No Debt, No Degree, No Regrets

I was born in 1980 and graduated high school in 1998 at 17, right in the middle of the great “everyone must go to college” push. Teachers said it. Counselors said it. Commercials said it. College wasn’t presented as an option — it was presented as the only door out of the building.

But here’s the thing about me at 17: I already knew I was on my own.

I’d been getting kicked out of my mom’s house since I was 13 or 14. By high school, I understood something most of my classmates wouldn’t figure out until their first student loan statement arrived: if I signed up for debt, that debt was mine. There was no safety net under me, no parent who was going to swoop in and make payments if things went sideways. Whatever I borrowed, I’d be paying back alone, probably while also paying rent alone.

That clarity changed everything.

The vocational loophole

I was always an artistic kid, and I’d already decided I was going to be a chef. So when I found out my high school had a vocational program, my teenage brain did some math that I’m still proud of: if I go to culinary school through high school, then high school pays for it. Not me.

So that’s what I did. I went to culinary school straight out of high school, got my degree, and walked into the working world owing exactly nothing.

Reality check, served cold

I worked in restaurants, including Classic Residence by Hyatt near the Aventura Mall, and that’s where fine dining got its hooks in me. The precision, the artistry — I loved it.

What I did not love was discovering how brutally hard it is to climb the ranks of a professional kitchen. I started at garde manger — which sounds fancy and French but means you’re the lowest rung on the ladder, making salads and garnishes while everyone above you gets to do the actual cooking. The hours were punishing, the pay was insulting, and the path upward was long and steep.

So I stopped. And here’s where the college crowd would call me a quitter, and here’s where I’d disagree: I pivoted. There’s a difference.

I went to beauty school next. Almost finished cosmetology school, actually — but working in a hair salon while training showed me the reality of that career too, and I realized it wasn’t for me either. So I left that as well.

Two career paths explored, two career paths abandoned, and you know how much debt I was carrying from all that exploring? Zero. I got to test-drive entire industries without mortgaging my future to do it.

The plot twist nobody saw coming

Then life took me to Pennsylvania, where I did something completely different: I worked for Penske and became a school bus driver. Yes, the artistic kid who wanted to be a chef learned how to drive big trucks. And before the 2008–2009 crash hit, I’d earned myself a pretty nice pension out of it.

Try doing that with $100,000 in student loans breathing down your neck. When you don’t owe anybody anything, you can afford to change your mind. You can afford to take the weird job, move to the new state, start over. Debt doesn’t just cost you money — it costs you options.

Where I am now

Here’s the part that makes the whole winding road worth it: two years ago, I started working as a wellness chef for a couple at a country club. Today, I’m their personal assistant and house manager — and I still do the daily cooking. Private chef work. If you’ve ever worked in the restaurant industry, you know that’s the job everyone dreams about. No 14-hour line shifts, no screaming expo, no garde manger purgatory. Just cooking for people who appreciate it, in a role I built for myself.

That kid making salads at the bottom of the kitchen ladder? She didn’t quit cooking. She just refused to climb someone else’s ladder — and ended up skipping to the top of her own.

I’m 46 years old. I have no debt. I have an excellent credit score. And I have to give credit where it’s due: my mom — yes, the same one — helped me over the years, including helping me pay off a credit card and establish credit in the first place. People are complicated. The woman who put me out as a teenager also helped set me up financially as an adult, and both of those things are true at the same time.

The part they don’t tell you at graduation

Here’s what nobody said in 1998, and what I want to say to every kid being herded toward a loan application today: a college degree is not a guarantee. It never was. Plenty of people walk out with a diploma and $100,000 in debt and no clear way to pay it off — and the debt is real whether the dream job materializes or not.

I’m not anti-college. I’m anti-pretending-there’s-only-one-path. My path went through a high school vocational program, a professional kitchen, a hair salon, a Penske truck, and a school bus — and it ended up exactly where I needed to be, with my name on zero loan documents.

Know what you can carry. Know who’s actually going to be carrying it. For me, at 17, the answer was “me, alone” — and that one honest moment of clarity is why I’m debt-free at 46.

Not bad for a kid who kept getting kicked out of the house.