape from… scared that I will always be poor.

“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” –Oscar Wilde