MILFORD, CT—Intermittently gnawing at an old apple core and scratching at his unruly bramble of stubble, 22-year-old Daniel Hardin admitted to reporters Thursday that he had become completely broke and homeless 10 days after taking control of his own finances. “I thought it was time to take my payments and bills into my own hands once I graduated, but barely a week after doing that, I found myself fighting off raccoons for access to the best backyard sheds to sleep behind,” said a dirt-caked Hardin, who noted that his current daily routine of finding discarded items to hawk for small change and washing his bare feet in a drainage pipe—which supplanted his previous life of mindlessly charging all his purchases and speaking endlessly on his cell phone without any thought to the costs incurred—can be traced back to the exact moment less than two weeks earlier when he took sole control of his checking and savings accounts, student loans, and credit cards. “The second I moved everything over into my name, that was it: my bank balance dropped to zero, repo guys took all my furniture, and suddenly I started being threatened by some collection agency called ShadowCash. I’m really not sure what happened—all I know is that I’ve spent the past two nights curled up next to a large transformer box for warmth.” When pressed for further comment, the misty-eyed millennial urged his peers not to make the same tragic mistake he did.


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