A book by Michael Lugenbell · Coming soon
Borrowed
Mistakes.
I paid for these mistakes.
You can learn from them.
A personal story about credit, the rules nobody explained, and what it took to start over. Twice.
The credit education I learned the hard way.“I never thought I was bad with money. That thinking shaped almost every mistake that followed.”
From the introductionA red truck.
A monthly payment.
A lesson missed.
The First Time I Blew It and Didn’t Know Why
“My dad and I went to look at vehicles, but once I saw that truck, looking stopped. Now I'd moved into buying territory. With only 15,000 miles on it, it was practically a newborn baby. The interiors were spotless, and the dashboard had more buttons than anything I'd seen before. It was pretty much like it was stolen from a spaceship. For a 17 year old boy who's always been obsessed with gadgets and gizmos, it was perfect.
I remember going for a test drive, but honestly that's probably misleading because I'd already made the decision, I wanted it. The salesman could have honestly told me the transmission was held together with duct tape and positive thinking, and I probably would have just asked what color duct tape.
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After the test drive, we went into the salesman's office. Well, office is generous. It was a cubicle. My dad and the salesman started talking rates, terms, and financing. Ancient Greek, as far as I was concerned. I sat there nodding like a tiny financial professional.
Newsflash, I didn't understand any of it.
After a while, the salesman disappeared with our information and came back with a grin I'd only ever seen from the Cheshire Cat. He looked like a man who was about to have a good payday. He put a piece of paper on the desk and talked through the numbers with my dad. Then my dad stopped him, looked at me, and pointed to the only number he knew I cared about.
$150 a month.
He looked at me and said, son, can you pay this? At the time, I was working at a grocery store, making more than that every two weeks. Honestly, it only took me half a second to run the numbers through my head.
Does a duck go quack? That's what I thought in my head, but I just nodded and took the pen.
I signed where I was told to sign and drove off the lot feeling as if I had just figured out adulthood. I had a job, a truck, and a monthly payment I could afford with plenty of spending money left over. I thought I had it all figured out.
From Borrowed Mistakes by Michael Lugenbell.
Download the Chapter One sampleThe story comes first.
The understanding follows.
Every chapter connects a moment from my life to the credit education that goes with it.
The payment wasn’t the whole picture.
How an affordable monthly payment hid everything I didn’t understand about borrowing.
Hard work wasn’t the missing piece.
The money habits I inherited, and the questions nobody at home knew to ask.
Confidence wasn’t understanding.
What happened when rebuilding my finances didn’t mean I had learned the rules.
Michael Lugenbell / Author