I Got Tired of Being a Victim about My Finances

I love my life… now.

Here’s why.

Now that I’ve become debt free, quit my job, and relocated to Ghana in 2023, a typical day for me is getting up at 8am in order to prep to go to the gym.

I get to the gym and work out with my personal trainer from 10–12pm.
I get back home, chat with Hubby for a minute.
Shower and then have lunch after 1pm.

From 1–5pm I work which includes meetings, pitching, writing content, and doing a load of laundry until Chocolate Drop comes home and then I switch to Mommy Mode.

Then I do some planning from 9–11pm once Chocolate Drop is in bed.

We also have help to make this all happen: Our Home Team includes a full-time driver, a weekly cook who also cleans the house every two weeks.

I normally don’t work on Fridays so I can meet a friend at a coffee shop and kekee..

On the weekends, a friend may visit from the US and we’ll connect and go to an artisan market like I did here.

Or I’ll work a little, go for a walk, read, go for a swim, go to a gallery… write a little.

It just depends.

On Sundays, it may be a family beach day. But it’s definitely my Spanish lessons with Carmen, my tutor in the Dominican Republic.

Now that I’m getting more settled into Ghana, I want to explore spots outside of Accra, the capital, and neighboring countries like Togo.

So I’ll be joining local travel groups to make that happen.

And of course, I experience sadness, home sickness, frustration, and disappointment because I am fully human: but none of those feelings stem from regret.

I’m a free-spirit yet very serious about getting what I want and not playing in God’s face.

Sidenote-I’ve alluded to it last year but I lost my father recently. And a saint—this man was NOT. But authentic and unapologetic for fighting for the life he wanted, desired, and felt he deserved? Ma’am, he gets a 10 out of 10. No notes. He could deliver a masterclass.

Our desires and dreams are meant to be lived right now.

Sometimes, I’m reluctant to share this much about my personal life with other people because I don’t want to come across as haughty, uppity, or inaccessible.

But this is my current life and money truth.

And here’s the much older truth about my life.

I used to hate it.
I saw myself as the perfect victim.
Righteous in my anger.

And technically, I had a lot to be rightfully angry about.

Black women earn pennies to the dollar when compared to their white male counterparts at work.
We get less than 1% in venture capital money when we do decide to step out on faith and bet on ourselves.

Our girls are disproportionately policed and hypersexualized in schools.
Our boys are disproportionately represented in special education and the adult prison population.

Black women carry a lot for our community.

And my personal struggles, I was struggling with $65K worth of student loan and credit card debt.

Some of the debt came from shopping… shopping… and more shopping when I was an undergraduate with trips back and forth and forth and back to our local mall. (Anybody else remember when Express sweater sets and those cotton/knit pants had the girlies in a chokehold?)

And the late fees that I ignored when the bills would come to my mailbox.

And the student loans? Dear Lordt.

I lost track after my 8th student loan…across all my years of education, which accounted for the bulk of my $65k.

It was all Mandarin to me.

Let’s not forget the family stuff:

I had a complicated relationship with my mother.
I grew up without a father.
I lost a lot of friendships in my 20s and 30s.
I struggled with emotional eating and gained and lost the same 30lbs foreverrr.
I questioned my worth and worthiness of love from my partner even though we’d been married for years.

I’d wake up every morning (for longer than I’d like to admit), get into my car, call up my friend, and complain to her the fullll 30-minute commute until I arrived at work and clocked in as assistant principal.

When I wasn’t staving off hunger, I would swing to the other side of extremes and rush through the drive-through and explain away that the stress of the day made it impossible for me to choose healthier choices for my body, my body, and finances.

Even with going to therapy, I ruminated and dwelled on the past: how I was correcttttt in all of those failed relationships and I was the only one who cared as deeply as I did, that I was the only one who could love with the same capacity and nuance as I could.

I wasn’t feeling heard.
I wasn’t feeling seen.

And after a while of holding on to that story–the story that repeated:

My life didn’t turn out the way I wanted it.

 I didn’t have a fair start or the same resources as some other people and because of that, I get a pass to be stuck and unhappy.

I really started to see things get worse:

I ate more. I complained more. I isolated more. I stopped before I tried.

But then this happened:

I started to get really pissed… at myself.
I started to ask myself…

What do I win by holding (better yet, clinging, white-knuckling) this version of the truth?

Because there were a lot of things that were true about being a Black woman born to a single immigrant mother who didn’t have a father, a trust fund, or a lot of financial help…

But what else?

I started to wonder, “If I hold on to this version of my life, love, health, and finances,” I never get the happy ending I’ve always tried and craved for myself.

It dawned on me that I get to fight for my limitations…and keep them!

The life that I really wanted meant that I had to let go of this losing narrative.

I had to begin to speak power onto and into my life.

In addition to seeing that there were a lot of things that I didn’t have, I so’ nuff had things going for myself in other ways:

I was smart.
I had access to communities and knowledge at my fingertips.
I had a job that I could leverage to pay my debt, invest in my future, invest in my health, and get the help I needed when I couldn’t (or didn’t want to) do it by myself.
I was curious.
I was a great writer.
I was an amazing teacher.
I was cute

See what I’m saying? (You feel that energy?)

This process also meant acceptance of what I couldn’t control:
I could neither control my mother’s behavior any more than I could control what a racist or sexist allows to come out of their mouths.

I couldn’t control whether someone would buy from me, but I still put out the offer.
I couldn’t control whether someone will ghost me, but I make the ask: in friendship and in business.

So I let it go… while still understanding the playing field for Black women that look like me is uneven but still deciding to center joy, my desire, and my dreams as the most revolutionary and radical response to a world that seeks to snuff us out.

I had to begin to fully focus on what I wanted out of life and not be afraid to be seen trying and failing until I reached or at least made progress.

Ask me how many times I paid for a personal trainer only to show up late or not at all.

Ask me how many times I went to the dermatologist, paid my little (sike, big co-pay), yes’d her to death about committing to using the products she gave me to take care of my skin… only to leave them bad boys on the counter AND still complain about not having any progress on my skincare goals.

I could go on and on…

But I won’t.

But I will say this to you.

You deserve every bit of joy, happiness, and juiciness that your heart and finances can imagine.

You have a lot more power than you think you do. You’re a lot stronger (not in the Strong Black Woman Syndrome way), but in the way of being able to dig deep to pull up and pull out just what you need in terms of smarts, resourcefulness, vulnerability, stubbornness, discipline, and resilience until you are where you want to be, doing what you want to do, exactly how you want to do it.

And I’ll end with this.

Because if you’ve read this far, I don’t think it’s random.

I think you’re someone who has been carrying a lot for a long time.

And maybe, like me, you’ve gotten very good at explaining it away:
Why things haven’t shifted yet in your financial life…

Why now isn’t the right time to start (or continue) the journey toward debt freedom…

Why you’re “almost there” but not quite and comfortable not getting to where you want to be with your finances…

I used to be fluent in all of that.

And at some point I had to notice something uncomfortable:

My explanations were getting in the way of my life.

Not my circumstances. Not my background. Not the real things I was dealing with.

My explanations.

The story I kept returning to about why things couldn’t be different for me when it came to life and money.

And I had to slowly start asking a different set of questions.

Not “Why is this happening to me?”
But “What am I doing with what I already have?”

Not “What did I miss out on?”
But “What am I still available for?”

Not “Who should have shown up for me differently?”
But “How do I show up now that they didn’t?”

Nothing dramatic changed overnight.

But my choices started to change.

Small things first.

For me, it’s when I finally opened up my credit card statements , saw the balance was going up and complained about it to my mother and her baulking back: Child, of course the balance is going to go up if you don’t repay it: it’s interest and late fees.

Then harder things.
Like negotiating a raise (which I did with the help of a colleague when I was in my early 30s, which increased my salary by 40%).

Then the things I kept avoiding for years.

Like investing in a quality accountant to help me create a tax strategy as our family’s finances became more complicated.

And even the therapy I so openly advocate for.

And over time, my finances followed those choices.

Not all at once. Not perfectly. But consistently enough that I couldn’t deny it anymore.

So if you see yourself in any part of my (previous) life and money story, I don’t need you to judge where you are.

I just want you to get honest about whether your current explanations are protecting you… or keeping you stuck in debt.

And if at some point you’re ready to do something different—not everything, just something different—I’ll meet you there with what I’ve learned.

Please leave a comment below. What resonated with you the most? What life and money story are you holding on to that’s holding you hostage?

With love,
Kara