The Spectacular Collapse of My Six-Figure Life

White-collar Americans like to think poverty is something that happens to other people. That there’s a line, and if you have the right degree, the right experience, and the right work ethic, you’re on the safe side of it. Your bank account might thin out between jobs, sure. But with some basic credentials and a little financial discipline, you’d never end up in real trouble, wondering whether you can keep yourself housed and fed.

Monica Andreasen, 45, believed that too. She spent more than a decade working in executive recruiting in Colorado, including in Boulder and Denver, earned six figures, and was once named division director of the year out of 425 offices globally. Then, over the span of a few years, she had premature twins who needed round-the-clock care, left a troubled relationship, and lost her job. By 2024, she was lining up outside a government office before sunrise for childcare assistance and working at a grocery store for $11 an hour in rural Kansas.

For the first installment of Money Feelings, Andreasen talks about the strange, disorienting, and occasionally clarifying experience of going broke while still looking, on paper, like someone it shouldn’t happen to.

Life Before I Went Broke

I started out with a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and quickly decided I was not going to support my lifestyle on a journalist’s salary. So I went into sales, and then into executive recruiting, and really spent about 20 years in that space. I managed teams, ran divisions [in Kansas City, and later, in Denver and Boulder, Colorado]. In 2011, I received the award of division director of the year. I was the number one producer. Then I went off on my own in 2017. I partnered with a woman who owned her own Denver-based small boutique staffing firm.

I was a six-figure earner most years. When I say that, sometimes people are like, “Oh my gosh, well, how do you not have a retirement?” I mean, no. I made $125,000, $150,000 comfortably. I’ve never been one that’s great at saving or investing money. I wish I could say something different about myself in that area.

I was pretty much your stereotypical Republican corporate America woman. Real bootstraps kind of woman. I would’ve been the first one arguing against the fact that there was a real wage gap or gender gap. I didn’t really recognize that. My whole view of women and how women are treated in this country completely went up on its head after I had my children [in 2019].

I’d been told by a doctor at 25 that I probably would not conceive. I took that advice and mentally prepared myself that children probably weren’t going to be a part of my future. And then at the youthful age of 38, I became pregnant with twins. I had only been dating the boys’ dad for a couple of months. We ended up getting married. That really flipped my world upside down.

My Professional Freefall

The boys were born eight weeks premature and needed extreme care for the first year. They had to be fed a special formula every three hours, 24 hours a day. I went from running a business to being a full-time caretaker.

Their dad suffered from addiction. I was having my own alcohol struggles too. The transition went pretty quickly into leaving [that relationship]. When I left the boys’ dad, I didn’t even have my own bank account. I drained it the boys’ first year and even had to dip into my 401(k). I had not one penny to my name. Employment options were off the table. I had no money for daycare.

I moved in with my dad, and eventually was able to jump back in with my business partner; we had a couple of large projects going on. I was able to rent a house, so me and the boys were living on our own. I was paying a full-time nanny to watch the boys during the day. But then as soon as the project work ran down, my bills were so high—it wasn’t sustainable. I got court permission to move me and the boys from Colorado to Kansas City in June of 2023 because my whole family’s here.

Then I got a job doing executive recruiting again, working back in corporate America. Oh, I thought I was on top of the world. I thought I had it back. I had my $80,000 draw, which was more guaranteed money than I’d had the entire time I was working for myself. I had health insurance, almost 100 percent covered. I don’t think I paid more than a few dollars a month out of pocket.

It lasted 90 days.

I had just gotten back from the boys’ Valentine’s Day preschool party, and I got a Zoom link request from two managers. I got on the Zoom about 60 seconds later, and I had to decide on that call whether I wanted to get fired or if I wanted to resign. It came at me out of nowhere. They had overhired. Anybody that didn’t have a placement in the first 90 days, they ended up either being forced to resign or firing. I chose to be fired, and I’m glad I did because I was able to get on Medicaid and assistance.

[After that,] I thought, gosh, well, no big deal. It wasn’t like I was scared to go find another job. Then it seemed like every door was just closed, or the base pay was something like $50,000 and I have to cover insurance and childcare and everything else. I couldn’t make anything work that was on the table being offered to me. After six months of unsuccessfully looking to get back into my industry, I took a job at a grocery store.

What Poverty Looked Like For Me

I’ve had to go stand in the [Department of Children and Families] line about every quarter since February of 2024. [The office] is literally a government building that sits under a bridge, an underpass. It is just a drab building. You have to line up. They don’t open the doors until eight. It does not matter what the weather is outside. You line up in the order that you got there. There’s people being dropped off by buses. There’s people that ride bicycles there. There’s a lot of women with babies, in all kinds of conditions. I’ve been there in the rain, in the snow, in the heat. The line just wraps around the building until they open the door at eight. And the most stressful part is childcare. If you’re there for childcare, they only take two appointments a day. If you’re not one of the first two in line, you have to come back another day.

I’d be sitting there thinking [the other people] have it so much worse off. But then I’m in the same exact line that they’re in. That’s when it hit really hard. The drive home from that office is probably my most shameful time that I can think of. Just in the car alone, like: What am I doing to myself and my children?

It’s very hard to keep yourself physically fit when you’re eating your kids’ leftovers. [You’re] eating fast food more than you normally would on the treat days, and then your meal is whatever the kids don’t eat. The leftover chicken nuggets or fries, melted ice cream. Being the garbage disposal is what I felt like.

There were a couple of months I didn’t know where my car payment was going to come from, and that was only $175. My parents have filled in the gaps for necessities. So I did have that safety net. But I think getting into credit card debt was the biggest mind screw for me. I’ve always been anti-credit card. Before my kids, I only had one for business travel. I never spent a dime I didn’t actually have.

My boys know that there’s certain things we don’t have money to do. They know their friends that have two parents have enough money to go do that stuff. We were invited to go to Urban Air, and I didn’t have the money. Same thing with Topgolf. At a restaurant, they don’t get a Happy Meal. We’re going to get the $5 value meal that we can eat for $2.50 a piece versus $7 a piece.

There’s nowhere to climb out of $13 an hour into being okay. The gap between qualifying for any type of help and being able to fully sustain you and your children’s lives, that’s a huge gap—the livable wage gap.

The Mind Fuck of Going Broke

You’re treated very, very, very differently. I sit on the rec board in my town. I’m the first woman that’s ever been on that board. At the first meeting, when the board members were going around introducing themselves, I led off with my kids. I got cut off right when I got done with my kids. They didn’t even let me get to my professional part, because everybody in the room assumed that I didn’t have a professional life before working at the grocery store, I guess. I had to interrupt and say I wasn’t finished. I did have a professional life that’s relevant, so let me tell you about it.

I felt that switch just from a societal perspective immediately upon becoming a mother. I felt like a second class citizen, and I had never felt that way before in my entire life.

I have two great mentors , and both of them knew me as an overachiever. I still, to this day, struggle looking at either one of them. I struggle having a relationship with them, and I don’t know how to pinpoint it. Part of it’s shame. Everything that I equate to really being bad in my life, I kind of equate to that version of my professional life.

Back then, if you would’ve told me, brace yourself, because I have a crystal ball and this is the situation you’re going to be in, I probably would’ve told you that I’d rather not be here than have to deal with that.

My political views have changed 180. Back in my corporate days, I was your perfect kind of Fox News conservative. Not proud to say that now. I’m very progressive now. But it’s also affected my social life. I also had to shut down my LinkedIn account. I had 8,200 followers. I got so much hate, messages and threats, from men with headshots, men that I used to work with, telling me to shut up, that this wasn’t my place because of the political stuff.

What I’m Building Now

You’re catching me right in my transition [out of poverty]. Literally, my food stamps just ran out this month. They will not renew next month. And honestly, I was never going to get there continuing to work at the grocery store.

We moved down to Paola, Kansas from my mom’s house in Kansas City in September of 2024, right when the boys started kindergarten. My dad and I built a house together. He financed the house, but I actually drew the design. So that’s where we live now, but my dad owns the home.

I’m kind of an accidental activist. I started going to school board meetings. I was just curious. It’s like, well, I don’t have anything else to do, so I’m going to get real nosy about what’s going on. And I started uncovering things. I wrote four editorials for my local county paper. I met some members of our local Democrat chapter.

I got on Substack in January [of 2026] and just started writing and putting it out there. I’ve kind of just accidentally fallen into all of this. But now I truly feel like it’s my calling and my direction. It’s a subscription model. I didn’t know anything about it. I couldn’t believe that you could actually make money off subscriptions. So essentially my readers can subscribe to me for free, or they can pay $6 a month or $60 a year to support the work. It’s just a way to support independent journalism essentially. My Substack has really taken off, and I’m just now starting to feel some footing underneath myself.

I get up at three o’clock every morning. I’m a morning writer. That’s my time. I’m completely invigorated. Even though what I write about is depressing, it’s working towards a better future. I actually feel like for once in my life, I’m positively contributing to something greater than myself and those immediately around me.

The boys are incredible. In school, they’re doing very well. I have one that reads at a fourth grade level and he’s in second grade. I coach their soccer team. We had a little extra money, so we went to St. Louis, we went up into the Arch, we went to a baseball game. Just getting out and being able to have some of those experiences that have been tougher to have.

I’ve already worked up some things with savings accounts. I’m really looking at the whole financial picture completely differently. I think I’m proudest of my sobriety and the mental clarity that I’ve been able to maintain given the extraordinary circumstances. I’ve mentally never been more sharp or clear in my entire life.

I’m always worried about slipping back into poverty. I will forever be a little bit traumatized by the DHS lines, the quarterly waiting in line, and the thought of going without just personal basic needs. I just never want to have to go back into survival mode. Until we start taking care of mothers in this country, I don’t think much is going to change. One thing that would really help would be more women in leadership, and I’m talking about politics. I don’t think women and children are going to be okay until women are somehow able to take some of that power and make those policies.