Bad-credit blues: Bill collectors are hounding
you. You can't buy a car, a home or even get
a cell phone. You don't have to live like this.
Even a sister who had a six-figure debt found
a way to financial freedom. You can, too
For much of my adult life I was burdened with
having poor credit. Falling into debt felt nightmarish
line ghost of past bad choices always trailing
behind me, Not even breaking up with a boyfriend
left me as depressed as I was for the five years
after I ruined my credit. I learned line hind
way that playing fast and loose with money is
dangerous, not just financially but also emotionally.
Related Results
As alone as I felt at the time, I've since
discovered that many Black women from all backgrounds
have suffered from bad credit at one time or
another. This is true for other races and ethnicities,
but there are reasons that we in particular fall
prey to this. "Black women don't meet the criteria
of being the so-called right gender and race.
To compensate, many of us try to bolster our
sense of identity and self-worth by buying things
that somehow give us a sense of worth and self-esteem," says
Linda James Myers, a psychology and African-American
studies professor at Ohio State University in
Columbus "The key is to reverse the faulty formula
that has us trying to define our worth by external
criteria like how we look and what kind of car
we drive."
A Family Affair
When I began to examine my behavior, I realized
that most of my family members struggled with
credit issues, too. I remember sitting around
the dinner table during holidays, laughing hysterically
at a relative's dramatic tale of how he or she
had cursed out some annoying creditor calling
for a payment. In my young mind, paying bills
on time was not nearly as much fun as not paying
them.
