Confessions of a trust-fund baby

(Image credit: Thinkstock/Photos.com)

last updated 10 January 2015

Just before my 16th birthday, my mom wrote a check from my account to buy me a BMW 328i, and that is how I learned to drive a stick shift.

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Every month, money drops into my checking account. It's a solid middle class salary, untaxed, and it's contingent on nothing. I don't have to work for it, nor can anyone take it away from me if I behave badly. I did nothing to earn it, unless you count growing up without a dad — the fund stemmed from a wrongful death lawsuit. Every year the annuity increases by 3 percent, and it will continue to show up, every month, until I die.

Then, when I turned 21, I was handed a shit ton of money. Here's something to consider if you ever want to do the same for your kids. (When you're done laughing, I'll continue.) The prefrontal cortex, which helps you make responsible decisions, isn't fully developed until you're 25. So I wasn't really capable of making the best decisions concerning my money. I didn't even get a financial adviser to go along with it, just my mom's advice to "always pay off your credit card bill every month." Well. That was easy.

In fact, I was the cliché everyone loves to hate. I spent my days eating organic eggs benedict at the local café, doing The New York Times crossword puzzle, then traipsing off to afternoon yoga. I fell into a group of friends who, like me, had outside financial resources (read: rich parents). We spent our money on shopping, ski trips, all-night parties with $50 entry, and drugs. I could blow $350 in a weekend on coke, ecstasy, and alcohol.

Still, I felt guilty. There were clues, of course, that I had something unusual going on in my bank account. Editorial assistants are notoriously low-paid (which is probably why it attracts so many entitled white girls). At work one day, I kicked off my shoes and a coworker sang, "Caroline is wearing Prada sandals!" "They were on sale," I retorted. (True, but they were still $350.) I felt like I was secretly being judged.

Being a trust-fund baby felt like a core part of my identity, like my sexual orientation or being a writer. You just couldn't understand me fully without understanding that — but I still didn't want people to know. When I told close friends, I did it in the hushed tones of an ex-convict. Every time she got jealous, my very best friend told me, she'd remind herself that my dad was dead and hers was alive.

Still, I knew this couldn't be the point of life. I started to study Buddhism, with its emphasis on non-attachment to worldly things. I read nonfiction books, which told me that strong relationship bonds, not money, were the best predictor of happiness. And I discovered that there is a peculiar emptiness that comes with leaving a snobby boutique loaded down with $1,500 worth of clothes and nowhere to wear them.

I was staring at the ceiling in my apartment, remembering the fight I'd had the night before with my friend (something about her offering coke to my straight-edge sister and me complaining about it to a mutual friend). She'd stomped out and left me at the club, alone, as the lights came on. My heart was still racing from too many uppers, and suddenly I was having a panic attack. I was sobbing, barely able to breathe. I felt hollow. Were these real friends? Was this real life? Money, I realized, had bought me a well-lined, suffocating nest.

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