Chronicles of a Broke Butterfly BAP: Employed and Still Broke?

Hey Ya'll!!! *waves enthusiastically* Did you miss me? I missed you, even though no one ever comments here (hint, hint). It's been too long. The good news: I got a job and am no longer on the Breadline. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!!! The bad news: Despite a decent salary, I am still broke after seven paychecks. Where they do that at?!?!

Granted, this is an entirely different kind of broke. This is an all major bills paid including consumer debt, more than one meal a day, gas in the tank for the most part kind of broke. But I'm realizing broke is a state of mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful not to be sitting up somewhere hoping no one hears my stomach rumbling and ordering a plate of fries as I watch my friends order a full meal. (SN: To their credit, they love me dearly, so most of the time, they offered to buy me dinner too :D) And beyond blessed to be past the conundrum of making just enough money to pay utilities and car insurance and put enough gas in the truck to get to the next placement while only qualifying for $16 a month in foodstamps. But it sucks to go to a job that pays a pretty decent salary, maybe not for a young lawyer with loans and credit card debt, but to my family and friends and the average person, and still have essentially no disposable income or means to start a savings account. This is especially annoying because people, especially in the black community, think that if you are a lawyer, doctor, accountant or Ph.D. you are supposed to be breaded up. Yeah, not so much. Most of us young professionals are suffocated by loans, credit card debt, and the costs, both expected and unexpected, of starting out.

Ya'll don't understand how many budgets I have made and corners I have tried to cut only to reluctantly come to the conclusion that it's not improper financial planning but income level that's holding me back. But to me, even writing this blog seems outrageous and ungrateful. I was raised in a working class family. My grandmother worked for a mattress factory down the street from our home until she retired and then she was a cleaning lady at the college I would one day attend. My mother worked in customer service and then at a company assembling glasses until she got laid off and was never able to find another job because of her lack of computer proficiency. My dad worked as a supervisor in Items Processing at a major bank and was responsible for the handling of paper checks pre-Check 21 before being laid off himself. As a supervisor, my dad made the most of anyone in my immediate family and my starting salary was a little more than the salary he worked his entire career to earn. How dare I complain?!?! For the most part I don't, not out loud anyway. I might say I'm upset I can't attend the Foreign Exchange concert tonight at the Masquerade (but only two of my closest friends know that it's because I can't afford it) or decline an outing because I'd rather stay in (even though it's really because I have to be very careful about how I spend my discretionary income).

It does take a toll in other ways though, I certainly don't eagerly arrive at work 15 minutes early anymore, to make a paycheck that will go to the city, the county, the grocery store, the gas pump and various bill collectors. But more importantly and most troubling, I worry about my ability to do what I am passionate about and what I think God has called me for, work in public service, either in the government or through a non-profit. If I am barely squeaking by now with no money to do all the things that I forewent in college and grad school (i.e. vacations) because I thought I'd be able to afford and enjoy them as a working adult, what happens when I want to go back into the public sector, particularly the nonprofit sector, and I have to take a 20% pay cut? These are the things that keep me up at night. But at the same time, it seems selfish and I feel guilty and ungrateful because I know plenty of people in my position who are unemployed and underemployed and way worse off than I am. I know that I cannot be the only person who feels like this and I am sure that people who grew up in single parent homes and working class families probably are in a unique position to really feel my struggle but no one ever talks about it. It's like all the young professionals are too proud to admit we're struggling and feel like we've been sold a bill of goods, or too afraid to be labeled ungrateful for the education and opportunities that those before us worked so hard to afford us. Having a pity party all the time isn't cool but I think occasionally it is cool to admit you're struggling because it lets the rest of us perusing our friends Facebook albums of trips to Bali, sojourns to Peru and weekend party excursions know that we're not in this alone. I'm just here to let you know that there is a kindred spirit out there making yet another budget, streaming TV series off the Web, and treating themselves to a Farmburger on a Friday night.

Chronicles of a Broke Butterfly BAP: This Is What You Shouldn't Do

So I gave you pretty much my entire backstory in my initial posting in this series. But there is another wrinkle in this tale worth mentioning. As you know if you read this blog, my grandmother passed away in October. That left me without any surving parents or grandparents, and aside from a cousin that's pretty much like an aunt, on my own. This is really the first time I've been financially on my own, as in no safety net. I got a full scholarship to college that covered the full cost of attendance so my parents did not have, or need, to support me there but my dad would give me money from time to time until he was laid off. I also got a full tuition scholarship to law school, so I only needed loans for expenses. I wasn't so lucky with my MPH and had to take out a lot of loans. I struggled a little at the tail end of some semesters, my grandmother helped where she could on her fixed income, but it was mostly smooth sailing until my dad passed away with no warning and no insurance my last year of law school. I spent my loan money to bury him properly and ended up putting myself in a financial bind for the rest of that semester until I was awarded my dad's funds through probate court. I used them to right my financial situation, cover my bar expenses along with my bar loan, and to move back to Atlanta for my grandmother.

After my grandmother passed, I made some necessary additions to the house. A washer/dryer because we had never had a dryer and the old washer had no spin or rinse cycles and was in effect useless. And a new stove because the old one was older than me and took an hour to preheat. And I painted and did the floors of the kitchen and my grandmother's old bedroom because as far as I can remember I don't think that's been done since I've been alive. I also rented a huge dumpster and filled it with stuff my grandmother had been hoarding since she'd bought the house in the 60s. I was very careful to buy durable, nice things but nothing too nice that would break the bank. Still, after two and a half months of unemployment, I am in effect tapped out. But this post isn't really about me. We are still deep in the throes of a recession. And I want all of you out there, especially the new grads, to learn how to approach unemployment and learn from my mistakes. I am definitely a walking, talking cautionary tale.

So since sharing is caring, I decided I'd share some things I've learned since March 31, 2011. I did some stuff right but a lot of stuff wrong, I'm putting all of it into this list. Enjoy.

1. Don't be overly optimistic. When I stopped working, I was sure that I'd have a job to go to by May 1 and definitely no later than Memorial Day. Today is June 16th. looks for job under a nearby rock. Yeah, it's not there. You need to cut spending as soon as you learn you will be unemployed and definitely no later than the last day of your job. I was pretty good about cutting out shopping and needless excursions even in the months leading up to my last day but what I neglected to do was think about how I could decrease the regular bills I had. We'll get to that in a minute.

2. Don't ignore the "little" expenses. Yeah, I know that Starbucks coffee you have every day at work only cost you $5. You go to work everyday, don't you deserve even that small luxury. Yes, yes you do. But think about this, in a months time if you are still unemployed and you have to pass on an outing to the movies with your friends because your tank is on E and you don't have the $10, won't you wish that you had been a little wiser about those little luxuries. I hate coffee, but every day I worked I would buy a lunch. It was never over $10 and my rationale was that I deserved it since I worked all day plus I was too lazy to actually get up early and make a lunch. But now, I wish I had cut that corner. Along the same lines, GAS IS TOO DAMN HIGH, if you work walking distance from a train line, take it in to work. I did this from September until late October or early November when it started getting real cold and then again in March once it warmed up. I suggest you set a benchmark temperature, mine is 50 degrees because I hate the cold. If you live in Atlanta, this rule only applies if it's on the train line. MARTA buses are way too erratic to mess with.

3. Don't forget your student loans. If you are unemployed or underemployed, consider consolidating your federal loans and entering Income-Based Repayment (IBR). Also, don't ignore your loan payments. Call and ask for a forbearance/deferral based on your current circumstances. Defaulting on your federal loans can have dire consequences for your credit score as well as your employability. I heeded this suggestion, as soon as I saw that $1000 loan payment that would be more than my monthly take home pay coming down the pipeline, I hit Direct Loans right on up. No sir, uhuh, I don't play that.

4. Don't forget that monthly bills can be streamlined. Today, I went to send a text and I couldn't. You wanna know why? Because Verizon cut my ability to make outgoing calls and send texts. For now, I can still receive my calls and access my voicemail. A month after I lost my job, when I came to my senses about the situation, I cut my Comcast Xfinity cable and internet services, cut the features on my home phone (including the long distance), and downgraded to a basic DSL internet connection through AT&T, my home phone provider. I even haggled the guy on the phone for a lower rate which is antithetical to my entire personality. But in the words of Judge Mathis, "Times [are] hard, [I] had to make due." What I forgot to do was think about how I could cut one of my biggest bills, my cell phone. I was still walking around with a $140 plan that includes a data package, unlimited talk and text and insurance. As a result my bill is now two months past due. With Verizon, I have to keep the data package for my smartphone and with me being me the insurance is a wise wise choice because I'm very clumsy. But as soon as I pay this past due amount, I will be downgrading to that 450 minute plan with 500 texts. It's real in the field ya'll.

Chronicles of A Broke Butterfly BAP: The Introduction

Those of you who know me outside of the blogosphere know that I am unemployed and have been for about a month and a half. My last day of work was March 31, 2011. After I graduated from law school, I lined up a job through a transition into legal practice program engineered by my school to pump up its U.S. News and World Report employment numbers and ease the burden on the masses of unemployed law students that were graduating. In my jaded world view, I think it was much more the former than the latter. Originally, I was to work with a nonprofit focusing on children in D.C. but as my grandmother's Stage 4 breast cancer worsened it quickly became obvious that she couldn't stay at home on her own and the idea of putting her in a nursing home as my relatives suggested was beyond ridiculous to me. So I found a job in the public interest legal sector in Atlanta and settled in to be here for a while. I sent in an application to sit for the Georgia Bar exam since I had previously taken the Maryland Bar thinking I'd be in the DMV area for a while, found out that the deadline had passed, and applied for an exemption given the exigent circumstances. It was granted and I settled in to spend the next three months at my fellowship.

As imagined by my law school, recent graduates would find unpaid 40 hour a week legal gigs in the public interest sphere and be provided with a $4000 stipend. That works out to $8.33 an hour. Yup, four years of graduate school to make $8.33 an hour. That's less than I made at my summer job right out of high school. Le deep heavy sigh. I digress. As planned, the program was to run 3 months, but 3 months later there was still a great need for experience and money amongst recent grads, so it was extended for another 3 months. Except this time, you could only work 24 hours a week because the rest of the time should be devoted to your job search. This worked out well for me as my 2nd 3 months would start in mid-December just as I would need to divert my attention to the Georgia Bar. Between my job and studying for the Bar, my job search was relegated to the backburner and mostly consisted of a weekly check of Simplicity (a popular web program for job listings in law school) and daily monitoring of bar association listservs. Occasionally, I would also check state and county websites. I kept applying to any jobs that caught my interest either in Georgia or the DMV but it wasn not my focus. Finally, at the end of February I turned my attentions to a hard-core job search but I was coming up short because I was not yet admitted to practice in Georgia and competition was massive for those jobs that were available in the DMV. And then March 31, 2011 rolled around and I found myself unemployed.

Over the next month, I put in applications for every legal job I saw that I might even arguably be qualified for on USAJobs, GA Careers, Atlanta city websites, county websites, Symplicity, PSLawnet, and even Craigslist. I got a few interviews but nothing ever materialized. I also applied for jobs that could capitalize on a Masters of Public Health; jobs at my college alma mater; and administrative jobs because those are the only "real" jobs I've ever had. Since I didn't work while I was in law school, most of my work experience has come in the form of summer externships in the legal field. And in college, I did admin work as well as some title search and public affairs stuff over the summers. I even registered with legal staffing and temporary agencies online to no avail. Finally, a friend suggested I call the temporary agencies to schedule an appointment. That worked and I was able to get on with two. One has yet to produce any jobs and the other is highly sporadic. I've been with them about a month. The first week I worked 4 days, the next week it was three, then one, then one again. This week I've worked two days so far.

I recently got my Georgia Bar results, I passed and I got sworn in. I'm officially a double esq. I'm admitted to practice in Maryland as well. I'm hoping that actually being a licensed attorney will help me in my job search. In the meantime, I'll keep writing about my misadventures as a broke Butterfly BAP, and hopefully, you all will enjoy my stories. The next chapter of this tale will be all about what you should not do when you first become broke.

Party of One?

So, I usually get on here and write some super introspective post about religion, life, death, suffering, depression, or love. But anyone who knows me outside cyberspace knows I'm not always so serious. So, I'm gonna try to write more regular posts on a regular basis to reflect that. On to today's thoughts...

This weekend I came to the conclusion that I don't have any female friends. OK, that's a bold-faced lie. I have plenty of female friends. What I really mean is I don't have any female friends to hang out with. Being a professional person who went to a top 20 school and has other successful friends all over the nation is really cool until you actually want to go out and do something. I have lived in Atlanta and D.C. with brief detours in New York and Philadelphia. And I met some amazing people in all of those places, people that are some of my very best friends to this day. And I love that I have a Gchat list full of people to converse with and a phone full of people to text, but at the end of day, it's nice to have people to chill with in real life.

So how did I come to this conclusion? I got invited somewhere. This rarely happens to me unless it's someone's birthday. I was at home doing my hair wondering what I was gonna do with my Memorial Day and I got a message from a good friend inviting me to a pool party. Awesome! I now have something to do, I can get the barbeque I've been craving, I can reconnect with an old friend I haven't seen in years, and there might even be some cute boys. And he says I can invite some friends. Cool! I won't know anyone else there except for him and he will be busy hosting the party so I can use some company.

But wait. Who do I invite? The first person I think of is one of my friends from college whose birthday was this weekend who told me that she had no plans and wanted me to rescue her from her apartment because she's car-less. I call her. The phone is off, it goes straight to voicemail. I send a text. Then I decide to call my LS, she doesn't answer. I think of my other LS but she was in a wedding this weekend. Then I think, "This can't be life. Who do I usually go out with? I have more than three friends, right?" I do have more than three friends but I usually don't go out all that much, not to parties anyway. I go to dinners and movies and bowling but not really to social events and when I do it's with one of my male best friends or my LS doing maid of honor duties this weekend.

I decide to suck it up and go to the party alone. Guys always say they hate approaching packs of women anyway, right? I was very introverted at first, I even tweeted all my ATL linesisters to see what they were up to, but eventually I opened up and met some really cool folks. But this made me think, how do people handle moving back to an old city or a hometown? I think everyone sympathizes with folks who move to a new city and have to create a new social network out of whole cloth but what about those of us who move back home to find all our old friends gone or operating in whole new social circles. Time waits for no man. Of my high school crew, only two still live in Atlanta. Of my college crew, two still live in Atlanta. Then there's the issue of having different friends for different things. Of course, we all have best friends who we can do anything with but we (by we, I mean I) also have friends for different occasions. I'm kind of a conservative person, I like to go out and enjoy myself, but no one has ever mistaken me for a party girl, and I have pretty traditional values. Those values tend to coincide with maturity and, unfortunately, for some people maturity goes hand in hand with becoming a homebody That means I tend to have a lot of really great friends who never wanna go out the house, at least not to parties or social events. I have dinner friends, brunch friends, movie friends and bowling friends but no party friends. As a matter of fact, the LS that I called, called me while I was out at the pool party to see what I'd called about. I invited her to come join me but she she passed to chill at home.

So, I guess that leaves me trying to figure out how a grown woman meets new friends to go out with that also have good sense? That last part, good sense, is imperative and the primary reason I was selective with my going out in college. Sloppy drunk isn't cute on anybody, especially a lady. If you've got any suggestions put them in the comments.

Unfinished...

Here we go playing these games of pretend again,
living out verses of the Cardigans,
"Love me, love me, pretend that you love me."
But these games of pretend,
they only seemed to work when I thought you even had the capacity to be genuine.

Words that I sat vigil for over a thousand nights,
find my ear through hushed whispers from underneath a back room's dim lights.
I will my heart to shatter like glass into a million tiny pieces,
or hot tears to flow down my cheeks with the urgency of a river a dam releases.
Nothing.

I often find myself looking deep into your eyes,
searching, for what, I'm not sure, any reason to believe your lies?
When we are in love's embrace, I dutifully avoid your gaze
lest I sink deeper into this lovedrunk haze.

To Be Continued

And All The King's Horses and All the King's Men Couldn't Put Me Back Together Again (Part I?)

I'm trying to get back to writing again. I'm really trying to do a lot of things, things that aren't really compatible. I'm trying to keep my sanity but I'm trying to keep my emotions in check. I'm trying to keep the faith but I'm constantly questioning it. I'm trying to be upbeat/not depressed but I'm trying to grieve. I'm trying to give 100% at my job and I'm trying to give 100% to studying for the Bar. (Seriously, if anyone can tell me how to do those two simultaneously I'd be eternally grateful.) I'm trying to focus on working on myself but I'm also trying to focus on being open to new relationships. The list could go on. In short, I'm trying to live a normal 20-something life for others and myself (I'm not sure which I care about more) when really my life is anything but normal and most days I just want to lie in bed and be left alone. I feel like I've been stuck in the same cycle since all the way back in 2003.

Here's a secret, I was depressed, like really depressed, for about two years in college. How could that possibly be a secret you ask? Well, my mom knew and my boyfriend at the time knew, but that's about it. How do you hide something like that? Well, I was highly motivated not to let anybody know. I didn't really have any close friends at college at the time, I'm sure that wasn't helping with the whole depression thing, but I digress. I was the girl who smiled all the time in high school, not the most popular, or the prettiest, or the best dressed, as reflected by GPA maybe one of the smartest, but my claim to fame was being nice, friendly, sweet. Maybe even funny if you really got to know me. I drew people in with that. No one wants to spend time with the depressed girl so I hid it, even from my best friends. I'm sure if they read this they will probably be shocked. But from 2003-2004, there were periods when I was away at school, where I literally didn't do anything except go to class (never missed a class because I felt down, that was the only thing I really cared about) and eat, if I even bothered to do that, and lay in bed and sleep, A LOT. In fact, on weekends when I didn't see my boyfriend I might come back from class on Friday, climb in my bed and pretty much stay there for 24 hours, sleeping, sometimes crying (but I'm not much of a crier, that's another blog for another day), thinking, and watching Cartoon Network (because cartoons made me nostalgic, which in turn, made me feel better). Then I'd go get something to eat or order it and continue the cycle for the rest of the weekend. There were no Emory friends to miss me and I had a single occupancy dorm room. Most of my friends were too busy with their first year of college to call much or return my calls when I called them, although I did have a faithful AIM crew. The only real challenge was sounding upbeat whenever my mom would call or when I'd see her since I went to school in the city and the same goes for my boyfriend. As I stated, they found out, largely because I saw them all the time.

At this point you're probably thinking, were you really depressed, or were you just homesick and lonely, perhaps having a hard time adjusting to being a college student/quasi-adult? Well, technically I was never diagnosed as depressed, because I was too ashamed to go to the counseling center to try to figure out what the problem was. I didn't want to go to the counseling center because it was tragically located right in the center of campus. Seriously, if you ever wanted to discourage young adults from getting help, please put the center in a building in the middle of campus that everyone regularly visits. I also didn't want to be labeled as "crazy" and I certainly didn't want them to suggest that I just pop some pills to feel better. I decided I'd just work at it on my own. In the meantime, I still organized all the group outings for my high school friends, called everybody on their birthday, and went above and beyond to seem the same as I'd always been, so no one would know and it was exhausting.

What's the point of this story? The point is this, lately I've been getting a lot of feedback about seeming sad or morose. I've had a rough year. Honestly, I've had a rough few years. I was depressed in 2003-2004, I lost my mom in 2006, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2009, and my father and grandmother passed away in 2010. In addition to that, I have the normal stressors that people my age deal with: relationship issues, struggles with faith, trying to jumpstart a career, and managing finances. I'm not going to pretend like I'm something I'm not. If I'm in a good mood, I'm in a good mood. If I'm not, I'm not. And if you can't deal with it, I'm not pretending for you or anybody else, that's so 2004.