This past week I was visiting a few schools that I’m considering applying to next year. I’ve been really carefully weighing this decision for the last year. One of the things I get asked at each school is “what makes you want to apply here?” While I have a good answer for each school, each time I answer them, there’s a voice in the back of my head laughing it’s butt off because it’s so aware of how often I just plunge into crazy situations without a plan.

And how un-flippin-believably expensive it is each time.

• Plunged into an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies in another country.
• $30,000 of expensive.

• Plunged into moving to the other side of America without a job or a plan.
• $15,000 of expensive.

• Plunged into buying my first car, aptly nicknamed Monster.
• $3,500 of expensive not even including all the tows, alternator belts and tires it kept eating.

• Plunged into buying the first pair of headphones I could find when mine broke.
• $5 of expensive. Multiple times in a row.

Ok, the $5 of expensive isn’t a huge thing in and of itself, but this crazy plunging habit I’ve got does add up at times, even in the tiny amounts.

• Plunged into a new tattoo.
• $80 of expensive.

It’s the financial version of a bad, spur of the moment haircut (for real though, the first time I cut my hair into a “bob” on a whim, the way the crazy hairstylist styled it made me look like Toad from Super Mario Brothers and I went home freaking out until my roommate just yelled at me to get in the shower and we’d just start fresh and figure out a way to fix it).

Incidentally, I’m not 100% sure what the financial equivalent of that shower would be to fix crazy financial plunges, but there really needs to be one. And a good, calm roommate who can talk sense into you while you ramble frantically about needing to drop out of school to help rescue Princesses as you tug at the alarmingly puffy pieces of your hair.

…I’m not sure where I was going with that analogy.

Anyway, over the years I’ve found I have a definitely plunging problem. I get restless and need a change and the next thing I know I’m draining a bank account to have an adventure.

That is, until I started getting more personal finance savvy. Since then, I’ve definitely learned that my plunging is a major problem (let’s not even get into the compound interest I’ve lost on $45,000 since I was 27 – which I’d possibly be up if I’d skipped the random M.A. and living in San Francisco for a year) and these days it’s relegated to cheaper plunges like buying Five Below headphones a bazillion times before admitting defeat and putting some effort into researching a good pair, paying slightly more and having them last longer (that is until you get them tangled in seat while boarding an airplane and tear the jack off the cable right before a six hour flight – it wasn’t traumatic. Not at all).

I’ve learned a lot from each of these mistakes too. Did you know that with a little planning and halfway decent grades, there are tons of ways to get Master’s degrees that are fully funded?!?

My crazy move across the country was insanely expensive, but I actually managed to pay that rent (to this day, I’m still a little shocked) – and while I would never, ever recommend that you just jump in clear off the deep end of financial responsibility, I learned that where there is a will, there is often a way, which has been an important lesson I’ve held onto over the last decade.

I learned don’t buy the first car you look at. Have patience. Comparison shop. Take it for a test drive (yes, I bought the thing without driving it #poorlifechoices #iwasnineteen).

Are you a plunger? What has it cost you? And taught you?