This Year, I Ran Through My Savings
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Health, Success, Life, Self, Money

If there’s one thing I wish more people understood about poverty, it’s that growing up poor is terribly expensive. It’s funny. When I first began making “good” money by writing online, it felt like most people didn’t understand that the money I was making wasn’t all just sitting in a bank growing exponentially.

Some of it sat in the bank, of course, and some of it was saved for certain events, specific needs, or special occasions.

But over these past couple of years, most of my money has gone toward simply “catching up.” Honestly, I’m not sure why more people don’t talk about this. Maybe they’re ashamed. After all, talking about money at all is often seen as uncouth — as if you’re either a braggart for mentioning how much you’ve made, or a panhandler for admitting when it’s still not quite “enough.”

Personally, I believe we can talk about money in frank terms without bragging or begging. So, let’s talk about it.

“Catching up” is something that happens when you come into more money after never having enough. It looks different for everyone, and it depends a lot upon how much new money is coming in. For me, getting out of debt and repairing my credit after homelessness was important. So, that was one priority.

But buying decent furniture was important too. See, when I became pregnant back in 2013, my daughter’s dad left me in the lurch after I’d already left everything in Minnesota just to be with him.

That meant the pregnancy wasn’t only the beginning of motherhood for me — I also had to start my life all over. Again. The first time I started my life over was after my divorce in 2006.

This time, starting over meant moving about 11 times in my daughter’s first two years, and never having close to everything we needed. Most of the valuables I had back when I was with my ex got lost, ransacked, or pilfered by his ex-mistress subletter.

As a result, over the past couple of years, I’ve been slowly acquiring some of the stuff we lacked. Kitchenware that’s not from the Dollar Store. Decent beds and linens. Basic organizational tools.

In 2019, putting my daughter into a good preschool essentially doubled my rent, but I believe it was a good choice for us. Now, she’s in kindergarten and I plan to keep her at the same school for as long as I can pay the tuition.

Twenty thousand dollars worth of dental work? Done. That was probably the worst expense of the first 18 months of my blogging journey, but it was unavoidable unless I wanted to keep losing teeth. I’ve been a nighttime tooth grinder since childhood, and coupled with a lack of adequate dental care for most of my life, my mouth was a mess.

Actually, it’s still a mess. I’m now in the process of replacing failed amalgam fillings from my youth. I’ve got a few more implants to finish up as well. Eventually, I hope to get veneers and be a lot less self-conscious about my smile.

On the more frivolous side of things, my daughter and I took a week-long Atlanta vacation in the summer of 2019. It could have been cheaper, but my daughter still talks about the trip, so I can’t really regret it.

For all intents and purposes, 2020 was meant to be my year of frugality. Sure, there’d still be big expenses like more dental work and my first official car, but I originally planned to save the bulk of my income.

And then I got sick.