Why my dad isn't my financial role model

I wrote my first piece for DailyWorth, an essay titled "I Learned How NOT to Handle Money From My Dad." It's a pretty personal piece, but one I felt was important for me to write as part of my journey in figuring out my money. I'm usually not one to read comments, especially when I'm being vulnerable with my writing, but the comments so far over there have been very interesting and prove my theory that when you share from an intimate, personal place, others will too. Here's the beginning:

For my bat mitzvah, my dad gave me a check for a thousand dollars, a gigantic sum for a suburban teen in the ’80s. It was extravagant, and I was appropriately giddy, plotting exactly what I would use it for. Until it bounced.

That’s one of many examples of the ways my father, while offering me unconditional love, failed me as a financial role model.

Read the whole thing

Money, Guilt, Freelancing and Feminism

All of those topics are wrapped into my new DAME essay, "I Feel Guilty for Not Being the Breadwinner." Freelancing is key here, because a) I never know exactly how much I will earn in a given week/month/year ahead of time and b) don't know when I will receive payment for what I've earned. This makes it very challenging to budget and plan. So it's not so much that I don't make enough money to pay my bills (at least, while the erotica book market is in my favor), it's that that money doesn't always arrive in a timely fashion. I've had weird things lately where places that usually pay me one way suddenly paid in another way, or checks sent to old addresses, or delays, and all of it makes me feel guilty and uncertain. Read more at DAME, where I've got another one coming up related to sex.

My first piece for xoJane! "It Happened to Me: I Declared Bankruptcy"

I'd love it if you'd check out my first essay for xoJane, Jane Pratt's site, "It Happened to Me: I Declared Bankruptcy," and if you like it, pass it on, like it on Facebook, etc. I'd really appreciate it. That's a self-portrait of me with my rent money on line at the post office buying a money order. Thank you!