Balancing Act: Finance Edition
Finding balance with finances and emotions
Welcome to (or back to) the balancing act where I share moments of seeking balance in life. I find myself chronically stuck between perspectives, and writing helps me balance the scales.
I go by Lavendula, and today I’m introducing the [finance edition] of balancing act. I want to give readers the choice to subscribe to this separately, so if you’re interested, please be sure to hit subscribe here. Thanks for being here 🤍⚖️
Anyone who knows me knows I'm passionate about personal finance. In college, I majored in finance, accounting, and economics (although I dropped everything except finance by the end because I was ready to leave).
I had dreams of becoming a financial advisor, so I took an internship with a successful advisor firm. I later accepted a full-time role with a credible advising company, but it didn’t last long. The pay structure felt slimy, and I realized the entire field is designed to help the wealthy, mostly. My self-esteem also got in the way because, at the time, I feared wealthy people wouldn’t want to listen to a 21-year-old black woman new to the field telling them what to do with their money. My passion wasn’t for helping the well-off get wealthier anyway. I came to realize the people I wanted to serve probably wouldn't have the funds to pay. They need much different help than optimizing an already large investment account. So I talked myself out of that path and pursued a career in banking and fintech instead, commercial underwriting to be specific. One of my biggest regrets.
I quit several times due to lack of fulfillment and burnout; more on that here. During one of those times, I decided to try the advising route again, but from the angle of life insurance, because I knew it’d be a much less intimidating angle to start with for my people. Easier starting point to educate from, and more affordable for the clients. Turns out that industry was even more slimy and scammy. (Life insurance itself is not a "complete" scam, but most life insurance products are money grabs.) Anyway, I had to quit that. I wasn't destined to be a slimy salesperson.
On my last corporate hiatus, I sat unemployed and lost for months. That's when I did some soul searching and rediscovered my love for writing. I had written a couple of articles on Medium about personal finance, but later switched to other topics because I couldn’t get over my insecurities. The itch to keep writing about finance never went away. Something in me wanted to write about my debt situation, so I did (linked below), and now I'm ready to share more.
It's hard being vulnerable about money, especially as a supposed expert, because I've made a lot of personal financial mistakes. But I'm hoping people can learn from it all with me. That's always been something I wanted.
Laying it all out here in balancing act finance edition: today, I'm in five figures of debt, mostly from student loans (but I like to pretend those don’t exist). I live frugally and am pushing through an extremely stressful job to pay it all down soon in the hopes of quitting corporate for good. I started this payoff journey years ago and am finally at the home stretch (excluding the student loans, which I honestly forgave myself). I’m realizing just how much emotional regulation played a part in this, rather than the payoff methods themselves. I plan to expand on this extensively with the next few posts. Along with: How did I accumulate that much debt? How am I paying it off so fast? What would I do differently if I could go back in time? What's my plan once I have a clean slate? Etc.
Articles about my debt journey from Medium:
All other medium posts here.
Thanks for being here 🤍
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I am so excited to read all you have to share about paying off debt and emotional regulation. I never thought of the connection so I’m really looking forward to hearing more!