This is Tyler. I’m new to this, so you will have to bear with me.
I read a few of Julia’s posts, so I have an idea of what you are expecting.
My story begins with a new job. After University, a family friend helped me get into the insurance world. I took a job with one of the major brokerage firms in Vancouver. After three years of paying my dues, I was finally able to build a respectable client book. By year seven I was pulling in over $100,000 a year.
Then I started to get bored with the industry. I made sort of a fool of myself at a business meeting and a week later I handed in my resignation. I worked for another month to save face.
The problem with me quitting my job was the bills that I had acquired during the period when I was making money hand-over-fist.
I had the fast car, a posh apartment in Yaletown and a taste for the finer things.
After a year of semi-retirement, I was out of cash and unable to find work in a field that would interest me. I had to reconsider my finances. I wanted to hold on to a few of the luxury items I had gained when I was at the top of my insurance game, but there was little money to pay for them. Eventually I sold my car, but there were still other bills that I was struggling with.
April 20th holds a soft place in the hearts of many Vancouverites. It’s a day for indulging in some of British Columbia’s finest. It’s a day when green enthusiasts can come together and share their love for a plant that many west coasters use to relax and unwind with.
This year’s celebrations will be held at the traditional meeting ground, the Vancouver Art Gallery steps. With tens of thousands expected to participate, the Vancouver gathering is considered to be the largest in North America. There will be free samples offered to the crowd, so no one goes without.
Proposed topics for discussion at this year’s event are the active promotion of legalization and the arrest of Marc Emery.
The festivities will begin at one o’clock and will build to twenty minutes past four. The gathering will continue until 9:00.
A post-party hip-hop show will take place at Fortune nightclub in Chinatown. The main musical guest will be the legendary Raekwon, of Wu-Tang fame.
Police will be on hand at the Art Gallery for the purpose of crowd control only.
Well guys, it’s playoff time again and like most Vancouverites, all I can do to alleviate the excitement of Wednesday’s match-up against the Chicago Blackhawks is distract myself. Work is out of the question, I was in a daze the whole day. Television? Too many ‘History Will Be Made‘ ads. Bike ride? I always end up outside Rogers Arena. So I thought I would spend this weird purgatory period writing to you.
And you know what? We’re going to talk about the Canucks!
My question to you is this: “Do you think the Canuck organization should change the goal song from Green Day’s “Holiday” to something else?
I’m thinking something Canadian, or something by the White Stripes. Or… yes, I have it. “Howlin for You,” by the Black Keys. I’m a genius. Alright, your turn. Comment below and include your vote for the Canuck 2011 Playoff goal song.
Wave Your White Towel
Here’s hoping the Chicago Blackhawks don’t score a single goal in their own building and we don’t have to listen to that annoying song by the Fratellis!
My friends! I have a little entertainment saving tip for you.
Concerts can be an expensive luxury, especially if you want to check out some of the bigger acts that come to our fair city. Rihanna tickets went on sale last week and the majority of the seats were over $100. Ouch. The same applied for the Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj tour. Honestly, who was $140 dollars to spend on a one-night ticket? Not this young lady.
But don’t turn your back on the music. There are plenty of small shows playing around the city that are more affordable and way more intimate.
Hey Rosetta is playing the Rio Theatre on Friday night and tickets are only $25. This is an awesome venue to check out a show. And for all the hipsters, the Rio serves Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Saturday you have The Dears, an amazing indie band out of Montreal, playing Venue. Tickets, again, are only $25. And you can get as close to the band as the bouncers will permit.
So don’t let your limited finances hold you back from enjoying what the city has to offer. Just pick your events a little more carefully.
Stay tuned for more affordable entertainment options.
Vancouver, BC has recently won the honour of ‘Most Livable City in the World’ for the 8th time in a row or something.
Sure, Vancouver’s a lovely place with majestic mountains, beautiful beaches, clean air, lush forests and a temperate climate – but what of the cost of living in such a place?
It seems there is no room for a middle class in this city. Housing prices are the highest in the world compared to salary. The average house: $700,000. The average household income: $65,000. That’s over 10 times.
It’s crazy. No one can afford to live in Vancouver except overseas investors, and even they don’t live here. Take a look at Yaletown at night and you’ll see what they call the ‘Blackout Effect’ – a whole lotta empty apartments. Couple that with the worst homeless problem in the country, and it’s not looking so livable any more. (There is one really easy solution to kill two birds with one stone here – but I’ll leave the dot-connecting to the anarchists.)
Don’t get me wrong. I love this fair city. But it shouldn’t be inaccessible to own a place without accruing an impossible debt.
For now, I’m happy to rent. If I can consolidate my debt in Vancouver to a manageable number, then I’ll start looking into buying. And hopefully, by then, the prices will be back to normal.
Either way, the sun is shining. I’m off for a jog along the sea wall to the backdrop of the mountains and buildings of shimmering green glass all under the glorious blue sky.
With all the work I’m doing to pay off my debt, it is sometimes hard to find time to keep my body in the shape I like it to be.
(Ladies, we’re talking about the backside. Boys, we’re talking about your gut. And that joke about having a keg instead of a six-pack stopped being funny years ago.)
This week I considered joining a private gym. I confess my new infatuation with Vancouver’s adopted leader, Trevor Linden, lead me to ponder a membership to Club 16. Yes it’s in Coquitlam, but the chance to work out beside Linden had me looking past the drive.
Trevor Linden on the Treadmill
So I started doing some research and looked into the price. It cost $14.99 a month, but I would have to lock into a 12 month plan. I looked at my budget and even though I was spending almost right to the cap (Gillis style), I could just afford it.
But then a few days went by and I started to think about my idea with a little more clarity. How much would I honestly spend on gas? Would I use the gym for the five months of the year when Vancouver is truly amazing outside? What if I joined and decided three months down the road that it wasn’t for me?
Then I looked into Community Centre plans or lack thereof. The monthly price was a little higher, but there was no contract. The location was less than four blocks from my house. And the equipment was a little older, but the basics were all there.
Then I thought, what if I just used my home as a gym. I had stairs in my apartment for climbing, a park near by for running, a yoga mat for crunches and a old workout ball from an ex who thought he could tone his tummy by sitting in front of the TV.
Eureka! Julia’s private workout club was born.
I had enough bills already. A gym membership was silly, private or public.
And the best part. No gym monkeys posing in the mirror.
Try it. It’ll save you money.
-Worried about motivation. Find a friend and create a daily schedule. Push each other to increase your difficulty.
The way he explained it, this statistic is troubling because it could spell financial ruin for families who have over extended themselves. The threat comes in the form of rising interest rates. Currently interest rates are at a all-time low, but as the economy rebounds, these will start to rise. When they do, some families may not be able to meet their higher payments.
I brought up the matter with my credit counselor at Full Circle. He told me that this was exactly the reason why debt consolidation is a smart move for any Canadian with a variety of credit card and personal debt payments. Consolidate and you only have to make one payment at a fixed rate. It’s simple. Even I get it. And you know how much financial trouble I used to be in – We’ll get back to that next week.
Here is another article if you want to read more on the debt-to-income crisis. You’re welcome…
Vancouver is a city of extremes. It’s the kind of place where firework shows and sporting events get shut down if you mention booze or cigarettes, but its #1 export is drugs. Vancouver is a city where housing prices are the highest in the world compared to income. No one can afford to live here, but everyone does.
Half of the apartments in Yaletown and the Olympic Village are empty, but we also have one of the largest homeless populations in Canada. In Vancouver, everyone exercises and every second restaurant has a vegan menu. Then there’s the crack epidemic. Vancouver has Air Care so your car doesn’t pollute. And every second car is an SUV. There’s no smog, but there’s massive opposition to public transit. Cyclists ride en masse to create change. But when they get it, no one’s happy.
Here, you need to smoke outside, but only if you’re smoking cigarettes. They call Vancouver ‘No Fun City’ because they shut down all the great venues to watch shows. But they also call it Vansterdam because you have hemp shops on Hastings and the smell of BC’s finest is never more than a block or two away while strolling downtown.
If you live in Vancouver, it’s one or the other. It call be a ball, or it can be a drag. Chances are, you’ll need to be out of debt to enjoy it to the fullest.
Vancouver, BC debt solutions are a little different than other cities. If you have hundreds of dollars in monthly payments, and if these are credit cards and you are paying crazy 20% plus interest on these bills – you aren’t ever going to get anywhere.
But there is hope. If you live in Vancouver, BC, and you are interested in Vancouver debt consolidation solutions you have a friend in Full Circle Debt Solutions.
The first thing you need to do is examine your options.
1. Do you own a home? If you own a home in Vancouver, BC then you are already ahead of the game. You will be able to consolidate all of your high-cost debt almost instantly with a home equity loan or second mortgage.
2. If you don’t own a home – are you good with numbers? Take a good, hard look at your financial statements, at your chequebook, and at your organized bank statements and data. If you have all of this available, and you check it weekly, you can probably make some headway to the steps you need to sort out your debt.
3. HELP! If you can’t balance a chequebook on a 40 foot concrete slab. then you might just need a little help from people who deal with numbers and figures every day. A lot of what we do is just make sense of your financial situation. Because we live and breathe this stuff, it’s easy for us to make it easy for you to understand. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just get a consultation about your debt situation, so we can offer practical advice.
To find out more about Full Circle Debt Solutions, give us a call today. We would be more than happy to help you out. It is our goal to see everyone in Canada out of debt.
I was talking to my ex-boyfriend the other day on the phone.
We are still friends and we still keep in touch from time to time. And in a funny way, no one knows me better than Stan. We went through a lot when we were young, idealistic early-twentysomethings.
One of those principals was that we would never allow anyone to pay for anything for us. His dad was a successful businessman and he even had Stan working for his company selling insurance when he was in high school. But Stan was never big on insurance. He’d rather grow out his hair and strum along to Donovan. That’s what I loved about the guy, he went his own way.
And he really stuck with it. He ended up getting his own recording studio, years later. And now, talking to him, he’s doing okay.
We got into a conversation about debt though. I guess owning your own studio isn’t the cheapest endevour to set out on, and being as stubborn as Stan was, he refused to get any help from his dad. This meant that he was up to his eyeballs in debt when I talked to him.
You know my story. My debt was simply out of control up to just recently. So I told Stan about debt consolidation options available and how with the right debt management, how he could save his bruised credit.
Stan was all ears. I have to say, even though I haven’t seen him in years, I still miss my crazy hippie friend.
If you are truly debt-free, then you will feel as free as a hippie on holiday. You will be running wild in the streets with none of the oppression of the Establishment or The Man to hold you down with crippling monthly interest payments.
If you want to feel as free as a hippie on holiday, Credit Counselors Canada can show you how to open your mind to a world without debt.
It’s not bad being a single guy in this town. Vancouver is the ultimate cultural and culinary melting pot, which means beautiful women everywhere and plenty of amazing restaurants to take them out to. When I started working at the accounting firm, and stopped being a broke college student, I took full advantage of what our wonderful city had to offer. But now that I’m job-less, broke (yet again), and in debt (no less), it’s back to Subway and ESPN companionship.
Every lonely night I spend sitting on my couch, eating store-brand popcorn and throwing back Colts is depressing. The only way I get through it is by reminding myself over and over again that I have to save money, and get rid of my debt, if I ever want to get my business off the ground.
I’m not proud of it or anything, but I was what they called, a “super senior” in university. Not because I was the star basketball player or anything of that nature; rather, because it took me 6 years to graduate instead of the usual 4. Now let me explain myself… I’m not a dumb guy, nor am I a slacker. I am, however, extremely indecisive. I started out undecided as a first year, and then after a summer abroad in Rome, I decided that my life calling was to be an art curator. One Art History class later, I realized how wrong I was. Third year, it was journalism because I figured I’d be a great news anchor – after all, it’s like being an actor but without having to memorize lines. You can imagine how that went. Finally during fourth year, when all my friends were scrambling to complete their requirements and score internships, I found my calling. Business. And more specifically, accounting. Surprising even myself, it came quite naturally to me, and I liked the feeling of being good at something (for once!). Only problem was, I figured this out kind of late, and had to spend 2 extra years to get my degree. Great news for my career, but not-so-great news for my student loan debt.
I was out having beers with my buddy Mac from university last week, catching up on what was new in our lives. He was regaling me with stories of how sick his trip to Cabo was, and I was getting him up to speed on how my business venture was going.
Somehow the conversation moved onto Twitter, and personal techniques on Twit-flirting, and he mentioned one of the Tweets that he had received that day. It was basically a casting call from a debt solution company for someone who would be interested in sharing their debt story.
First, let me note that Mac has always been the type of guy who did homework assignments a week before they were due, and who painstakingly took the most detailed notes in class. He was obviously pretty concerned with my current financial state and my seeming lack of initiative to get it under control. So he suggested that I volunteer myself to document my story for their blog.
“Hey man, just think of it as your financial journal. If you write this stuff down, you won’t be able to avoid the problem anymore,” he said, trying to convince me.
My hesitation must have been apparent because he quickly added, “Comon, it’ll help you start your business. Once your own debt’s taken care of…”
And long story short, ladies and gentlemen, here I am – revealing all the blood, guts, and gore that I experience on my way to financial freedom. End goal? Starting my own business.
I have something to admit. I forgot to mention one little detail in my last post. And that’s that I am deep in debt. And when I say deep, I mean like 69-days-to-rescue-the-Chilean-miners-deep. I’m still trying to pay off my student loans, and my credit card bills are piled as high as that rescue shaft was deep. I really don’t know why my personal finances always trip me up, considering the fact that I help people balance their checkbooks all day. I really have to get it together soon, god forbid one of my future clients finds out.
So my debt poses a problem for my entrepreneurial aspirations. How am I supposed to pay my web programmer and graphic designer if I’m struggling to make ends meet? At the very least, I know I need to have a solid website if I want this business to succeed…
Hey guys, since this is my first blog post, I guess I should probably introduce myself. My name is Ben and I’m a 29 year-old guy living in Vancouver. After I graduated from UBC, I jumped right into a job at one of the Big Fours in accounting (I won’t name which), and ended up staying there for 3 years, working my way up from being a lowly auditor. Like my fellow number-crunching minions, I was also trying to get my CA certificate so that I could eventually move up the corporate ladder. Endless nights and forsaken weekends later, I passed the test and became a chartered accountant. However, the corporate ladder proved too slippery for me to climb.
So I left my job, and everything that was safe and steady behind, to start my own boutique accounting firm. Sure, it’s going to be hard as hell, but I’ve got time – that’s where the ‘boutique’ comes in handy. My grand plan is this. I’ll start off small, build my brand, and once the customers start coming, all I’ll have to do is expand, right?
This past Sunday, Mark and I were sitting in the kitchen after a particularly festive brunch, relaxing and enjoying our lazy Sunday. The kids were in the den, watching their cartoons, and we were sipping on our coffee, and flipping through the pages of the Sun. I was doing some serious newspaper reading (Dilbert, my ultimate guilty pleasure!), when Mark said to me, in a voice that he reserved for emotional or confessional moments, “Scar, I’m proud of us”.
This got me to thinking… We’re finally out of the woods with debt thanks to my rehabbed spending habits and our debt management consultant at Full Circle, and we’re finally making progress on the kids’ college funds. People are even asking me (me!) for financial advice. 4 years ago, I would have never guessed we’d be this far along.
So, dear readers, I think it’s time to say goodbye…As sad as I am about it, and as much as I love sharing my debt stories with you, I’m excited. Excited about my newfound financial responsibility and all the freedom that comes it. I can’t wait to spend time with my family, without the stress of thinking about interest rates, and bills. So thanks for hearing me out, and good luck to you on your road to financial freedom!
I was getting none of it a couple years ago, when Mark and I were clawing our way out of debt. But ever since we got in touch with our debt management consultant at Full Circle, I’ve been able to sit back and relax. Our debt was in good hands, and all Mark and I had to worry about was making our newly lowered monthly payments.
Not only were we able to consolidate our debt, we even started to save some money (finally!). Weights off our shoulders, we were finally able to focus all our attention on our careers – and that’s when Mark got his job offer in Vancouver. Our finances were finally back on track, I was finally getting some beauty sleep, and the rest is history.
I love my job. As a legal assistant at a law office that does a lot of great work in First Nations economic development, I’ve been learning a lot of Aboriginal law and the ins and outs of the Canadian justice system. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go to law school one day, when the kids are older. And to be honest, anything is better than my job in Calgary, where I was essentially a bona-fide document filer at a law office.
But as much as I love my job, I have days when I wake up and the only thing I want to do is lay on my couch and watch trashy soaps and infomercials. As soon as I go to wake up the kids, though, all those thoughts wash away and my work ethic kicks back into overdrive. After all, the last thing I want to do is to fall back into debt, and have to struggle to raise them.
When Mark and I first moved back to Vancouver together, the first order of business was to buy a car. While Mark was enamored with sleek lines and big engines, I was all about energy efficiency and eco-friendliness. After weeks of listening to Mark wax poetic about Napa leather seats and the ‘practicality’ of a sports car (honey, the kids are so small, they’ll definitely fit in the back seat!), I finally put my foot down and insisted on the Toyota Prius. And plus, we just got our debt under control, and there was no way I was going under again for some European sports car.
Of course, for the past couple of years, I’ve had to listen to Mark whine about our car’s torque and how the whole green car thing is a passing fad, and look at that the 20 inch rims on that beauty! So when I read in the paper about how one in three vehicles in B.C. would be electric by 2030, I almost jumped out of my seat at the breakfast table. It was a shame that Mark had already left for work, because I would have loved to do a victory lap around the kitchen, article in hand. Sure, it’s a tad bit immature, but so is wanting to own a convertible.
One of my favorite $aving tips of the day is, “Buy in bulk – and invest in a vacuum sealer”. It’s something my mother taught me, just from tagging along with her whenever she went shopping at my all-time favorite store, Costco. I would insist on sitting in the cart (despite my age and size) while my mom pushed me through the store. The smell of samples hot out of the toaster ovens, the garish fleece jackets piled in cardboard bins, and the seemingly endless array of candy lining the warehouse shelves were feast to all my senses. The experience was, at the same time, fascinating and intoxicating to my 8-year-old self. In that 6000 square metre concrete warehouse, the world was full of possibilities.
Needless to say, the addiction continued into adulthood. Whenever we need something in the house, whether it be toilet paper or some eggs, I jump at the opportunity. Not only because I love Costco, but also because we save a lot of money getting things like meat, seafood, and cheese there. Throw in a basic at-home vacuum sealer, and you’re looking at a packed freezer and a boatload of savings. And even though I don’t get to sit in the cart anymore when I go to Costco (I had to relinquish my seat to my son), I get to be a kid again.
When you’re in debt, it’s really hard to think about anything else. Sure, you can avoid looking at the growing pile of bills on your desk – say, by avoiding the desk, or by avoiding the room that houses the desk altogether. But deep inside, you know full well how much money you owe and the extent of your debt. And on the outside, the new clothes hanging in your closet and the brand-new mohair rug on your living room floor are constant reminders. In fact, falling into debt is not unlike stepping on dog sh#!. The smell follows you around and lingers no matter how many times you try to get rid of it.
So if you’re sick and tired of worrying about your debt, and want to do something about it, give us a call. At Full Circle, our team of licensed debt management professionals will help you minimize your debt and your monthly payments. We know everything there is to know about debt consolidation and we’ll even help you get rid of those annoying calls from creditors.
At Full Circle Debt Solutions, we’ve got lots to be proud of. We’re proud to be Canadian, we’re proud to call Vancouver home, and we’re proud of our clients, all of whom have taken control of their debt. But what we’re most proud of is our team ofdebt management consultants.
As Canada’s largest independent group of licensed debt management professionals, they will walk you through every step of debt consolidation, even tailoring consumer credit counseling programs to your needs. By contacting your creditors to negotiate debt payment plans that are more manageable for you, our debt management experts help you get rid of those annoying calls from debt collection agencies.
I’m sick of paying bills. I know it’s all part of being an adult an all, but sometimes I wish I could go back to my sandbox days. Sure, I wouldn’t have a car to drive, credit card to use, or cell to text with, but I’d be totally debt free. (And I’m sure my mailman wouldn’t mind.)
But seriously, how nice would it be if the biggest worry in your life were the guest list at your next play date? Instead, I have to worry about how I’m going to make my next mortgage payment and how I’ll pay for my car insurance.
Our oldest, Griffin, is on summer break, much to the delight of his younger sister Silvia who considers herself his sidekick. All summer long, they’ve been taking advantage of the sunny days and warm weather, and have developed quite the skill at convincing our nanny to take them to the beach. When I get home from work, I always know if they’ve been successful, not only by the sandy trails I find in the foyer but by the stories that the kids enthusiastically tell me about their seaside escapades.
Now that Mark and I have our finances under control, thanks to our Full Circle debt consultant who helped us consolidate our debt, we’ve decided that we should take our first family vacation abroad. Since the kids love the waves so much, we’re definitely thinking somewhere tropical with white sandy beaches, but we’re not sure where. Any suggestions?
I’m so sick of getting bills in the mail. And I’m sure the mailman is sick of the dirty looks I send his way whenever I happen to see him on my daily walks around the block. Poor guy, it’s not his fault that I’m perpetually swipe-happy with my credit cards, and that I have student loans that will take me until retirement to pay back. Add that to bills I have to pay for auto insurance, car payments, and electricity, and you’re looking at a mailman who is going to be looking at a huge chiropractor bill by the time he finishes delivering my mail.
Of course Full Circle Debt Solutions services all of Canada. But if you live in Vancouver, you can drop down to our new office in Delta anytime and we can help you out in person.
If you are interested in debt consolidation in Vancouver, talk to us first. The other counseling companies will charge you voluntary ‘fees’ that you will have to pay. Not so voluntary.
If you live in Vancouver, and you are being suffocated by debt payments that haunt you worse than farmed salmon, you’ll need to talk to a debt advisor right away. We’re open late.
Call 1 877 220 3328. Getting rid of your debt is as easy as a phone call.
You hear about folks that never pay a bill. They just float from place to place ducking out on dentist bills, and hotel bills, and rent.
Now, Mark and I have never been like that, but our credit was shot all the same, so we got to thinking – why not?
We could easily skip town without paying rent. We could take our rented furniture and run. We could hit up every no-money-until-payday, Moneymart, payday loan kind of places and then make a run for it.
We made the mistake of mentioning this to my sister, almost as a joke. She just went all pale and told us, ah, Scarlett, don’t do it. No matter how desperate things get, your credit will be shot to nothing, and you’ll never be able to get a home down the road, even when you get yourself out of this mess. Believe me, that kind of quick fix is no way out.
We kind of grumbled to ourselves and she suggested that we call Full Circle Debt Solutions. With Mark’s three credit cards out of control, and him paying over 20% interest on each of them – matched up with my student loans and (hush) Sears card mishap, we had debts all over town.
At least Full Circle Debt Solutions could consolidate all of those payments for us.
Half the time, she said, they can even cut your debt payments in half.
That’s all the convincing it took for us. The next day, we called them up.
Even paying $1000/month, for 25 months, is not sustainable. There’s rent, food, transit to pay – and not mention that $300/month bill that’s more than your rent.
It’s a nightmare.
It’s a hell that most people my age face. All your life you are told to do what you love, and when you do it, and it doesn’t work, you have to pay the rest of your life for it.
What a drag.
Either way, my debt was way out of control. I was living in a run-down house that if you slammed the basement door the entire building shook. The porch was held up by a flimsy piece of chain the size of your pinky. The back door had been broken into and there was a piece of plywood over the shattered window. Great. The whole place should have been condemned. It was a tough situation to be in, and everyone I lived with were in the same boat. Debt, gloom, desperation.
I was working as this legal assistant, which mostly meant filing papers and making photocopies and looking up stuff on the Internet. Not too bad, but I don’t think I ever saw much of a lawyer except the inside of his nose.
One day this new guy moved into our flat. I loved him right away. He was just the right combination of artistic ambition and solid grounding. He wasn’t a dime in debt and he was looking to break into architecture.
I liked him for other reasons as well, of course, he was nice enough, and he was pretty tall. Pragmatically though, he was everything I needed to make my checklist of dreams a reality. I grabbed on as hard as I could. He fought me at first, but eventually, he couldn’t help but love me. I’m good. But he kind of won me over too.
It had been a long time since I had looked at myself as wonderful. I was talented. And beautiful. And loveable. It has been a while since I had given myself so much credit.
Right then, that day – something magical happened to me.
There was something about writing that list that empowered me. It gave me direction. And for the first time in years, I felt that life could be full of possibilities and opportunities, and hope.
I was in legal assistant school now. I had yet another student loan under my belt, and as I couldn’t work at the restaurant or call centre as much as I would like while I was studying – my credit card bill kept getting worse and worse too.
I spoke to someone, way back when, and they told me how to get my credit card bill down from 20% interest to 10% interest. That was a lifesaver. If I had only known back then what I know now, I would have use Full Circle Debt Solutions to reduce ALL of my debt in the same way.
Either way, at this point, I figure I was about $25,000 in debt. That is a ridiculous amount of money – especially for someone making $20/hour, or $3000/month after taxes.
It felt hopeless. I moved into the cheapest apartment I could find.
At this point I quit the soul-destroying, part-time call centre job and took a job at a supermarket. I hated that too. I worked with a bunch of losers.
I thought I was special. I thought I had talent. I had been selected, out of all of my classmates, as the most promising set designer… what happened!?
My first boss only agreed to pay me $18/hour (although the industry standard was $20), but I was desperate. I needed to get out of this debt.
I took my first legal assistant job – and to be honest – I hated it.
You see so many people that just give up. They resign themselves to paying the minimum monthly payment each month, and that’s it. You can see them sinking lower and lower. And their eyes getting more and more sad. Their vehicles going without repair and their houses without mending. It’s tragic, in a way. But debt is like a wraith that needles into your body, and latches onto your spine, and slowly, ever so slowly, sucks out your soul – until you are a shell of the person you were.
I’ll admit it. Even with this new job. I was scared.
People as a whole are mean, messy, obnoxious pigs. Let me restate that, the average person is vile – but only when there are no consequences to their behaviour. Otherwise, they’re sweet as pie.
There are some rotten jobs out there, and serving drunks is one of them. You see people at their worst. And it’s gross. I was doing that.
Working on the phone is just as bad. People are rude. I may have been interrupting them, but at least I was polite, forthright, and willing to strike their name from the list to prevent further interruption.
Where does this all come from? What you realize, quick enough, is that most people don’t have any power in their lives. And in the same way that they can’t fight against the authority that makes them miserable, they take it out on those that can’t question theirs. People are petty, passive-aggressive worms sometimes.
Not all of them, of course, but most of them. Of course there are a few gems in the swamp out there. But as a whole… yuck.
I looked at myself one day and thought. Do you know what? I don’t have any power in my life either. I’m stuck in these two crappy jobs, living with my grandmother, I have an art degree that I don’t even use, and…. My life sucks! This sucks! I have over $15,000 in debt and absolutely no way to get out of it.
It was at this moment, like some kind of stroke of fate, that the girl across from me (I must have had my arms across my eyes and my face on the desk at this point) that she was going back to a community college to become a legal assistant. Lots of work. One year training. Guaranteed $20 an hour upon graduation.
One problem – it was another $5000. Not to mention the money I wouldn’t be making while in school.
But to hell with it, I’d be out of a cubicle and off my feet and into a desk and making twice as much.
There I was, working at a call centre with these other half-wits and misfits.
It turned out my set design education was only good for that – set design. And seeing how I hated all the nonsense that surrounded the career that I loved, here I was, back at Square One.
There was one major difference though. After art school, and trying to fit in, and borrowing against my credit card to make ends meet on minimum wage – I was more in debt that I had ever been in my whole life. When I realized that my minimum payment on my credit card was $100. And none of that – not one cent – was going towards the principle, I knew I was in big trouble.
I wasn’t about to ask my parents for money. They had just moved and they were in no position to raise their baby daughter all over again. If nothing else, they had faith in me, so I had to tough it out.
I had faith.
I saw sets in everything I did. I’d look across the cubicles and picture ways in my mind as to how to redesign them to catch a more elegant slant of the mid-day sun from the north-facing window. I’d envision managers in bowler caps and zut suits and my co-workers with bar codes for faces, mindlessly droning on into black phones about relentless, inane crap I could care less about.
It was a rotten job. So I started waitressing again, as well. I was living with my grandma now. And I couldn’t feel any worse about myself. I was in debt. I saw myself as a failure as an artist. And I was waitressing, again, after all this time and vision and passion and hurt – and every month my Visa hit me with a tax that meant nothing but ownership. I was now a slave to debt – and at $100/night in tips, and $12/hour at the call centre, there was no way – ever –that I would crawl out of this hole.
I needed a better job. I needed a way to earn twice what I was earning.
I worked for Mia Gazelle for exactly three weeks, two days and four hours. It was a disaster.
I know you hear stories of apprenticeship where the master leads the student into the mountains to fend off wolves. There are young apprentices that paint the entire house of their sensei with only a wax-on, wax-off motion. But this was not for me.
The hours were ridiculous. I would get up at 6 in the morning, I would be there by 7. We would work, nonstop on chores I hated such as assembling tables with bolts and a wrench, and sanding wooden chairs down to toothpicks. I was home by 10. It was horrible.
It had nothing to do with my creative visions. Other people were supposed to do these things. I suppose she was trying to teach me humility, and sympathy for the construction crews that worked like mindless ants to assemble her creations – but after doing their work, all I felt was pity.
Day after day (there were no weekends) she brought me in to sweep sets, hammer nails and trim bushes. It was humiliating. It was soul destroying. I sat at the end of the day and wept – I had spent two years, and $10,000 to follow my dream, and this is what became of it – I was a common slave, working for next to nothing to fetch nails and paint as a waitress would fries and sliced lemons for water. I had gone nowhere.
After three weeks, two days and four hours, she looked down and gestured that I should get off my knees from the floor I was scrubbing. She took me by the shoulders and turned me around. The set was done. It was for a scene in the X-files, and even saying that I worked on it was something. But I felt nothing. I felt used and spent. None of my creative input had be listened to, none of my ideas, or style, or mid-day inspiration was acknowledged. I felt like a stooge.
My classmates thought my carefully constructed sets ‘tried to hard’ (whatever that meant) they felt they hid behind a veneer of insincere perfectionism and uneasy entitlement that was inappropriately employed so early in my career. One of my teachers wrote those very words and it set me into a rage. But looking back, maybe there was something there – but at the time I hated their condescending criticism.
When I tried to defend my work, my teachers had no time for me as soon as I grounded their airy talk with statements like: ‘So what you are saying is.’
I didn’t fit in with this arty scene, really. I was a small-town girl and they were determined to keep me in my place. I kept my hair brown, I had no visible tattoos. I pierced my nose, but this was as far as I could go in my counter-culture mind. The reality was, I wasn’t a punk – I wasn’t anti-society, I was me, and I preferred to be left alone, without having to make a hollow statement with every move or word I spoke.
Looking back at it, shy little me actually produced some of the most original work there. I was proud of my creations. Even if the others scorned my finicky and quiet style. The only person that mattered was the head of the department, and between me hiding behind cigarettes outside and ducking behind props, she caught me in a corner and held her eyes in mine long enough to know she meant business.
She told me the (mostly infamous) Mia Gazelle – one of Vancouver’s best set designers, was a good friend of hers. A graduate as well. And she might be able to offer me a job when I graduated. She had sent her pictures of my last set and the nods all around were enough to land me an apprenticeship spot, if I wanted it.
What can I say? I was ecstatic. I was finally recognized, and for one day, one single day, all the negative voices of my classmates, and my friends, and my parents, and myself were pushed down and I could breathe. For that one day, I looked at the photos of my set – with the purple harlequin seats, and the bold chandeliers, and the great gilt framed paintings over round tiled tables and wrought iron chairs as a masterpiece. Perhaps not a masterpiece, but an accomplishment in an artistic eye that I always knew I possessed, but had never been appreciated – until now.
I bounded home. I called my parents. And while this story is true, I promised I would tell you my second lie.
I am transcribing old journals from years’ past. The truth is, I am recounting my story here and now. I did not wish to mislead you, only to entice you, as I truly believe this story is a good one – but back when, I was too focused on building sets to worry about writing blogs about finding my way out of the debt I built around me. So I’m writing it out for you now, in the here and now.
All the same, my career as a set designer had been given a shot of adrenaline, and I was exited to see where it would take me.
For whatever reason, she documented her struggle, the trepidation and ups and downs, and eventually, her goal to break free.
We were fortunate enough that she chose Full Circle Debt Solutionsas the company to help her consolidate her debt – because her story is a fantastic one. An avid writer, she blogged the entire process in order to keep some kind of daily focus to her task.
She came to us with over $20,000 in debt. Today, she is debt-free. In only four years she turned her life around, and she documented every second. She is very proud of her story. So are we.
We asked if we could reprint it here, as a weekly column of sorts, on this blog.
She agreed, as long as we changed a few names and details. Her biggest worry, strangely enough, was that her story would appear as a rather good, if not long, testimonial to our capabilities and services.
Please note, that none of these posts have been fact-checked by Full Circle Debt Solutions, and any data cannot be verified without talking to one of our staff.
However, in the name of artistic exploration, we present to you: Scarlett.
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