Student Debt Identity

When I was in San Francisco two years ago, immediately before I met my girlfriend in person for the first time, I visited a small bookstore in the city's gay district (The Castro).  It was the kind of cozy, inviting bookstore that encouraged leisurely browsing, which is exactly what I did for my last few hours in the city.  I checked out the staff favourites; I discretely flipped through LGBTQ books that would make Dan Savage blush; and I somehow resisted the enormous selection of magnets and mugs and bookmarks that I'm usually suckered into buying.  In the end, despite finding a large collection of books that wanted to come home with me, I managed to leave with only one:  Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed. 

If you have never read this book, you should go out and do so immediately.  And don't take it out from the library (although I love libraries):  buy it so that you can read it over and over and over again.  The book is a collection of articles from the "Dear Sugar" online advice column that Strayed used to write, and it is easily the best advice column I've ever read.  She addresses every topic from romance (of course) to friendship to finances to body image to life's purpose, and she does so in a way that is wise and frank and kind and simply amazing.  I loved the book so much that I finished it on the red-eye from San Francisco (instead of resting up for my date when I got home), and I have read it cover to cover two additional times.  When I picked it up to start writing this blog post, I had a hard time not reading it a fourth time.

Anyway...this is not supposed to be a post about the genius of Cheryl Strayed but rather a post inspired by one of her responses as "Dear Sugar".  In one of the letters she received, a young woman wrote about her desire to go to graduate school and her frustration about having to incur additional student debt to do so because her parents didn't have the means to put her through school.  In one line that stuck with me, the woman stated "[M]ore often than not, I am defined by my 'student loan identity'."  Strayed's response surprised me a bit.  She seemed to diminish the woman's concerns about debt, and she encouraged her to strongly consider graduate school despite the cost.  In addressing the woman's concerns about the psychological aspect of debt, she said "I don't even known what a student loan identity is.  Do you?  What is a student loan identity?"

As I sit here, months away from having a positive net worth for the first time in almost a decade, and another decade away from having my debts payed off, I know exactly what a student loan identity is.  A student loan identity is waking up every morning and thinking about how much you still owe.  It's feeling like every dollar you earn is already accounted for and that none of it is actually yours.  It's saying yes to extra clinics and extra weekends of call because you're bloody tired of being in the red.  It's feeling like every decision you make has to be based on the financial implications, rather than on what you most want to do in your heart.  No matter what my rational brain tells me about the wisdom of my decision to go to medical school or the long-term financial security that I will enjoy, my lizard brain keeps fixating on my student loan and the long road between me and debt repayment.

I wish I could be more Zen about my debt and just accept that it's there and will be for a long time, but I can't seem to get past the sensation of OH MY GOD, MY HAIR IS ON FIRE!  I can't seem to stop questioning every purchase, wondering if I can somehow live without $20 a bag cat litter and train my cats to use the toilet.  (The answer to that question is a resounding no.)  I can't seem to say no to any opportunity to make extra money, no matter how tired or stressed I may be making myself.

More than anything, I just want to be back in the black.

November Lessons?

(This post might be a bit obnoxious, as I'm writing about finances from the perspective of a well-paid physician with no children living in a low cost-of-living area.  Feel free to skip it!  Please don't hate me.  I do recognize the incredible privilege and good fortune in being able to write a post like this.)

November started out as a really good month financially.  I was on call for nine days, which meant that I was earning an on-call stipend and consult fees on top of my usual clinic income.  I had recently increased the number of patients I was seeing per clinic, so even my relatively constant clinic income had taken a jump.  I felt flush.  Money was coming in more quickly than it ever had, and so it seemed silly for me to be sticking to a budget and limiting my spending.

Big mistake.

My change in spending habits started slowly, with a takeout meal on a night when the fridge was full of leftovers ("I work hard!  I deserve sushi instead of spaghetti!), but it quickly escalated.  Soon I was eating out in the fancy restaurants that had never seemed remotely worth the cost, and I was offering to pick up the tab for my friends. 

And then I went to San Francisco.

The trip was a combined conference and brief vacation with my girlfriend, so I convinced myself that I could completely ignore my budget and classify most of my spending as business expenses*.  $20 tequila sampler at the hotel restaurant?  Business expense.  $39 flight of port and $20 plate of cheese at a wine bar?  Business expense.  In just over a week, I spent more money on restaurants and new clothes and Trader Joe's chocolate than I had spent in months. 

And I'm not going to lie - it felt amazing.  It was fun to spend without thinking about money or entering expenses into my budget.  $20 plates of cheese are tasty.  And I felt strangely powerful sitting in Jardiniere, which was filled with the pre-opera crowd dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns**,  eating fancy french fries and ordering overpriced wine from a sommelier.  After 16 years of sacrifice, it felt like I had arrived.

Reality hit the day after our dinner at Jardiniere, when we had to pack to go home, and we didn't have room in our suitcases for all of our new things.  Then, when we were preparing our forms for customs, we realized that we had spent almost to the very generous customs limit, something neither of us has ever done.  The worst moment, however, was getting the credit card bill in December.  The only time I've ever had such a ridiculously high credit card bill was when I paid my fees for my licensing exam.  It was painful.

As a result of the overspending, I ended up in the red in December.  This was a huge (and painful) contrast to previous months as an attending, during which I'd been paying back some of my student debt and making healthy contributions to my retirement savings.  The whole month of December felt like a terrible hangover, as I watched all of my earnings go to MasterCard.

My initial take home lesson from November was "Stick to the budget!  Keep living like a student!", and for a while that's precisely what I did.  But as I look back at the month now, I wonder if that's the only lesson I should take from it.  Because although the month was way beyond sustainable spending for me, there were also a lot of good things about it.  While eating the flight of port and the cheese plate, my girlfriend and I had a wonderful conversation about our relationship and the future that makes me happy whenever I think about it.  While having dinner at Jardiniere, we realized that we never want to become people who own ball gowns and think we're special because we're eating in an expensive restaurant.  And we got to see Idina Menzel in a shitty musical, which was on my girlfriend's bucket list.  (Seeing Idina Menzel, that is.  Not the shitty musical.)

So...what to take from this experience?  First and foremost is the recognition that it is easy to spend a lot of money in a very short time.  And although I am earning more than I ever had, I can't afford to spend indiscriminately when I still have a six-figure debt.  (Or probably ever.)  Second is the reminder that people adapt to things very quickly.  While the unrestricted spending felt exciting in the beginning, after only a month it was starting to feel very ordinary.  And going back to my previously comfortable budget felt horrible.

Looking back at the month now, I think the overarching lesson I'm going to take is that splurging is fun, but it can't (and shouldn't) be an everyday thing.  I'm going to keep sticking with my budget and dutifully saving my money, but I'm also going to make sure that I leave some money for the really self-indulgent expenses that are worth it (like going to wine bars with my girlfriend). 

Balance.  Once again, the lesson is balance.

*Please note that this was only from a budget perspective and not a tax perspective.  Hi Revenue Canada!  I'm not evading taxes by claiming booze as a business expense!  Please don't audit me!

**I was in jeans, because I hadn't realized from the website just how fancy the restaurant was.  Awkward!

Paris

For days I have been wanting to write here, to share my thoughts about the conference I'm attending in San Francisco and to tell you about the places we've visited and the food we've eaten during the gaps between sessions.  To talk about things that are light and fun and pleasurable.  But I've felt like I can't talk about lightness and trivialities until I say something to acknowledge the recent attacks on Paris.

But what can I possibly say?

This is the third attempt that I've made at writing a post, and every attempt has seemed too....earnest? Cheesy?  Ignorant?  In my attempt to write something meaningful, I've given myself an incurable case of writer's block.  And now that it's late, and given that we have tickets to Alcatraz for early tomorrow morning, I'm going to say something quick to simply get it over with.

All that I'm going to say is the one thought that enters my head every time I hear about the attack on Paris and the resultant escalation of the war in Syria:  we have to find a better way.  As the (purportedly) most intelligent species on Earth, we need to acknowledge that our endless cycles of war are failing.  We aren't making the world safer by constantly responding to violence with more violence; we're simply creating more enemies.  And destroying the lives of more innocent people, both civilian and military.

We have to find a better way.

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Because this post isn't nearly as good as I would like it to be, here are the thoughts of some other people that I think are worth sharing:

An American college professor's eight ways to defend against terror nonviolently.

SLukettG's thoughts about the need to recognize the tragedies occurring throughout the world, regardless of the skin colour of the people affected.

Feel free to share any other links that you think are interesting/relevant (as long as they aren't racist or xenophobic) in the comments.  Or tell me your thoughts about all of the horrible things that are happening in our broken world.