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-Let me know when the Crass changes.
Back then, when people liked my Instagram posts,
I would get really giddy, tingly, and excited.
I'm Lissette, and I racked up $10,000 of debt
trying to become an Instagram influencer.
I remember any time I would post travel content,
it performed the best.
So, I spent a lot of money going to places
in the southwest, like Austin, Texas; Nashville.
I had no actual interest in Nashville.
Like, I don't listen to country music
and then I was like, "But the Nashville Wall is 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 ticker of likes and comments,
it almost became, like, an addiction.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
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[ Traffic roaring ]
This little space is where I keep designer bags
that I kept over the years.
This red one would be the $1,000 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 flatlay of a restaurant,
here's a place I'm traveling to, here's a cool new outfit.
So, this bag is the bag that I had spent over $1,000 on.
One of the first big-ticket items I bought
was a Louis 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 the 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.
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So, whenever I traveled, I would take a Polaroid with me.
This is D.C.
Nashville...
Germany.
In the past three years, I've traveled to 12 countries
and more than 120,000 miles
of just back-and-forth air travel.
That's five times around Earth.
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I remember my first salary being $30,000,
so spending $400 on clothes every month,
or taking $1,000 trips every so often,
is definitely something that kind of salary could not afford.
I accrued about $8,000-to-$12,000 of debt
on my credit cards.
That doesn't include things I spent anyway,
with my cash.
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I had about six credit cards
and about three retail credit cards.
Every time I got a new card,
it's because I maxed-out one of them.
One card that I had, I have a 2017 statement,
where it's at about $3,000.
Another card at $1,300.
The highest one I'm seeing is $4,376.69.
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,
were really just to show it off on Instagram.
Oh...
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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, it's a photo-shoot trick if you're shooting in the cold.
You put the hand warmers in.
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.
Wait, 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.
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I didn't regret the places I traveled to,
or the restaurants I ate at, but I could've waited to do that
when it didn't feel like a burden.
It's just paying for a lifestyle that's above your means.
Oh.
We're gonna die.
You want people to think you're living
the most glamorous New York life.
And just all the pressures of social media
that just make you continuously spend,
I think that's the most dangerous,
when you're spending without really noticing.
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