
I recently realized that I’ve spent a large chunk of my life cosplaying below my economic means. It started when I was way younger — elementary school age — when I realized that having more meant you were the target for ridicule, bullying, ostracization. In the media, the well off are simultaneously the object of envy as well as examples of moral failings. At home, I was told to never, ever show off wealth, yet we lived in the biggest house on the block.
I grew up with this very conflicted view of wealth, and eventually in adulthood, I chose to fit in with the status quo — to be struggling for basic necessities. I made myself believe that I would only be as good as what labor I could give for minimum wage. I starved myself in order to not spend money on groceries. I didn’t just cosplay, I became the character: frugal, penny pinching, pitiful, stubbornly cheap.
All of this amounted to me taking low wage work, never asking for more, working for free, and the biggest hindrance of all, having zero financial literacy to get me out of this hole I kept digging deeper.
Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I had gone to private school when I was malleable and young, and be surrounded by other kids of similar socio-economic status. I would have been a nobody instead of having a bullseye on my back. Maybe now I wouldn’t be so scared to be perceived, to ask for compensation, to understand how to save and invest?
It’s only recently that I managed to de-tangle morality from wealth. Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of Kool-Aid have I been drinking this entire time?
Now it’s time for a different era — we need $100k in 4 months, and had I not cosplayed Frugal Frannie my entire life, it would have been an easy ask. But alas, here we are. The only compounding interest I have accrued is the absence of knowledge, knowledge I could and should have learned to wield instead of learning how to work shrink and myself to death.
While I’ll be honest, the steady routine of working for a paycheck is safe and predictable, and worst of all, comfortable. When you’re comfortable, you’re not innovative. We need $100k by the end of January, and it’s time to get innovative.