by Karyn Bosnak
Saturday, July 6, 2002
Today I colored my own hair. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not a real blonde…. shh!!! I’ve been getting my hair colored since I was in grade school. The myth is true—gentlemen DO prefer blondes…At least for me anyway. I bought a bottle of L’Oreal Preference. At $8, it’s a bargain. And Allure magazine told me that it was the same stuff that the salons use. Getting your hair colored at a salon is pretty expensive—a color and highlight will run you about $150. So I figure I saved $142.
On Saturday, after doing laundry, I went to check my PO box and Pack-Man was there. No one else worked there but him. I went to my mailbox, inserted my key and opened it up. And inside were two envelopes! I got mail! I grabbed them from inside, closed my mailbox and headed out the door to open them up. When I got home, I sat down at the kitchen table and started.
The first one was from a guy named Dan who had e-mailed me a couple of times already. He addressed it to Learn how to save! Karyn. And inside was a $20 money order!
The other envelope was from Naomi’s parents. I almost died when I saw their name! She must have told them! Inside was a $100 check with a short note that said, “We happened purely by accident to stumble upon your website, and we would like to help ‘Save Karyn’ with the enclosed check. We love you! Good luck and love! PS—Can’t Elvis Help you?” Naomi’s parents also liked to give Elvis human qualities. I couldn’t be angry at her telling them. They were so nice! I had tears in my eyes!
By Sunday, I had received 341 hits that week, twice the amount from the week before. In addition to writing my weekly update, I added a disclaimer to my Give Karyn Money page on the advice of two separate accountants that e-mailed me. They told me to make sure I told people they could not deduct their donations on their tax returns. I accepted all the free advice people gave me. I also updated my Daily Buck.
Sunday, July 7, 2002
Today I needed to do laundry, but I’m out of detergent. That can be quite pricey. That is unless you’ve discovered THE DOLLAR STORE!!!!! Oh my gosh! What an emporium! Everything in the whole store is just $1. One buck. Seems appropriate that I talk about it in my “Daily Buck” column. And you don’t need to go anywhere else. They have everything! Shampoo, toilet paper (pretty decent quality too—doesn’t scratch your booty), mops, even food! It’s truly amazing.
I also added a Frequently Asked Questions page because people seemed to always ask me the same questions, like “Do you have a job?” etc.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
You know, I have been getting a TON of e-mail and people have asked a lot of the same questions. Is your site for real? Do you work? Why don’t you file for bankruptcy? Will you pose nude for cash? Stuff like that…So I’ve taken the time to answer some of those questions.
IS YOUR SITE FOR REAL?
Very good of you to ask this question. My site is for real. I am a bit elusive as to exactly who I am for personal safety reasons. You gotta be careful in this day and age. This is the Internet, after all.
HOW COULD YOU HAVE GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO SUCH A “PIG WALLOW”?
Again another good and well-worded question. I just couldn’t stop buying things. It’s as simple as that. I’m going to be honest here…I wasn’t out saving the world. I was just at Bloomingdale’s.
DO YOU WORK? AND WHY DON’T YOU GET A PART-TIME JOB?
Yes, I do work. And I actually work about 65 hours a week. I am always working. That’s why I can’t get a part-time job. I have had a job since I was 15 years old.
I was actually working and making good money for a while, which is when I racked up most of my debt. But then I became unemployed for four months, which really set me behind. When you don’t have a job and you can’t for the life of you get a job because the economy SUCKS, it kind of throws a monkey wrench into your great elaborate debt payoff plan. I am now working, but am making less than half of what I used to make (but getting the best experience), and am therefore having problems paying my bills.
DO YOU EXPECT US TO PAY ALL OF YOUR DEBT WHILE YOU SIT BACK AND DO NOTHING?
No, I do not. I am simply asking you to help if you can. If you can’t—no big deal. I am making monthly payments on my own. I break down how much you pay and how much I pay on my Grand Debt Tally page. It actually may look like I’m paying less than I actually am, because I’m showing exactly what I’m getting from you, and not showing the addition of finance charges. Those finance charges are coming out of the amount that I pay.
WILL YOU POSE NUDE OR GO ON A DATE WITH ME FOR MONEY?
No, sorry. I’m not about selling myself or my body for money.
WHY DON’T YOU CONSOLIDATE YOUR DEBT AND BUY A BOOK ON FINANCE?
I already consolidated my debt, except one credit card. I was going to send that one to the same consumer credit counseling service that all my other bills are at, until I realized that I could pay it through PayPal. So I’m leaving it open and all of the PayPal payments I receive, whether it be from an eBay sale or just a donation, will go directly toward paying that bill and never even see my checking account.
And I’ve read a book about how to organize my finances, but all it did was make me realize how much I screwed up and how behind I am on saving for my future. It depressed me.
WHY DON’T YOU FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY?
In the long run, just who exactly is paying for me filing for bankruptcy—you! But not by choice. Your finance charges will go up, your taxes, etc. If you help me pay off my debt, you’ll be VOLUNTARILY giving me a dollar.
It’s like the bootleg CD theory. They are all over Manhattan, but you just shouldn’t buy them. Because if you buy them, then you’ll run up the cost of CDs in the future. It’s like stealing. Someone’s gonna pay, and it will be the consumer.
So you can voluntarily give me a dollar, then I will avoid bankruptcy, and we will all save on interest rates and taxes in the future.
I NOTICED SOME SPELLING MISTAKES. ARE YOU STUPID?
No, I am not stupid. AND I was actually a “super-speller” in grade school. You know I got a different, more-advanced spelling test than everyone else. But I type really fast, and as I’ve gotten older, I have come to rely on SpellCheck to catch my errors. And there is no SpellCheck on my low-budget website. So if you see something that is spelled wrong, please drop me an e-mail!
I thought that pretty much covered it. Afterward, I chose to list a nice pair of pink-and-red patent leather Prada Mary Janes as my Big Ticket Item. They were adorable! I was sad to part with them, but once again I didn’t have a choice. Thinking about the previous week made me realize how badly I wanted this debt to be gone. I hardly ate anything and none of it seemed worth it. I had a closet full of clothes, but no food in the fridge.
As I was updating my Grand Debt Tally page, I decided that I wouldn’t deduct the eBay payments until I received them. So even though my sunglasses auction closed, I didn’t receive the $75 that they went for, so I sadly wasn’t able to apply it against my debt.
$20,057.36 TOTAL DEBT June 23, 2002
- $113.45 my money
- $124.55 your money
- $0.00 eBay sales
$19,819.36 TOTAL DEBT July 7, 2002—WEEK 2
WEEK 3: THE VIRAL NATURE OF THE WEB
I woke up really early Monday morning because I had to check in at the PMS study that I found out about on Craigslist. The office was located on the Upper West Side, which was completely past where I worked, but I would make $500 if I got accepted.
After checking in at the lobby of a medical building, I went upstairs to meet with a nurse. It wasn’t an exam or anything, she just explained to me that I needed to keep track of all my moods for one month in a daily journal that she gave me. If my PMS turned out to be what they considered to be “severe,” then I’d be accepted to the study, which was about calcium and cramps or something like that. So the plan was for me to call her in one month to go over my daily entries.
I still had the two checks that I received sitting at home
because I didn’t want to deposit them until I had my own money. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I’m not always really careful with my money, and my fear was that if I deposited them into my checking account, then I would spend it. So I left them at home until I figured out what to do.
When I got to work, I checked my e-mail like I did every morning and saw that I had three. One was from someone named Janitor. It said:
Dearest Karyn,
I am terribly sorry about your financial difficulties. There is, however, some good that will come of your financial incompetence: you have inspired me to add a special section to my website (www.whitetrashrepublic.com) called “Retard of the Month!” I have selected you to be the inaugural recipient of the “Retard of the Month” honors. Unfortunately for you, there will be no trophy for you to sell on eBay, nor a cash prize for you to pay your Neiman Marcus bill.
I know it must be tough for a Brooklyn princess such as yourself to live on the income that you pull in as secretary or bathroom attendant or whatever it is that you do, but that’s one of the harsh realities of the world. If you want easy money, I suggest that you suck it up and look for a job as a hooker and/or selling narcotics. Hell, I’ll even be your pimp if you like.
On your site it says, “My name is Karyn, I’m really nice and I’m asking for your help.”
What it should say is “My name is Karyn, I’m a dumb cunt who doesn’t know how much money I have and in the process of emulating the wardrobes of the whores on Sex and the City, I’ve run up a $20,000 credit card bill. So, if you are responsible with your money, unlike myself, and have some extra cash to give away, instead of giving it to some worthwhile charity like the September 11th Fund, or the Fresh Air Fund, give it to me, cuz, gosh, I’m just plain old stupid and if my Prada pumps got repossessed, that would be like, totally lame, and my other Brooklyn princess friends won’t hang out with me anymore! Thanks!”
Thanks for the material.
Oh my gosh! What an ass! I clicked on the link to his website, and was brought to the front page. And there underneath big bold letters that read “Retard of the Month” was Janitor’s e-mail to me and a link to my site.
My initial response was a bit of fear actually, because his website seemed to be mean and anti-everything. Being the “Retard of the Month” was kind of funny, yes, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be featured on what was in my opinion a yucky website.
As much as I wanted to e-mail him back and defend myself, I knew that’s what he was probably looking for. I wanted to tell him that I would never expect someone to give me money before they gave money to charity, which is why I never positioned myself as being seriously needy. I made fun of the fact that the worst things that were happening to me were that I had to read my favorite beauty magazines at Barnes & Noble. What made me angrier, though, was the fact that this guy, who was an obvious “hater,” wanted to lecture me. But my mom always told me to “kill them with kindness,” so that’s what I decided to do. I sent him an e-mail back and said, “Thanks!” And that was it.
I didn’t know how the Internet worked that much. I had never been to a chat room. I didn’t know that sites like this existed. Before this, I used it to shop, check my horoscope and send e-mail. That’s about it. But I slowly started to realize that there’s a whole other universe out there in cyberspace.
Later in the day, I got another scary e-mail from a man who said he could track me down in seventy-two hours, and asked me how I would like it if I opened my door and found myself “staring down the barrel of his gun.” He finished his e-mail saying that if I didn’t take my site down, that these things could happen.
I knew by putting myself out there I was opening myself up to criticism, but this was a little extreme. I didn’t think people would be so offended by what I was doing. To me it was a silly website that was funny. Why send me e-mails like that and not websites that promote hatred?
From working in television, I knew that sometimes people who put themselves out there received e-mails and letters like this. And maybe I should have, but I didn’t take them that seriously. It did obviously make me realize how important being anonymous was, so after I was done reading them, I made sure that all my accounts from my eBay to my Register.com were registered to just the name “Save Karyn” and had a bogus address.
Later that day, I opened four or five more e-mails, all of which were nice. One woman told me I should be a comedienne, another told me that she got in trouble at work for laughing so hard at my Daily Bucks. Two other people told me how much they identified with what I was going through. One of them told me that she owed $25,000 and her husband didn’t know. It was weird that the site seemed to evoke such different responses in people. It either completely offended them or made them laugh. People seemed to either love it or hate it.
Tuesday morning was my mom’s birthday. And after mailing her some lame gift that I bought with a store credit at Banana Republic, I checked my e-mail. When I logged on, I saw that there were almost twenty e-mails in my inbox. I was shocked because so far every morning there had only been a couple. After clicking through and reading each one, I found out that my site was being talked about on a website called Metafilter.com. I didn’t know what it was, so I clicked on the link and it said that the site was a “community blog.” In reading I figured out that a “blog” was almost like a big message board. People could post things and discuss things. It wasn’t a live chat, but it was like a conversation. I started to read what people were saying…
“She needs to go to church.”
“Y’know, I clicked the link expecting to hate it and I ended up enjoying the whole site ;-)”
“She’s in the shit & she’s doing something about it…sounds cool to me. She seems to be having fun doing it, which is also cool. As someone who has been up to their arse in debt in the past [following burglary] I’ll applaud her approach…just stay away from the economy-brand foodstuffs…”
“She could at least do the decent thing and set up a juicy webcam for those who contribute.”
“She’s selling a Clueless VHS tape one Bay. Isn’t she lovely?”
“The WHOIS for Karyn’s domain lists:
Save Karyn
Save Karyn
Main St.
Brooklyn, NY 11201
US
Phone: 123-456-7890
E-mail: [email protected]
Suspicious? Slightly.”
“Smart? Definitely. I wouldn’t be too surprised if a 26-year-old woman who owes a wedge might not want to give out her address…”
“She says, ‘Fashion magazines are like therapy. They make me want to be a better person.’ That is so beautiful.”
“If you can get past the brazen shamelessness of the site, it’s pretty funny—especially in regard to how little she offers in return for strangers paying her debt. Quote: ‘Not all my e-mails areas friendly. Some guy named Crumz is pretty pessimistic. I don’t think he likes me very much. And since I’m such a PLEASER, my main priority is to WIN HIM OVER. Crumz wanted to know what he would get from giving me money, and I told him not much.’”
Wow! People were talking about my site! I was so glad that I’d entered a bogus address the day before at Register.com. I didn’t know people could actually look that stuff up, but I figured there must be a way. But how dare they make fun of Clueless! I couldn’t wait to see what they said when I listed my Darrin’s Dance Grooves VHS.
When I was done reading, I went back to my inbox and opened more e-mails. One of the next ones told me that my site was also being discussed on another blog called Paintballresource.org. I clicked on the link.
“She’s selling stuff on eBay as well. Furthermore, I don’t see what the fuck all you care what she does to get money. Did she break into your house, rape your little brother, and make off with your bank? Don’t donate if you don’t want to. However, with a little exploration of her site, it’s easy to see she’s not entirely serious, and I would doubt she had an
y debt at all.”
“Regardless if she’s in debt or not, I think we can all agree she’s got terrible taste in shoes.”
“No shit!”
“You’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t wear those?”
“I’d wear em…if I could wear the polka-dot jumpsuit and drive a tiny little car full of my 25 best friends…”
They were making fun of my Prada shoes? My pink-and-red Prada shoes! How dare they! I immediately went back to my e-mail. After opening more e-mails from people telling me that I had terrible taste in shoes, I decided to get back to work.
Randy and I were working on the proposal scene, when Atticus proposed to Cherry in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, since dogs can’t talk, his dad asked her mom if the dogs could get married. Cherry said yes. I mean her mom did. Seriously, this was my job. While trying to concentrate on dogs, I kept an eye on my e-mail. Every couple of minutes I’d get another. It was awfully hard to concentrate. Around one o’clock or so, I saw one that said “Reporter requesting interview” in the subject line. I opened it.