Money Horrors III: The Ghost of Purchases Past

The episode opens with listener Rita Bessie’s story about her teenage son, who got his first job, opened a checking account, and received a debit card. Soon, letters that looked like overdraft notices began arriving. Rita initially handed them to him, but eventually opened one and discovered that he was hundreds of dollars overdrawn. Rita sat with her 16-year-old son at the family computer to investigate the transactions. She found two recurring monthly charges: $30 for MrSkin.com, a site compiling nude celebrity videos from movies, and another $30 for a conventional porn site. Her son was mortified, while Rita was torn between being shocked that pornography had caused the overdraft and being irritated that he was paying $60 a month for something she believed could be found for free. The story sets up the episode’s theme: investments and purchases that seem appealing can become financial nightmares, especially when teenagers have access to spending tools before they understand the consequences.

Becky Harrison recalls being a freshman in high school in 1996, when she and her friends were obsessed with the Backstreet Boys. They collected shirts, posters, cutouts, and choreography, but Becky lived in a small North Carolina town with few places to shop. The arrival of dial-up internet and eBay seemed to solve that problem. She searched for Backstreet Boys merchandise and found five CDs laser-cut into the shapes of Nick Carter, AJ, Kevin, Brian, and Howie. Becky imagined bringing the unusual CDs to school and becoming the envy of her friends. She did chores and babysat to save the $50 starting bid, then received help from her parents and won the auction. When the package arrived weeks later, she put the Nick-shaped disc into her CD player. Instead of music, it made a terrible sound. In her panic, she yanked open the player and broke its lid. The discs turned out to be ordinary plastic CDs with stickers on them, cut into the boys’ outlines; they could not actually play music. Becky felt that her obsession collapsed within ten minutes. She never showed the discs to her friends, and her enthusiasm for the band faded—though she admits she later listened to Justin Timberlake.

Producer Peter Balanon-Rosen introduces listener Manesh Patel’s story as a financial crisis shaped by expectations about masculinity and family responsibility. Manesh grew up hearing that the man “cuts the checks and brings it home.” At his traditional Hindu wedding, the priest even added an unscripted line to Manesh’s vows: gains in the household were attributed to the wife, while losses were the husband’s responsibility. Manesh’s immigrant parents had struggled financially; he grew up in low-income housing, with a retail-working mother and a blue-collar father, and began working young to become a third income for the family. In 2007, Manesh and his wife, Nisha, were chiropractors who ran a practice and did nearly everything together. When Nisha became pregnant, Manesh worried they were not financially ready. He decided they would build a chiropractic clinic rather than lease space, believing ownership of the building would provide stability and pass generational wealth to their child. Their daughter Layla was born on July 14, 2008. After taking a week off, Manesh returned to find the project beginning to stall: the bank suspected their contractor, Joe, was requesting inflated payments—for example, $50,000 for work involving a sink.

The bank froze payments after deciding Joe’s requests did not match the work completed. Joe told Manesh the problem was probably the bank’s fault, but then stopped returning calls. Manesh kept Nisha in the dark because she was experiencing postpartum depression and he thought concealing the crisis would protect her. The situation escalated when subcontractors, including the roofer and electrician, sued Manesh for $72,000 in unpaid bills. Since he was the person in charge of the project, they argued that he was responsible for Joe’s failure to pay them. Manesh continued acting cheerful at home while privately lying awake with his heart pounding. He repeatedly told Nisha that everything was fine and that the building was moving along. The breaking point came when the drywall contractor threatened to throw Manesh, Nisha, and Layla out of their home, using their actual address and Layla’s name. Weeks later, while visiting Nisha’s parents, Manesh’s mother-in-law asked whether everything was all right. He broke down and finally disclosed what had happened. His father-in-law offered help, and Manesh’s lawyer explained that placing the disputed amount in escrow would allow construction to continue while the legal fight proceeded. His in-laws supplied the money within a day, enabling him to hire a new contractor.

Manesh spent two years fighting the lawsuits and more than $100,000 on legal fees. He learned that Joe had been using money from Manesh’s project to pay subcontractors on another job—“robbing Peter to pay Paul.” The building was completed in June 2009, a full year later than planned. Manesh initially found it difficult even to enter the building because seeing it made his pulse race, but after its completion he was able to feel proud of what he had achieved. The experience did not simply disappear once the construction ended. Manesh went to counseling and says he was diagnosed with PTSD, in part because he had internalized the entire crisis instead of sharing it with Nisha. In hindsight, he believes they would have handled the situation together if he had been more open. Years later, when they had the opportunity to buy another office and open another practice, they decided to approach it as a team. They have since expanded to five offices. The episode closes by tying Manesh’s recovery to its larger point: cultural and masculine expectations to provide, suppress fear, and “suck it up” can make a financial crisis worse, while letting trusted people help can make it manageable.