My "I've HAD It" Moment
“Charlotte, you’ve been sleeping for eighteen hours,” he said, “you need to wake up.”
The sun peeked through the blinds and danced on my eyelids. My then-boyfriend stood by my bedside. It was 4 in the afternoon, and I was dozing.
“I don’t want to wake up...” I mumbled, “...ever.”
August, 2012.
I’m a champion sleeper. I’ll admit that. But, usually, I need that sleep after a full day of living life or recovering from jetlag.
This sleep was different.
It was one of despair.
Six years prior, I started UCLA film school to follow my passion: screenwriting. I challenged myself to become a better writer and reader with some of the sharpest minds I had ever met. It was an extraordinary, life-changing experience; there’s nothing else I would’ve gone back to school for - not only did I learn more about filmic storytelling, but I also learned more about people.
I graduated into the ‘09 recession with $80K in student loan debt only to find a job temping in finance. I then got an assistant job in banking only to lose it (while writing and tutoring on the side). Paying only minimums on my student loans, I was noticing how hard I was working to pay off so little.
And now, after 3 years, I was unemployed with $80K still hanging over my head.
This wasn’t what I had signed up for.
And it wasn’t so much the money as the lingering feelings of shame and hopelessness. Those feelings (plus the cultural narrative of “you’ll have these loans ‘til you die”) created my own private dystopia wherein my creativity and freedom suffered the most.
But when I finally woke up that afternoon in 2012, I went out for a walk.
My despair transformed into anger… not at UCLA, but at myself.
I had HAD it.
I researched and developed a plan on how to pay off the loans quickly. A few months later, I got another moderately-paying executive assistant gig in banking and aggressively went after it.
The result?
I got out of debt 2 years, 9 months, 1 week, and 1 day later.
I felt like I had lost 600 pounds.
And two weeks later, I got laid off. (Which was kind of awesome!).
I was finally able to freelance, write, and live life on my terms.
Paying the loans off early did something else; when I unexpectedly lost my mom a year-and-a-half later, I could go to Denmark to take care of my Dad without bringing Sallie Mae with me.
Why am I sharing this? I know that I'm not the only one who groaned under the burden of loans.
If you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, I know where you're at. I can show you my tools and my plan to help get you out of debt in record time.
Let me help.