When Irony Meets Financial Disaster
There are bad financial decisions, and then there's ordering food delivery to your car while you're literally working as a delivery driver. Meet Erik, a 27-year-old from St. Paul, Minnesota, who's managed to transform a modest income into a spectacular debt catastrophe.
Erik earns $3,400 monthly as an electrical technician, supports a wife and two young children, and somehow accumulated more than $133,000 in debt. The debt spreads across a dozen Affirm loans and multiple maxed-out credit cards, many carrying interest rates above 30%. What makes this particularly fascinating—in a train-wreck sort of way—is that Erik appears remarkably unbothered by the whole situation.
Spending $10,000 On A $3,400 Budget
During a recent appearance on financial advisor Caleb Hammer's YouTube show, Erik revealed that he and his wife were burning through over $10,000 monthly despite bringing in far less. Fast food and delivery services alone consumed $1,500 to $2,000 each month. Add another $250 weekly on groceries, and you start to see the problem.
The peak absurdity? Erik orders DoorDash meals delivered to his parked car while working as a DoorDash driver. "Sometimes you're too lazy to get out of the car," Erik explained with startling casualness. Hammer stared at him in disbelief before responding, "Doordashing to your parked car, while you're out there doordashing is insane."
At the time of his financial audit, Erik's checking account was overdrawn by $255.
A Vehicle Debt Horror Show
Erik owes $41,000 on a Toyota Camry he purchased while unemployed. That sits alongside a $16,000 balance from a previously repossessed Ford F-150. He also owes Minnesota $7,000 for unemployment benefits he continued collecting after quitting a contract job.
Despite this financial chaos, Erik showed minimal remorse during the audit. He smirked while discussing his spending habits and initially attempted to shift blame. "My wife kind of led me into some debt," Erik said. "When we got married, I took on some of her debt, but it became my debt."
A Dysfunctional Financial Partnership
The situation gets stranger. Erik takes 70% of his wife's monthly income to pay bills, even though he admits he doesn't trust her with money. The couple keeps their finances separate to "avoid complications," but this approach has only multiplied the dysfunction.
Hammer didn't mince words, describing Erik as "a creature," "a degenerate," and ultimately "the villain" for prioritizing junk food and impulse purchases over his family's wellbeing. "You are the villain. You take all of her money," Hammer told him. "You have kids and yet this is how the finances end up. You're the villain."
Erik declared bankruptcy four years ago, but clearly nothing changed. Hammer assigned him a 0/10 financial score across every category and warned that another bankruptcy might be inevitable without serious behavioral changes.
The $130,000 Surprise
Perhaps the most striking moment came after the audit when Hammer called Erik's wife. When asked how much debt she thought Erik had accumulated, she guessed $4,000. The actual number? $133,779.
That communication gap tells you everything you need to know about how this financial disaster happened in the first place.