HomeWhen I was four, my godmother gave me and my big brother piggy banks, with the hopes that between playing with Legos and watching Transformers, we would learn and practice fiscal responsibility. They sat side by side (mine was pink, his was blue) in our living room, staring off into space, gaudily reminding us to feed them with lucre.
Thing was, my brother told me that his blue bank was mine. So for months I eagerly deposited my hard-earned allowance, birthday funds and pennies found on the sidewalk in his bank — gleefully thinking that I was being responsible when, in fact, I was funding my brother’s Pepsi addiction. This continued for several months until my mom spotted me skipping to the blue bank to insert my latest room-cleaning funds. My mother calmly explained how my brother rooked me out of months of cash and to this day, we all joke that my brother owes me back payments-with interest.
Perhaps as a result of getting ripped-off as a wee cherub, I’ve been paranoid about my money ever since. I’ve never had any credit-card debt, I stash away savings regularly, and I’ve written countless scholarship essays to fund my education. I listen with rage as my friends tell me about their ballooning debt, I clench my fists on the phone with financial-aid officers and I shudder when shoes I bought at full price go on sale the next day.
I now report live from the trenches of college. I’m a senior studying journalism and politics (two fields that foster my youngest-child obsession with fairness), and I regularly fight the battles of tuition hikes, inflated textbook prices and the rising cost of a slice of pizza. I’m fairly new to the personal finance beat (I’m used to writing about robotics and wine more than annuities, 401(k) plans and all the other gobbledygook out there), and as much as I occasionally relish reading the works of personal-finance crustwads, most of my money-related issues involve wrinkled dollar bills, post-it notes and credit cards loosely roaming around my purse. Sometimes, when I see my various e-statements all nice and neat (through no effort of my own, of course) on my laptop’s screen, I think I have my crap together. I don’t.
So here I am: less vulnerable than when I was four, but on a feisty crusade to ensure that my frequently manipulated demographic doesn’t unknowingly put their money in the wrong piggy bank. As for my brother? Well, he’s now fighting a raging battle with credit-card debt and loan payments. So there.
