My Financial Mistakes | brokeGIRLrich
One of the fun things about going back to school for accounting is that a lot of the scholarships I’ve been applying for are very similar to writing a blog post. I applied for this one last semester and they asked what my biggest financial mistake was – I bet a few long time readers can guess.
Several years ago, when I was twenty three, I went through a really bad breakup. We had been planning to get married and all my plans for the future were tied to him – what I was going to do and where we were going to live. When things ended, I was left feeling a little at sea.
During that emotional turmoil, my best friend got a job in San Francisco and was in a panic about whether or not it was a good idea to move to the opposite side of America all by herself. With my life now in pieces, I volunteered to go with her.
The thing was though, my best friend had been offered an excellent job, making a decent salary. I was about to move to the “other” coast with just my savings and no real plan. I told her that the absolute highest amount I could pay each month was $1,250.
Pretty funny considering I’d never paid more than $250 a month for rent in my life up to that point. However, I had roughly calculated that I could cover that pretty easily for about six months and by then I’d surely have landed on my feet.
Did I mention it was 2008?
And I was planning to work in theater? Certainly not the kind of career where you plan to be able to swing $1,250 in rent with your first job.
Sure enough, the best friend found us an apartment that actually cost more than $1,250 a month each, but true to her word, she paid the overage. That left me with a monthly rent bill of $1,250 plus utilities to figure out.
As I spent an incredibly fun week driving across the country for the first time from Virginia to San Francisco, I had this sinking feeling that I had made a terrible mistake. As a matter of fact, one of the first things I told her when I walked through the door of our apartment (she had beat me there by a few days), was that I might just move home and mail her a rent check every month; however, we both agreed to see how it went for a while.
So now, on the heels of the worst breakup of my life, I was unemployed and living in one of the most expensive cities in America. I was really nailing it.
I spent every day applying for jobs. I would sit in our little apartment searching job boards for anything in the arts that paid decently (a hilarious proposition). Then I would search for literally any job that would pay enough that maybe I could make the rent. Then I would search for just any job, because even if I couldn’t make the rent, at least it would help me stretch my savings.
And I had nothing. A particularly low point was as I wandered Fishermen’s Wharf one day and went into The Rainforest Café asking for a job. I had worked at one in our local mall in New Jersey for two summers and they told me I was underqualified to work at theirs because of the high traffic volume. I was winning at life.
As I wandered Fisherman’s Wharf wondering what the heck to do with my life now, if I wasn’t even qualified to waitress, I saw a cruise ship in port and thought, “they have theaters on them.” I headed back to my crazy over expensive (for me) apartment and started applying to every cruise line I could find. Within a week and a half, I was at sea as a stage manager on a cruise ship in Alaska.
Pretty much everything I made that year was forked right over to my best friend for rent and utilities, but by some crazy miracle, I didn’t wind up going wildly into debt – I just didn’t make any money.
I learned to look before I leap after that experience. I also learned that it’s much better to live below my means instead of right on the edge of what I can afford. I also learned that having some savings gives you more opportunities to take crazy chances in life – if I hadn’t had that money saved up, I never would’ve been able to move to San Francisco. If I hadn’t move to San Francisco, I probably wouldn’t have spent most of my twenties at sea, getting paid to explore the world.
