Single & Struggling - Step 1: At the Beginning Is a Very Good Place to Start

We all have a starting point—and sometimes it’s not pretty.

In this episode of Pink Money, I share a personal story about facing financial chaos head-on and taking the first real step toward control. Before budgeting, before goal-setting, before any kind of plan—you have to understand where you are. That means opening the mail, organizing the mess, and getting a clear picture of what you’re dealing with.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about awareness.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, behind, or unsure where to begin, this episode is your starting line. No judgment—just real, practical steps to help you face your situation, regain control, and begin moving forward one step at a time.

This episode also serves as the foundation for my upcoming Single & Struggling series, where we’ll continue building a simple, repeatable path toward financial stability.

💬 Have a question or comment? Contact Jerry here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Remember to seek competent tax, legal, and investment advice that is unique to your personal situation. We talk about all things related to money from a queer perspective. And I wanted to talk today about something I recently saw, and it had me start thinking about the way things kind of shake themselves out sometimes. What I mean by that, let me let me tell you a story. So years and years ago, when I first turned, I don't know, I was in my early 20s anyway. It doesn't really matter the time frame per se, but 64 now, so again, this is quite some time ago. But anyway, so you know, you you love your parents and they try to do their best for you, but sometimes they don't know any more than you do. And it's just a fact that maybe they weren't exposed to certain situations or some certain lessons either, right? It no harm, no foul, but they can't teach you something that they don't know themselves. Anyway, so I had moved out on my own, and I was in an apartment and I was all by myself. I didn't even have any furniture at the time. I just didn't have any money for that. But anyway, here I am in this apartment all alone at night and no furniture, and I was just trying to kind of sort things out. And I had looked over in the corner and there was this big black bag, and I thought, hmm, let me just see what's in this bag. And it was just full, like it more than half full of all kinds of paper. So I dump it out and I start looking at it, and I start realizing it's a bunch of old bills and statements and you know, all kinds of mail that I just kind of pitched in one place, and then when I moved, I just chucked it all in one bag and brought it with me. Anyway, so I started to go through it just to see what was in there, and I started putting things in piles, and I started to, you know, look at everything that I had, and a lot of it wasn't even opened, a lot of it. So I started to, like I said, sort things out, put it in piles, you know, things like and like, these are all my phone bills, these are all the utilities, these are all, you know, credit cards, etc. And once I had all my little piles, then I put them in order of date, you know, from uh earliest to latest, and then I started opening everything. And when you start opening your mail, you know you're gonna be surprised, at least I was, because a lot of this I hadn't been paying attention to, a lot of this I overlooked, and a lot of this I just frankly ignored. And it was because I didn't really have any good money management skills at that time. I had worked myself all the way through, you know, when I think I was 14 or 15, I started working, I was emptying trash cans, and then I was a busboy dishwasher, and then I worked as a line cook all the way through high school until I quit. And when I graduated and I decided to go on and do something else. I got tired of stinking like food every night. Anyway, so here I am, and I'm going through all this stuff, and I'm open to everything, and most things I'm not happy about because a lot of this stuff was overdue and I was behind, and you know, there was a lot of nasty, you know, threats in the mail, and I just really didn't have a good handle on anything. And so once I organized everything, and then I started, you know, trying to figure out how am I gonna pay all these people? You know, I owe a lot of people to a lot of money to a lot of people, but you know, I just didn't know how I was gonna be able to tackle everything because it seemed like everything was due now, right now. And I I just sort of, you know, what do you what is that flight or fight? And I was frozen out of fear. And it was just sort of shocking to me that I had let things go to this degree. And, you know, if I would have told it, if I would have told someone, I would have just probably died of embarrassment because it just showed everybody that I was very unorganized, I was out of control, and I didn't know what I was doing. And I didn't want anybody to see me like that, right? Because people have a certain perspective on you, of you, and you have a certain way that you look at yourself. And if someone were to characterize yourself as those qual having those qualities, I would say that's pretty unflattering, right? You want to be known as someone who's responsible, dependable, reliable, someone who really is on their game and really has you know their act together. That and that definitely wasn't me. So in the end, I just like I said, I started to just get myself organized. And the the point I'm trying to make here is that we all sometimes have a starting place where we need to begin our journey. And oftentimes it is just going through your top drawers or your bag of bills or whatever it is, gathering all these things from all these different places and starting to take a look at what you have. And it's eye-opening and sobering and sometimes very depressing, but this is the journey that you have to start when you're deciding I need to take control of my finances and I need to sort this out and get it under control. And this is before you decide that you're gonna create a budget, and this is before you're gonna even set your financial goals, and this is before anything, even just deciding, you know, who am I gonna pay first? And even if it's, you know, I gotta rob Peter to pay Paul, it's just saying we got to start at the very beginning, and the very beginning is right here. So we want to go through everything, and we want to whittle this down, and we want to see where we're at, and then we want to line it all up, and then we can start the process of uh process of tackling this, and we can go into that a little bit more later, but the whole thing here is that you first develop your knowledge and understanding of where you're at, because you can't control things that you don't even understand or even know, because we need an understanding of where we're at, right? And we got to know that these are all bills that are due in this essential order, right? And you may not be a very organized person, right? And that may be just one of the skills that is not in your wheelhouse, but one of the things that you really do have that's very beneficial in my mind, is like ChatGPT. So there's a lot of AI tools, right? And I just use Chat GPT because that's what I use. I like it and I I use it all the time. But anyway, something like that can help you just get yourself under control, and it can help you to create a sense of peace in the sense that now you have sort of wrapped your arms around your current situation, and you've been able to whittle this giant bag down to just a handful of things. And I don't care, like I said, even if you know you're 90 days past due, right? But at least you know where you're at, and that understanding is gold because you have to really grasp where you're at, and your own understanding is what needs to happen. And even let's say if somebody else wants to try to help you, nothing wrong with that, but you really, in my mind, need to do it for yourself because that is where the real understanding comes from. And it's like, you know, if someone's trying to, I don't know, teach you to work out or teach you to lose weight or whatever it is, you know, you really have to do it for yourself. You know, someone can say, don't eat that, you know, go ahead and eat this kale instead of you know, go ahead and you know have something else. I can't stand kale, but anyway, you get the point. And I don't want to belabor this point either, but it is a really good way for you to start your journey. And I'm gonna go into some of these other things, like I said, about you know, budgeting and goal setting, all those things. But this is your beginning point. And if you're listening to this and you are starting to look at yourself and look at that bag of you know bills over there, then I would say let's get started, right? Let's do something, let's put our best foot forward and let's tackle this. And we all have to start somewhere. And if you're way down the road from this and this isn't a problem for you, well, good for you. And if you do have some level of expertise in this area, and maybe you know someone who's struggling, then maybe you can help them, right? If nothing else, you can encourage them. You don't really have to stick your nose in their business and say, let me do it for you, but you can definitely help them again by being a listener if they want to share with you, or again, maybe you can share with them some of how you were able to get yourself under control or help organize yourself. And that's the journey, again, that you're on as well. And all I'm gonna say here is when you eventually get to the other side of this, and you're gonna remember your own starting point, and that's gonna be a very poignant memory to you. Hopefully it's good, but it may just be something that you remember that you know what, I remember just like I did, you know, way back when, when I dumped this out and I started looking at everything, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're gonna have your own memories. So I don't want to go on and on about this, but like I said, I really wanted to say that there are ways to organize yourself, and Chat GPT can be a very, very useful tool. There's many things that it can do, but it has no skin in the game, right? It's not there to judge you, but it can definitely be there to help you put things in place and help you organize things, and it can, you know, create a strategy of let's do this first, right? And I'll just stop there because where we're at is where we're at, and where we're at right now is a very good thing because we're taking control of our lives and we're deciding to move forward, and we want to improve and do better than what we're doing today. So hopefully that helps, and I will be talking to you next time.