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Courtesy of Angelisa Cunniff
I have $25,000 in credit card debt at age 27. The day I totaled that number, I remember thinking, Is it cheaper to die? My thought was that funerals were a little less than $10,000, and I had racked up more than double that. I was doomed.
At my most broke, I’m also making the most money I have across my six-year career. I recently started a marketing position, making well over six figures, three days a week, in person in New York City.
How did I end up here, essentially working to pay back what I owe?
My former boss gave me a promotion at my old company that put me just over the six-figure mark in 2023, at the ripe age of 25. She sounded giddy when she called, telling me, “When I finally hit that six-figure mark, I remember being so excited. How do you feel?”
I remember searching inside for that “I made it!” feeling and finding nothing. The truth was, I was deeply struggling with the responsibilities of that job, and making poor decisions based on my newfound financial freedom.
It was my first year living alone. That January, I signed a lease with my dad as a guarantor for $2,900 a month, assuming that once I made more money, I would be able to cover it comfortably. That wasn’t the case.
My spending patterns still reflected what I had the leeway to do when I was paying a fraction of rent ($1150 a month) with roommates: I bought flights to see friends cross-country, put other trips on a credit card that I had yet to pay off, and picked out brand-new furniture for my brand-new place before I had the cash.
It wasn’t long before I realized the discordance. My emergency savings turned into my regular savings, and six months into that apartment, I knew it would take me years to build up a safety net. The promise of independence started to feel like a trap.
My workplace structure was also sending me into a spiral. I learned about the term golden handcuffs, and I wondered if this applied to me and exacerbated the issues I was having financially.
My former position offered the opportunity to travel, but I often covered billable expenses on my personal card, with delayed repayment from our tiny finance department. I was paid my six-figure salary, but only with one lump sum payment a month, which made budgeting extremely difficult.
It was a remote position that offered “flexibility” and “stability,” but because of the long hours and difficult projects, the flexibility was usually just me sitting in my apartment working after hours to try to meet deadlines. I was isolated, and my world felt incredibly small.
How empty I felt doing everything right on paper gave me the sense that I was failing at something, which led me to put even more hours in at work to feel like I was earning my keep, which was then almost immediately spent.
This was the role I based my lifestyle on before a recruiter reached out on LinkedIn, and I ended up at my current company.
I do have compassion because many of these purchases were out of convenience, to give myself a break from burnout, and to attempt to maintain community through events, trips, and rare chances to see my people. Living with roommates previously had guaranteed me a community I took for granted, which I deeply missed.
Another huge cost for me that accrued a significant amount of interest was therapy, which my insurance didn’t fully cover. I thought if I worked a little harder on myself, I could fix my external stressors. This simply was not the case.
I was exhausted, depressed, and lonely. My values of freedom, community, and love were being quashed by reality.
In terms of debt, I know I’m not alone: thousands of women on TikTok create accounts and post their credit card debt, block their loved ones, and document their payoff journeys.
I feel a sense of camaraderie with them and understand their shame: Who wants to admit they fumbled when the rules are supposedly so clear? Spend less than you make, and invest the gap.
Instead, each morning, I wake up and pull up my three main banking apps on rotation, just in case a charge I do not recognize slips through.
One of the antidotes to financial despair, for me, has been reducing isolation and building community. My new job covers my key living expenses and allows me to be in person, which has already given me a burst of energy and excitement, as well as structure to get me out of the house.
Once my previous lease cycle ended, I scraped together enough cash (shout out to Depop and Facebook Marketplace) to move to a place with fewer frills than my old amenity building, on the corner from some of my closest friends in the neighborhood. My weekends are no longer booked with business flights, and I’ve put a pause on traveling for leisure.
A positive outcome of this has been acquiring the skill of resourcefulness and the awareness of how much I’m consuming, which I see as a gift. I’ve started to work with what I have and become creative with clothing, food, and household items.
When I go to the grocery store, I buy exactly what I need for the week and stretch it far. This has led to a much deeper sense of presence in my life, which I don’t take for granted.
I feel a sense of hope with my work-in-progress financial state and like I’m actively working toward building a life that’s both sustainable and successful.
Lloyd Lee/BI
Yaro Shcherbanyuk owns the quietest 1966 Ford Mustang you’ve ever heard.
That’s because under the hood of the cherry red Ford isn’t the original straight-six engine that came stock in the car — it’s a drivetrain from a 2024 Tesla Model 3.
“We’ve always sold components to people who do EV conversions,” Shcherbanyuk told Business Insider. “We figured, why don’t we try doing one?”
In the summer of 2022, Shcherbanyuk, the owner of Calimotive, a Tesla auto parts shop in the Sacramento area, found a white 1966 Mustang on sale on Facebook Marketplace.
The Mustang became a passion project that he worked on for about two years with his dad, Viktor, and brother Daniel.
In total, Shcherbanyuk said it cost around $40,000 to convert the Mustang into an EV — and yes, the car is equipped with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system.
“It’s pretty smooth,” Shcherbanyuk said. “You feel like you’re in a Tesla.”
Here’s a look at the process of the conversion.
Tesla and Ford did not respond to a request for comment.
Yaro Shcherbanyuk
Shcherbanyuk said he didn’t have a specific car in mind for his conversion project. He and his brother only knew they wanted a classic car.
Shcherbanyuk found a ’66 Mustang located in Reno and had a local tow truck driver pick it up. The car looked better in photos than in person, Shcherbanyuk said.
“We probably overpaid a little bit for it, but it’s OK,” Shcherbanyuk said. “We weren’t sure what we were going to do. I just wanted something running and in OK condition.”
The Mustang seemed to be on its last legs.
“Realistically, this car would’ve went into the scrapyard in a few years,” he said.
Courtesy Yaro Shcherbanyuk
There was no blueprint Shcherbanyuk could follow to convert the Mustang.
“We were just kind of going with the flow,” he said.
At first, his family considered fitting the Mustang with components from a Model S. But once he stripped down the car, Shcherbanyuk realized that the Model 3 battery was nearly a perfect fit.
He said he was able to use the entire chassis of the Model 3.
“It’s pretty much almost like the ‘skateboard’ of a Model 3, but cut into three sections to fit pretty much within that Mustang wheelbase,” he said.
Lloyd Lee/BI
Almost everything that can be found under the hood of the Tesla Model 3 can be found under the hood of the Mustang.
Fitting all the components involved cutting out parts of the Tesla Model 3 frame and welding them onto the Mustang.
“There were a lot of fabrications that needed to be done,” Shcherbanyuk said.
Lloyd Lee/BI
The interior is a mix of the past and present.
The seats, taken from a Tesla, have heating and cooling, but the windows have to be rolled down with a hand crank.
Shcherbanyuk installed Tesla’s main media console in the car, which allowed him to control the vehicle’s functions through the 15-inch screen and receive regular firmware updates.
The original ’66 Mustang also did not have air conditioning. This one does.
Not all of the functions of the original Tesla are available in the Mustang.
For example, the air vents are manually adjusted and can’t be controlled with the touchscreen. Some firmware updates are also no longer available for the converted car.
“We have the Cybertruck steering wheel, and that thing never updates, although it does work perfectly fine,” Shcherbanyuk said.
Lloyd Lee/BI
Shcherbanyuk installed the Tesla charging port in the same spot where the ’66 Mustang’s gas cap was originally located: at the rear of the car.
Shcherbanyuk said he has been able to get 258 watt-hours per mile, which would be just as efficient as, if not more than, a Tesla.
During a test drive on a Thursday afternoon, the Mustang-Tesla’s screen indicated that it had 194 miles of range left at around 80% battery.
Lloyd Lee/BI
The Mustang was retrofitted with Tesla’s cameras, which are critical for functions such as Sentry Mode and backing up, and for a key feature of every Tesla: Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.
Shcherbanyuk said he initially did not know if he’d attempt to install the components needed for the advanced driver-assistance system to work.
“How the Autopilot actually came to be was that we wanted to put the Model 3 power steering rack in there to have power steering,” he said. “And then once we threw that in there, we were like, ‘We might as well just start putting the cameras and everything else in there.'”
Lloyd Lee/BI
According to Shcherbanyuk, getting FSD fully operational required some experimentation with the placement and angling of the cameras on the Mustang’s fender.
Then he had to drive the car about 2,000 miles to get the cameras properly calibrated.
“Biggest challenge was probably getting Full Self-Driving to work,” he said. “It was just very, very time-consuming.”
The FSD on the Mustang still has some kinks that a normal Tesla wouldn’t experience.
During FSD’s “chill” mode, Shcherbanyuk encountered a few moments where he took control of the steering wheel.
The Mustang’s body is also longer than a Model 3. That means the FSD gets a bit closer to the car in front when the Mustang approaches a stop, Shcherbanyuk said.
For now, FSD also doesn’t operate at night due to technical issues with the headlights that Shcherbanyuk still needs to resolve.
Lloyd Lee/BI
The conversion project took nearly two years to finish, with eight months of actual labor put into the vehicle, Shcherbanyuk said.
Considering the $10,000 for the Mustang, about $15,000 for the Model 3 components, other replacement parts, and the paint job, Shcherbanyuk estimated the total cost of the conversion to be around $40,000.
There were a few car purists who thought Shcherbanyuk’s project a sacrilegious act against such an iconic American vehicle. Still, the Calimotive owner said most people have been enthusiastic about the conversion, and he’s gotten requests for conversions.
Shcherbanyuk said he’d likely build another Mustang if he winds up selling this one.
“Most people don’t get how much labor is needed to do something like this,” he said.