I Was $10k in Debt Because of Instagram | My Debt Diary

[Music] let me know when the crop change back then when people liked my Instagram posts I would get really giddy tingly and excited I'm Lisette and I racked up ten thousand dollars of debt trying to become an Instagram influencer I remember any time I would post travel content perform the best so I spent a lot of money going to places in the southwest like Austin Texas Nashville had no actual interest in Nashville they get to listen to country music and then I was like listen Nashville was so pretty I spent about $700 on a plane ticket and when I went I took a ton of pictures posting something and seeing the tikar of likes and comments it almost became like an addiction this little space is where I keep designer bags that I kept over the years this red one would be the thousand dollar bag that I spent money on this is fun I bought this shirt twice I loved it so much I bought it twice when I first started having an Instagram presence it was really about just showing off experiences here's a cool flat lay of a restaurant here is a place I'm traveling to here's a cool new outfit so this bag is the bag that I had spent over a thousand dollars on one of the first big-ticket items I bought was a Louie Vuitton bag it was something I wanted to post immediately and so I did when I went to go photograph this to share it on my Instagram I actually went to a Chipotle that was nearby and put the bag against a brick wall and took this photo so it was kind of like champagne dreams on a Chipotle budget I was really just purchasing it because I wanted to share it with the world versus enjoying it for myself [Music] so whenever I traveled I would take a Polaroid with me this is DC Nashville Germany in the past three years I have traveled to 12 countries and more than 120,000 miles of just back and forth air travel that's five times around earth I remember my first salary being $30,000 so spending $400 on clothes every month or taking thousand-dollar trips every so often is definitely something that kind of salary could not afford I accrued about eight to twelve thousand dollars of debt on my credit cards that doesn't include things I spent anyway with my cash I had about six credit cards and about three retail credit cards every time I got a new card it's because I've maxed out one of them one card that I had I have a 20-17 statement where it's at about three thousand dollars another card at $1,300 the highest one I'm seeing is four thousand three hundred seventy six dollars and 69 cents it wasn't until I could finally kind of look at them this way that I realize it's a lot more debt than I thought about a lot of these purchases a lot of these travel we're really just to show it off on Instagram [Music] when I was getting out of debt I definitely had a ton of side hustles Instagram was something that was growing so I could make a couple hundred dollars off of that I tried to freelance consult I sold a lot of clothes on things like Poshmark I also loved dog sitting I love dogs fast forward you can see March of 2018 one card is at zero another one is at 200 another one is at zero it took me about 18 months to get out of debt completely and that was just a result of paying my credit card bills as a priority to everything else so that's a photo shoot trick if you're shooting in the cold you put the hand warmers in [Music] really guerrilla photo shoot I grew about 15,000 followers just through telling my story about being in debt and coming out of it and the pressures of social media hey let me just check the lighting you look at my career today I definitely would not be where I am if I had not created a Instagram and blog presence for myself people wanted to use me for my back-end experience of being an influencer I didn't regret the places I traveled to or the restaurants I ate up but I couldn't waited to do that when it didn't feel like a burden it's just paid for a lifestyle that's above your needs what people to think you're living the most glamorous New York life and just all the pressures of social media that make you just continuously spend I think that's the most dangerous when you're spending without really noticing [Music]

Channel: VICE Life

Views: 409,023

Rating: 3.5888531 out of 5

Keywords: debt, finance, instagram, Celebrity, INFLUENCER, personal finance, instagram influencer, my debt diary, documentary, videos, culture, women, feminism, Broadly, vice videos, lifestyle, independent, vice mag, vice magazine, girls, Female, documentaries, Identity, financial freedom, money, vice, cardi b, finance major, investing, how to use instagram, dave ramsey, shopping, lisette calveiro, kylie jenner, online shopping, fashion nova, clothes, social media, social media influencer

Id: ts-qQ7rV2V0

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019