When I was eight years old, my grandmother began taking me on annual back-to-school shopping trips for new clothes. I looked forward to these visits to the mall every year; we would spend all day running from store to store, stopping midday for lunch, our big shopping bags slowing us down. Growing up in the early 90s as a young Black girl, I felt rich in these moments. All I could think about was the first day of school, and what kind of girl I wanted to be that year; I imagined walking into class when the school bell rang, rocking my United Colors of Benetton skirt and penny loafers. I knew these clothes, along with my occasional new backpack, were not necessities, but my grandmother bought them for me just the same, with a simple swipe of her credit card.
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“My card has a limit,” she’d remind me gently at the register, in her soft, patient voice. But I never learned what it was.
I was raised in eastern Long Island by my grandparents, who grew up in the segregated south, and because they loved credit cards, so did I. They rarely carried cash in their wallets, and over the course of my childhood, I saw how they used credit cards to pay for everything from groceries to home furniture to my school clothes.
My grandparents did the best they could to provide for me and my two siblings, but they were held back by what they lacked: generational wealth. Nothing was passed down to them, and they owned little themselves. This informed the way they talked about money – the way they talked to me about money – and the lessons I learned from them, which I would one day have to unlearn. My grandparents, who carried around credit card debt all their lives, placed a higher value on being able to provide for our family in the moment than to putting that money away or investing it, such that their savings might grow over time and one day, be able to provide for us in the future. I’m still learning the balance between spending and saving, between buying now and budgeting for later – but I see how my grandparents’ lack of financial knowhow, especially in terms of planning for the future, also held me back as a young adult.
I can also see how systemic barriers to economic opportunity have acted on both me and my grandparents; the history of the ruling class keeping Black families from being able to provide for themselves is as long as the history of the country. My grandmother’s great-grandparents were slaves and her grandparents, sharecroppers. As our family would tell it, my grandmother’s father (my great-grandfather) had a home in central Virginia and 14 acres of land. When he died in 1996, that house and that land were passed down to my grandmother and her four siblings as their only inheritance. Today, my grandmother owns a portion of this land, and one day, she’ll pass it on to her children and grandchildren. But in terms of passing down good financial planning skills, unfortunately, I would have to learn that the hard way.
Growing up, we rarely talked about paychecks or savings or investing around the dinner table; instead we talked about God, family and education, and how these things were able to provide for us. When it came to money, my grandparents believed credit cards could provide for all our basic needs, and indeed, I seemed to be living proof of that: I needed clothes, food and shelter, and these shiny pieces of plastic met those needs when my grandparents’ monthly income couldn’t. Credit cards were a reliable bit of magic – taking the tight monthly budgets my grandparents did not want me and my siblings to see and making them invisible.
The three credit cards I carried, with over $15,000 in debt, weighed us down figuratively and literally
As a kid, I didn’t question these things. Why would I? I was loved and taken care of. As I morphed into a young adult, a college student who needed to survive on her own, I relied on credit cards to do so and for a few years, that worked. But at some point, the gaps in my financial education started to show.
My wife and I got married in 2011 – but even when we were dating, we would talk about our credit card debt, mostly mine. The three credit cards I carried, with over $15,000 in debt, weighed us down figuratively and literally. For her, my credit card debt was the result of my family failing to educate me about being making wise financial choices. I was angry when I first heard this, rushing to defend my upbringing and my family’s choices. But as I grew to understand more about what it takes to build financial stability, I realized how my short-term decisions about spending could have long-term consequences, giving our growing family stability or robbing us of it. My wife and I started sitting down once a week to talk about our (modest) paychecks (we both worked in non-profits). Initially, these discussions left me feeling sad and angry, blaming myself for past financial decisions I’d made out of necessity. How did I get here? How could I have been so careless?
What I began to come to understand, as we kept up with our budget meetings, is that I survived a system that was never meant for me to get ahead. The odds of achieving the American dream (owning a home outright; feeling safe within it) seemed stacked against my wife and I: as a Black woman, I was more likely to make less money than my white colleagues, and have a harder time acquiring credit, as I struggled to pay off bills and rent with the meager paycheck I earned.
As I learned more about the home-buying process and prepared to apply for a mortgage myself, I realized the extent to which my grandparents’ credit card debt had shaped our collective family life. I thought of my grandmother, who is 81 years old and lives alone in the house passed down to her from her father. The house my grandparents bought in 1978 a distant memory, even so she is still paying off her mortgage on a property she updated. Credit cards had allowed our tiny family to survive, had allowed me not to worry. But in the end, the worry caught up to me. How could I make sure that, as a parent, I could be different?
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I don’t blame my grandparents for their choices, just like I don’t blame my younger self any more for my poor budgeting. Today, my wife and I own our own home (sort of). We have a mortgage and are working hard to pay it off well before our 30-year due date. We’ve realized how crucial it is to educate ourselves and our children about money. We talk about the importance of saving during dinner, and started savings accounts for our kids. Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to teach our kids is that, in order to get ahead, they must put in hard work in every aspect of their lives, and that even then, the color of their skin may hold them back from what they want. Yet, I never want them to lose hope that the American Dream can be theirs, too.
As a mom of three, a wife and a full-time employee at a non-profit, I can say with humility, that I am debt-free – mostly. I still am paying down on those pesky student loans and our mortgage but in my new story, credit card debt is no longer taking up residence in my home.
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