One
night I was driving on a road that, in hindsight, probably should’ve been
closed. Alerted by the flashing lights of a police car and an officer sitting inside,
I saw the dark road ahead was flooded. The traffic kept moving through the
floodwaters. No one was stopping by the side of the road, no one was waiting,
everyone was just going through.
I called out to the officer, “I dunno, do you
think my little car can make it?” He replied, “Well… you do it at your own risk,
but… I will say that everybody else, and smaller cars than yours, have made it.
Nobody’s had a problem going through this.”
I
said, “okay!”
So
I slowly drove forward into the water. No common sense occurred to me in that
moment, like, turn around, don’t drown! Seeing the officer made me feel safe
and reassured at first. But the flood was big enough that I was in there a
couple minutes, and the water got up to my headlights.
Ahhhh, I’m ruining my
car! I thought. And as soon as I drove out of the water, my car was jerking
back and forth, and the anti-lock brakes were going crazy. Gotta air out my
car, I thought. So I turned on the heat for the rest of my trip.
My
mistake was I didn’t turn on my air conditioning. First I took my car to the
dealer, and then to a mechanic. Between the estimate and the repairs, that
incident caused $1,200 of damage to my car. Why is that number significant?
Because
in 2013, I had rebounded from a health crisis and finished my car payment. I had
stopped putting out fires and started saving again. The week before this
incident, I had just opened up a savings account. I opened it up with $1,200.
The repairs to my car cost $1,200.
This
took me back to my childhood. My parents would promise me something and say, when we get our tax refund back, then you can have it. Or, when we get our
tax refund back, then we’re gonna be ok. And every. single. time. something
would happen, like, the washing machine would break, or the hot water heater,
or a car repair, or some emergency took the whole amount of the tax refund. Things
happened that way every year, year after year.
Somehow
the idea got into my mind that if I saved money, bad things would happen to me.
After the $1,200 car repair I felt scared, and ashamed of my fear of saving and
my dumb decision to drive through floodwaters. I had no one to consult, so I
closed my savings account. I didn’t even try to leave $10 in it, I just closed
it.
I’ve
hidden this from everyone close to me and avoided talking about it, until now. It’s
time to start learning gold can stay! What is your money fear story?
