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I Used My Credit Card to Keep the Heat On. It Took Five Years to Pay It Off.
Sometimes it seems like all everyone can talk about is student loans. It makes sense when more than 44 million Americans collectively hold nearly $1.5 trillion in student debt. The average student loan...
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I Couldn’t Get a Bank Account. My Girlfriend Paid the Price for Helping Out.
The day I started my new job as a cashier at Tedeschi Food Shops, I went in for my training feeling more hopeful than I had in a long time. I’d had the 1998 Buick my grandmother left behind when she...
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I Went Into Debt for a Christmas Gift
As I neared the checkout counter at Belden Jewelers, the sales associate who was helping me asked, “And did you want to pay for this in full or did you want to finance it?” “Finance it? What do you...
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I Gave Up My “Poor People” Foods. But I’m Keeping Soda.
When my two childhood best friends and I were kids, we would toast two pieces of bread, spread butter across them, and coat them in cinnamon sugar to curb our hunger if we were between grocery trips...
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What It Tastes Like to Eat What You Want for the First Time
All my childhood grocery shopping memories center on being poor: Walking 10 minutes from our two-bedroom home in the Malden Housing Authority’s projects to the local Stop & Shop and filling the...
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Getting By Without a Car Was Always Hard. Now It’s a Public Health Risk.
When I was ten, I ended up in the local emergency room. I still remember sitting in the waiting room, shaken and in pain, waiting for answers that had evaded the ER doctors and my pediatrician. My mom,...
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1 in 6 Millennials Have Crowdfunded a Funeral. I’m One of Them.
The day after my dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 60, I found myself in a nearby funeral home, staring at the handwritten, folded letter I’d written for my dad as a polite funeral...
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