Preamble: a life in debt
I figured I would get started early, since my Buy Nothing Year ("BNY") has been flittering about in my mind for months on end now. Close friends will recall me telling them of this idea early this summer. Aden (soon to be my wife in 3 days time) will remember me coming up with this wacky idea around February ('07). In fact, it had been festering for some time longer than that, probably at the turn of the year, 2007.
I really wish I'd journaled or blogged about the gestation of this idea, as it did take a while before it was fully formed, and fleshed out to the point where I was satisfied about it (and, after a short while, very excited to do it). In some respects, this idea started as a means to revitalize my blog. I had been contemplating "3-6-5" photoblog projects and a book that was given to me for Christmas '06, "Everything I Ate" in which a guy documented everything he ate for a year. I was wondering what I could do that was the equivalent but was also interesting to me to do. The percolation started.
After pondering various ideas, none of which even register anymore, I came to look at what I do with myself, what I do with my money, what I enjoy, and what I like to share with people. Looking around my apartment -- at the shelves of DVDs, the containers of CDs under my bed, the boxes and storage compartments of comics and the action figures scattered everywhere -- I knew. Having written literally thousands of movie, comic book, music and other types of reviews over the past decade, I knew. Having blown tens of thousands of dollars on these, my Earthly possessions, I knew there was something there, something to be done.
But what? I mean, I was already keeping track of everything I bought and I was writing reviews for pretty much everything I saw and much of what I read... what more could I do?
Them's the brokes
Aden and I started going out July 23, 2006 after having been friends for many months before that. Once we realized just how in simpatico we were, it wasn't long before we started to discuss things like "the future" and "houses". For a long time the prospect of a house was unattractive to me, being a low maintenance guy and houses being a high-maintenance lifetime investment. (Bear with me, this all does tie in) But for some reason, with Aden, suddenly having a house to call our own seemed an important thing to me, and the talk of houses is what led to talk of (and even-tu-al-ly) marriage. But Toronto isn't a middle-income-friendly market, with a simple bungalow costing a half-million dollars, most houses will be out of our reach, unless we take a lifetime mortgage or sell our kidneys.
Thinking about this kind of thing, how much money it would actually cost to buy a house and how long it would take to pay off a mortgage and such got me thinking in general about financial issues... namely my debt.
I got my first credit card via Citibank, a brochure application chosen primarily because of the company's clever advertisement techniques which preyed upon fears of fraud and identity theft (before identity theft was the "it crime" it is today). I can't even appropriately recall if it was during high school or University, but as it was so exceptionally well put on Judd Apatow's Undeclared, "Free money... they're giving out free money". And for $800 worth of credit, it was like free money. It didn't take long before I'd blown through much of it (from many trips to the cd or comic book store or the occasional restaurant bill). Occasionally my borrowing rate would rise... another $200 here, another $400 there, and it wasn't until one particularly high-paying summer job after 3rd year University that I manage to pay that sucker off, completely, after which I cut it up. Sending payments via cheques to a payment office in Hamilton every month cost me $2 per cheque and $0.4x cents per stamp. Annoying. (A year later, I would get a notice from Citibank saying they were charging me $40 service charge for my inactivity... that's right, you don't use the card, they don't make money, so they charge you a holding charge of sorts. I called them immediately, told them I wasn't going to pay it and cancelled the account).
I got a Visa card via my bank around then, a GM card from which every dollar spent would earn me points towards a new GM vehicle purchase (this was before I was aware that a) I wouldn't ever buy a GM car and b) I wouldn't ever want to own a car again). I used this card a little more nobly... to buy books for school in my fourth and final year, and also to buy some nice things for my girlfriend at the time... oh and like, comics and food and clothes and cds and action figures for myself. I didn't do too badly this time... a couple hundred bucks, nowhere near maxing out my $2k limit. But, that didn't last. One purchase of an engagement ring later and I was on the verge.
I moved away from home, found a crappy job at Wal-Mart which barely paid enough for me to survive, never mind feed my comics and cd and Star Wars toy cravings (and it was that Christmas I discovered DVDs, buying a DVD player and soaking up DVDs like mad). I was quickly tapped out. Me and the fiancee at the time (she also making shit money at a bakery) wanted to buy a computer, and to do so I knew we needed some more credit, so I applied for another Visa card when the Bank rep said "why don't you get a line of credit?"
"Can we?" (We meaning "I")
(Click clack) "You're approved for $5000."
"Oh, I don't want $5000, I only want $2K"
"Well, $5000 is the minimum for a line of credit."
"Hrm... can we put a usage limit of $2000 then?"
"Sure"
And just like that more free money was ours.
One computer purchase later and I was further in the hole with no way out. The relationship ended, and I honored the last few months of the lease by paying for 1/2 the rent on a vacated apartment for, oh, 5 months. Paid via my line of credit. I didn't even get the computer, but I did get out, and my sanity seemed worth the sacrifice.
I returned home and soon a $2000 visa was a $3800 Visa, and with the $2000 cap on my line of credit, it became a $7000 line, then an $8200 line, and with my semi depression and shitty job and new girlfriend and an uncontrollable urge to spend, spend, spend... I had gobs of toys and cds and DVDs and comics, but also a massive debt load that for some reason didn't bother me.
I quit my job, which was going nowhere, and took off with my remaining line of credit and started moving about the province winding up in Toronto in my first solo apartment ($600/mo) with nothing but a car (that sucked up money like George Hamilton does sunshine) and a duffel bag of clothes. I had a job that was (temporary, but) going to pay me more than I had ever earned before. I figured with this job I could get myself out of hock and move on with life. I just had no idea how expensive Toronto was with it's plentiful cd stores, it's well-stocked DVD shelves, it's abundance of comic book stores, and ... Toys'R'Us! There were things like furnishing ala IKEA, parking passes and transit costs and all the eating out and drinking out and grocery bills and plane visits home. Soon I was unemployed and living off my meager government hand-out pittance covering my bare minimum monthly payments, rent and bills, my debt pretty much at its limits and only higher than it ever had been, and it only got worse.
Another relationship, a new job, a failed attempt at paying down debt, only to watch my limits climb and my debt climb with it. I like to say I was trying to keep two people afloat, which is a partial truth, in that I was helping keep two people comfortable, while using my new debt allotment to keep myself in material possessions. Three years later and it was over, my debt maxed out, a perpetual loop of paying down and using up, paying down and using up. I was yo-yoing on my debt, and despite a good job and lots of support over the years, I've never been able to make any headway at actually keeping my debt reduced.
I've had plans, I've made notes, I've kept journals, and yet something always came up, something always separated me from my gap of debt. I've had plans, yearly resolutions to limit my spending, to restrict my buying, and it's never long before it falls apart or compulsion takes over. I have a spending problem in that I seem to have no problem spending. And what do I buy? Things that give the simplest of pleasures for a limited time. It's a good way to live if you're living for today but if you ever want anything from your future, you've got to pull yourself out of it.
And I do want out.
I want out of this $20,000+ debt of (mostly) my own creation.
I did an assessment of my Visa and realized that for all the interest I've paid on it in the past 8 years, it would have paid the entire thing off... basically I've paid into it already what I've gotten out of it, and by the time I pay it all off I'll have paid over double what I borrowed. I don't think my line of credit is that bad, but I can see by the time it's gone I'll have paid about 75% in addition to what I've borrowed.
So yeah, I want out of my debt spiral. I'm done with it, and I know what I have to do to start crawling to the surface. A sacrifice must be made.
Don't get me wrong, I love music and movies and TV and reading and art and little plastic figurines... I love them with a passion that's at times scary, obsessive and feral, but I realize these satiations need a perpetual incursion to sustain them. I know going cold turkey and telling myself no every time instead of saying "well, if I buy this this week, then I'll buy less next week" is the only way I can stop myself. But if I stop buying them, what will happen?
I don't know.
In a year's time will I be itching to get back into it all? Will I have discovered new avenues to spend my debt instead? Will I have basically just set myself back a year on purchasing everything I want? Will I no longer be interested with such fanaticism in such things?
Questions like these erupt out of me for which I (obviously) don't have an answer.
And that's why we're here.
Coming up...
A pre-BNY look at my life as a consumer or comics, DVDs, cds and toys.