She earns $150,000 a year, and is sinking deeper in debt
Posted
Jun 20 2008, 08:40 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
"DogAteMyFinances" didn't report a success story when she recently updated her finances for her reading public. When she started her blog, also called Dog Ate My Finances, she had a net worth of $8,000 and $30,000 of debt, she wrote.
Fast forward six months. The net worth is now $3,000 and the debt has grown to $45,000. "That's just embarrassing when you make over 150K," she admitted. But, she's being an adult about it. She's blaming no one but herself.
In a reversal of roles, her readers offered sound advice to the personal-finance blogger.
But first, where has all the money gone? She helped her fiance start a business that had upfront costs for equipment and inventory, and it has yet to start making a profit, although it seems to be getting close.
Other expenses: a personal trainer ($30 an hour twice a week), a "ridiculous garage of cars," eating out often, a vacation in Haiti, a bridesmaid dress, etc. Also, they pay people to clean their rented condo and their clothes.
Some of her readers cut her no slack. "The shame of it is that your lifestyle sounds, well, a bit selfish. It's hard to sympathize with someone who makes twice what our family of four lives on," wrote one anonymous reader.
Others urged measures like budgeting (and sticking to it), cutting up the credit cards, eliminating unnecessary expenses, and simply getting real with herself. SavingDiva shared the wisdom of her own experience: "I definitely had some failures early on with my blog. But you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going."
All good advice, but we're concerned that "Dog" still doesn't get it. In her most recent post about the business -- written after her readers gave all that wonderful advice -- she wrote: "I asked Fiance what he wanted to do when the business made money. I expected him to suggest a fancy restaurant or a gadget. Instead, Fiance said he wanted to take a little road trip to a kind of close B&B." Hmm.
She is making some progress. She's contributing the maximum to her 401(k). And, after early backsliding, she kept her pledge not to buy clothing for six months -- except that she ended it a month early so she could buy a summer work outfit at the Neiman Marcus biannual sale. It could have been worse; she had planned to splurge when the moratorium was over. "Now that I'm off no-buy ... I can't even think of any shoes or bags I want. Just the one outfit," she wrote. "And that is a huge deal for me."
