THE FINANCIAL DIET
INTRODUCTION
How to Give a Shit About
Money
Saving money isn’t about depriving yourself. It’s about deciding you love Future You as much as you love Today You.
I graduated from high school when I was seventeen years old. The subprime mortgage crisis hadn’t yet happened, and it was a very good time to be a teenager who was irresponsible with money. When bankers weren’t standing on the roof of their branches and throwing loans at anyone who walked by, they were going into the high schools to find unsuspecting teens to ask them if they wanted a
credit card.
Looking back, when you compare the potential implications of a starter credit card to the student loans those same kids were signing on to, getting a Visa with a $500 limit was probably the least of their worries, but still, handing out a credit card to someone whose primary “life skills” education came from episodes of Degrassi still seems pretty cruel. Of course, we all wanted
free money, and of course, we were going to pay it back on time. We were teenagers, and we had zero concept of fiscal responsibility and every interest in instant gratification. I was definitely one of those
teenagers.
The day I turned eighteen, I acquired my little card full of free money and maxed it out within a month and a half of delirious
spending. Once swiping it no longer provided me with the sweet, sweet Forever 21 dresses my body craved, I tossed that bad boy into the garbage and ignored the increasingly urgent notices that arrived
in the mail. After all, I had a savings account with thousands of dollars from my summer jobs to blow through. You couldn’t touch
Teenage Chelsea!