We Are More Than Just A Bank Statement

Jane got her first “real” job a little over three years ago. She was putting in 50 plus hours a week and taking evening courses online in order to graduate from college. That wasn’t the plan, of course. She thought she would be able to find some summer work while she waited for classes to start again in August, but instead she found herself half way through what she thought were promising interviews being told that they weren’t interested in “seasonal help”.  Suddenly she was faced with the realization that playtime was over. This was it. Life was really starting, and no one was asking if she was ready.

And she wasn’t. She had been able to avoid paying anything toward her education with scholarships and took on debt for the first time when she applied for a loan for a car and borrowed money from family for her first, last and security for an apartment. She had a balance on her “emergency” credit card (which she had previously been able to pay off in full each month) that made her sick to her stomach. She made nothing. She ate nothing. And she sweat more that summer in her tiny third floor bedroom without air conditioning (electricity isn’t cheap) than she ever had in her life.  This definitely wasn’t what she had in mind for herself when she imagined life after a bachelor’s degree.

About a year later, though, things started looking up.  She met her fiancée, moved into a bigger place and reaped the benefits of dual income. What a cheap thrill to be able to finally afford the simple pleasures in life like DirecTV and going out to dinner. Sure they weren’t rich, and maybe they didn’t have the best of everything, but they were proud of what they’d accomplished. They were building something together. And they were doing it with good old-fashioned hard work, perseverance and passion.

But everyone knows the American Dream never comes without a few bumps in the road, and the state of the economy was a huge hurdle when it came to reaching their professional and financial goals. He got laid off, her salary was stagnant despite the company having to downsize, and they made the move back to a smaller apartment.  Credit card balances soared, and it got harder and harder to pay the bills. It was a rough time for them in a lot of ways, but it was their morale that suffered most of all. They had let themselves get nice and comfy with the idea of a steady upward climb and even allowed themselves to get multiple nights of good, long, worry-free sleep. They thought they were making all the right moves… and here they were taking giant steps backward!

On paper, Jane and her fiancee are just another invoice that never gets paid on time, or a checking account balance that dips into the negative a few times a month. They’re a bad credit score, or a debt-to-income ratio not worthy of a loan. They’re unreliable. They’re system abusers.  They’re not people, they’re a problem.

Businesses in financial jeopardy are viewed no differently. These are people who have put everything they have into their dreams and have been forced to watch helplessly as they crumble in front of them, but no one ever asks about how they ended up where they are. No one cares about their journey- the sacrifices they’ve made or the challenges they’ve overcome. Money remains the only focus, and the lives that are so deeply devastated by it all get lost in the paperwork…

They deserve to tell their story. They deserve another chance.

We’re listening.