Lamborghinis, Jeans, and Pageant Queens - How I wasted 42 grand pursuing the wrong women

"So how much do you make?"

That's what she asked me. Yeah, I should have seen that red flag from a mile away. This was four years ago, though, and I was pretty bad at recognizing horrible people back then.

Jennifer* and I had spent quite a bit of time together over the past couple weeks. She was a certifiably gorgeous pageant queen; intelligent, charming, far and away the most beautiful woman to have ever expressed interest in me. She took me out to a steakhouse. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world to have a girl like her interested in me. Naturally, my ego was in the stratosphere.

Granted, I was a little bit worried because she could look at someone and tell you exactly how much they spent on jeans and the rest of their outfit, but hey, I could look at someone and tell you exactly how much they spent on A/V cables for their TV, so I figured we were two peas in a pod.

For the record, this was back before I had any significant debt. I drove a 1994 Buick Lesabre and shopped at Ross. Like a boss.

Me, back then. So boss.

I told her I made about $20,000 a year from a part-time job, but when I graduated, I hoped to make $30,000 or even $40,000 if I worked hard!

She wasn't too impressed with my response.

In fact, after that date (our second or third), she pretty much ignored me. Can you believe that? The incredibly shallow girl wound up behaving in an incredibly shallow fashion! Inconceivable.

So what did I do?

Well, I wasn't about to allow some little thing like being financially responsible separate me from the woman of my dreams!

I sold my old Buick, and bought a $14,000 Acura RSX. I drained my savings and took out a loan for $11,000 to finance it. 

How could any woman resist a guy on this hot set of wheels, right?

I knew she had a thing for nice clothes, too, and my $15 jeans from Ross weren't cutting it. I traded up to $300 Rock & Republics and some other denim from the Buckle, where she worked.

How could any woman not be impressed by these incredibly tasteful jeans?

I was sure she would be impressed the next time she saw me.

Man, was I in for a shock.

You see, because the next time I saw her, Jennifer waved at me as she was getting into her new boyfriend's car, a Lamborghini Murcielago worth more than $300,000. 

This is a Lamborghini Murcielago. This is the car I did not have.

He was wearing tailored clothes and was taking her to the house he had just bought. Now you know why I hate summer salesmen.

I punched a hole in the wall. Later I covered it with a picture of Jesus.

Thanks to this picture of Jesus, no one ever saw the hole in the wall.

But I noticed something. People, especially women, seemed to pay a lot more attention to me with my fancy clothes. 

Wow Greg, nice jeans!

Greg, nice car!

Okay, I thought, I may not make a lot of money, but if I have expensive things, people will treat me like I do make a lot of money. So... I put two and two together and came up with a terrible idea!

I became addicted to buying expensive clothing (especially from the Buckle), and relied on them to feel a sense of self-worth and importance. Whenever I got rejected by a girl, I found myself going shopping therapeutically and spending $500 at a time on new clothes. Lacking any real sense of self-worth, I relied on the compliments to keep me going. 

According to Mint, I've spent about $12,000 on clothing and apparel over the past couple years. That's some expensive therapy.

Mysteriously, I was still unhappy. People aren't really drawn to the unhappy, so the cycle kept repeating itself. In fact, one time I met another girl who I really liked (this happens a lot). When she shot me down, I determined it was probably because my car wasn't ridiculous enough. I traded up again. This time it was $30,000. 

To be fair, although this car was a horrible decision, I still love it.
Like a battered wife loves her drunken husband.

Surely she wouldn't be able to resist me if I had a better car! After all, that totally worked so well for me last time. 

Now she's married. To not me.

So... that's 42 grand that I wasted trying to impress the opposite sex, using material goods as a counterfeit for real confidence. Whenever I came close to maxing out my cards, I would just take out a fat student loan and use the excess to pay off Amex. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

I thought I was pretty smart since the interest rate on student loans is a lot lower than credit cards and there are all sorts of payment options on federally-insured student debt that aren't available for credit cards. Plus, I was building my credit score to the mid 700s so that I could borrow even more money. Not to mention my student loan balances were tucked away on some website I never visited, so I didn't have to stress out about them all the time! So smart.

In reality, the smart thing would have been to not spend the money in the first place.

A couple days ago I logged into that website I never visited to check and see how much my smart decisions were costing me in student loans.

It turns out I owe $51,000 in unsubsidized Stafford Loans, costing me over $4 in interest per day.

Wow.

That was like, twice as much as I thought I owed and probably three times as much as I actually needed to finance my tuition. I had $18,500 owed on the car and $11,500 owed on my credit cards. That's a lot of money.

So I've decided to start taking action and have some promising results to report after my first month. 

Next post will discuss sacrifice, hope, and the road ahead.

*Names changed to protect the shallow. The guy with the Lamborghini lost his job when his employer went bankrupt. Jennifer is still single today.