Unless you’re a nazi when it comes to financial responsibility, or you’re some lucky asshole that won 500 million dollars playing the lottery or something, chances are you’ve found yourself low on money before. Most of us are really shortsighted when it comes to our money, which makes buying useless shit and eating takeout multiple times a week an easy to do when we just got paid and feel momentarily rich.

But then the inevitable happens and reality sets in, which makes are available funds start to look like the contents of a 10 year old’s piggy bank (One that isn’t even that great at collecting change). Is there anything worse than that 2-3 day span right before the paycheck hits when you’re broke as fuck and find yourself eating a bowl of ice cubes with a side of breaths of air for dinner? The answer is no because not having money sucks.

Fortunately for those of us like what I described above there are things called credit cards. Credit cards are perfect if you’re like me and burn through paychecks like you’re playing with matches. Do I actually have enough money for this purchase? No. Does this piece of plastic in my wallet enable me to still be able to buy shit I don’t need like magic? You bet your ass it does. Just swipe that card and POOF, you aren’t a broke loser anymore. Well, maybe you’re still a loser, but I digress.

When you have a credit card, nothing can stop you. That is unless of course your card declines because it’s frozen due to outstanding debt or something like that. Which brings me to the point of this blog. Last week, former NBA player Kendrick Perkins revealed that this happened to him at the store recently. He went to buy something and his card declined, which surprised him because he’s rich. After doing some investigating, turns out his kids racked up $16,000 worth of purchases on the game Fortnite and that’s why his card was frozen. You can hear him talk about it here

I honestly don’t know how this is possible. I understand there’s downloadable content and whatnot, but still. I am a little out of the video game loop because I didn’t buy an Xbox until around New Years, and by then Fortnite’s hey day had came and went, so I don’t really know the ins and outs of that game. Plus I suck ass at this game because I still don’t really understand how to build and end get merked any time I’ve ever tried to play, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, how do you spend $16,000 on a video game? Turns out they were buying skins, which are pretty much just costumes that your character can wear during the game. This just makes it all the more confusing. How do you buy $16,000 worth of fake outfits that your fictional character can wear during a video game? I don’t know. What I do know is that if I ever pulled a stunt like this, my parents would have grabbed a belt and hit me with it so hard and fast you would think I was a race horse entering the final stretch at The Kentucky Derby.

I can relate to this story a little bit because a similar thing happened to me when I was younger. I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas one year when I was in middle school, and over the course of about a week I bought a bunch of downloadable content on various games. It wasn’t even close to being $16,000 worth, more like 250-300 bucks, but let’s just say my 12 year old self had to ref a lot of basketball games to pay that back. Plus, my mom ended up kicking my ass. Nothing teaches you to never spend money on your parent’s credit card ever again quite like a slap so hard your head spins around like a character on Looney Toons, and that’s just a fact. Hot take, but if you never got hit while growing up, you and your parents are all fucking pussies.

The lesson here is simple: Don’t spend thousands of dollars on fake Fortnite clothes. No strangers that you’re playing with online are going to be impressed that your character is wearing an Armani suit or whatever the fuck skins they were buying that made them so expensive. If you feel the need to spend that much money on a video game, you need help, whether that help be psychological or physical.

Perk sounded like he already hated video games before all this, so I think this little stunt might have just caused his kids to lose their Fortnite privileges. What bad timing since they don’t have school and are stuck inside, but maybe now they’ll get out in the driveway and shoot around so they can end up in the NBA someday just like their old man.