I am at the crossroads yet again, only this time it's a financial one.
Back in 2005, 2006 and 2007 when I was between 17 and 20 years of age I was pretty well off financially. I had $15,000 in the bank at all times, 2 cars at all times which were paid in full(sometimes 3 at once and I've never had a car payment), over $100,000 of credit available to me at 0% APR, CD savings accounts open, at 20 I was going to set up an IRA retirement account and I had my credit cards PAID IN FULL before the end of every month. I had them all Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express, along with it I had a 750 credit score. Not bad for a teenager huh?
Well, with all of that jazz I had a lot of demons running my life, a lot of misery and unhappiness. I used to ask myself while slaving away at a shitty job(I had plenty of them) "What would I do if _____________(fill in the blank with a dollar amount)dollars fell into my lap today free and clear?" When I'd ask others this question they would tell me I was dreaming and why bother thinking of hypothetical situations that COULD NEVER HAPPEN! This came from the same people who told me I would never make $16+ dollars an hour with a GED and yet at 18 years old, what was I doing? That's right, making more than the naysayers. While asking this question I would go with amounts as low as $5,000 to 5 million dollars. The first thing that came to mind was never to pay debt because I simply didn't have any but I always thought about the things I wanted to buy. One time it was a 2003 Mercury Marauder muscle car for $13,000, another time it was buying the company I worked for so I could fire my boss and promote the assistant manager who had been there 20 years and was more qualified to run the show, not to mention give her a proper amount of pay($12 an hour after 20 years is an insult!). I quickly realized that I had nothing driving me in any healthy directions. As I sank further into a depression and stress within the chemical and trucking businesses I had been working with in 2006 and 2007 I quickly realized something needed to be done. I needed to get out of the chemical business and try something different.
I signed up for a class at the local college on "Chakra Energy" where I learned about the energy points in the body, this lead me to being certified in Reiki, which is an energy healing remedy which also lead to me leaving my therapist(who I had been going to for over a year and spending thousands with at the time)after only one Reiki session and looking into holistic medicine and healing.
In early 2008 while at a Reiki share someone had mentioned Sedona, Arizona so as many of you know I felt called there so on June 6th 2008 I quit my job of over $16 per hour with a earning potential of $80,000 a year after a short period of time(without a college degree mind you)to set off for Arizona. On the night of June 23rd 2008(the same day another freedom fighter George Carlin died)I headed West for the first time and anyone who knows me knows how the rest of this story goes....
Fast forward a few years through all kinds of light, darkness, love, loss, travel, good choices and not so bright ones I am staring down a different path. When I left the dispatcher job in June 2008 I also left my attitude towards money with it and granted, the economy hadn't quite started to collapse yet until about a month later. I thought about it "had I stayed there would I have been laid off?", I knew however when I rolled into the Badlands in South Dakota for the first time that I had made the right choice to leave and...well...go West young man.
Why do I believe I made good money before 2009? Why do I believe that 9 out of 10 jobs I have I don't apply for but they find me and the boss/owner almost ALWAYS offers me work instead of me asking for a job? Why do I believe that even in 2009 after my attitude towards money changed I still made $8,000 from a job that I only worked 2-3 nights a week for 4-6 hours at because the pay ranged from $75 a night to $250 a night that I still made money? Because I never believed in two key things that I started to believe in 2009...
1. Money is Evil, those who embrace and endorse it are Evil.
2. Money and financial abundance is scarce.
At 19 years old when I first started making $16.50 per hour I always believed that people received $2 an hour pay raises for every year they worked no matter the job, I thought that companies and corporations gave a shit about people..I was looking at the world through rose colored glasses but those glasses kept me oblivious which kept the negativity away about making money. I also had no spiritual direction so I bought into the dream "Make money, get married, buy a house, get the white picket fence, die a week after retirement."...that didn't last very long.
In the current time of October 2011 and over the past few years I found myself in credit card debt. In 2010 I still carried some debts from 2008 and 2009 and had it racked up to over $10,000 with 3 different companies. In late 2010 I worked for $8.25 per hour at a job I didn't like sometimes for 21 days straight with lots of OT(which isn't shit at $12 per hour OT rate)just to pay my cards down. By the time I left Illinois in January 2011 my credit card debt was down to $1,500 and my cash in hand was about $5,000 plus I owned a car. Not too bad eh?
I knew this year was going to be challenging and I knew it was going to be difficult for me to clear my karma but I was determined to do it. I didn't know when I was going to be working again after I arrived at my friends in California this January but I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I purchased a second phone and printed off some business cards to advertise myself as a photographer. The Universe had other plans for me though, it very clearly told me one name and one command(James Earl Jones voice and all!) "go see Sara".
So, after the whole ordeal with Sara went down and I found myself for the first time in almost 10 years ready to blow my brains out I was starting to ask the question "How do I get through this shit so I don't have to keep doing it?" and it became very clear that I needed to heal my thoughts and feelings about myself, my dad and her...and of course that was just a start.
As I sit here in October 2011 looking at my two remaining credit cards which are maxed out at over $14,000 which is my highest debt I've had to date, the interest is high(9% and 14%)which I've never had over 0% and my still immaculate credit score of 750(which didn't get me anything when I tried to use it for loans and more credit in 2010)I am looking at a radical change.
Citi, Chase and many other banks that I do not do business with have used tax payer money which I, along with millions of others have paid taxes for to "bail out" their financial institutions, give their CEO's and CFO's billions of dollars of money in bonuses and keep taking and taking from the American people.
I have never had a late payment, never been unable to make more than my minimal payment, never had an interest rate, never had this much debt and when I look at my cash in hand and see the $293 MINIMAL payment asked of me by Citi and Chase this month my mind can't help but recall... "wait, I already paid them the money I owe them through them taking my tax payer dollars when I was employed or anytime I buy a stick of gum, pump gas or eat a cheeseburger and then they take that money from the government who they are in bed with that is supposed to be watching out for my best interest...hmm, do I feel bad for considering not paying them?" Not. One. Bit.
To go from the "responsible customer" who always paid in full, on time with the high credit rating to the "perfect customer" who they will not see another penny from, who will not make another payment with the high credit debt is a huge cross road that I am at and I wonder why it is I feel hesitant to do this.
Am I afraid they can garnish my wages? What wages, I'm unemployed!
Am I afraid that my credit score will get ruined? What is it good for anyways? I tried to use it for loans and was denied!
Am I afraid that it will effect my chances of getting a job? Any job that wants to run my credit I wouldn't want.
Am I afraid that because I borrowed the money that no matter how evil and dirty they want to be and even if they take my tax money that I may feel like I still owe them the money I used? ..Now we are on to something. I do feel responsible to pay it seeing as to how I don't like to owe anybody anything.
I am walking a thin line here, a line that once it is crossed there truly is no going back. Once the credit is shut off, the score plunges and I refuse(or are unable)to make payment my damn good credit history will become history.
Without credit I wouldn't have been able to fund all of the things I felt I needed to do spiritually over the past few years and now that I've rediscovered the value of money and I know I am capable of going from $0 to $6000000000000(lord knows I do it with women, why not money? haha!)because I did it before and now that I am driven by Light, helping others with my funds, wanting to do good works and invest in projects and things I believe in I feel that I will be supported with my decision to make the move towards a conscious attitude.
If our world wasn't driven by greed people would be able to live freer, I do accept the fact that I chose to use the credit cards and I also admit that some of the purchases were foolish, we all make mistakes just look at the banks, they do it all the time! Pissing off the masses by taking their money will only go over for so long, then rebellion starts.
When I run into a large sum of money, I may decide to pay Chase and Citi back with interest(if they're still around and the world still revolves around greed) but until that large amount has been received I have to say that the credit card companies may not be receiving anything from me for a long time to come.
It's not about weather or not they robbed me and everyone else cause an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind but survival is survival and I'm not interested in giving Vikram Pandit and Jamie Dimon a $14,000 bonus this year.
A $14,000 surplus can feed a whole lot of people or buy a whole lot of cardboard to make cardboard signs for the Occupy Wall Street protestors.
Goodbye Citi and Chase.
-Zachary Hill 2011(C)
Written: San Jose, California 2011
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