Today I’m writing from an East Midlands train on it’s way to Sheffield from London to go visit the city I used to live in and see some friends.

I kind of decided on a whim to do this about three weeks ago. All told, between changing my flight, booking train tickets and a hotel room, this project to visit Sheffield and a friend in Scotland is going to cost me like $500.

I was thinking about that on this journey today and marveling at the difference a few years makes.

The brokest I’ve ever been was while I was a student in Sheffield. I was barely making any money due to my visa work restrictions and everything I spent was pretty much just sending me further into student loan debt.

The idea that in a few years I might spur of the moment decide to go back and visit for a few hundred dollars would’ve seemed laughably crazy.

In retrospect, one of the things I actually regret was not going maybe another thousand or two into debt while I was living there and traveling to other countries on the weekend like once a month. It is super cheap to fly to the rest of Europe from England and stay in a hostel for a few days, but that always seemed too expensive back then.

Even as I was thinking about what I wanted to go see and do while I’m in town, I kind of laughed because other than seeing a bunch of theater (which is kind of a requirement as a theater grad student), the only things I really used to do were walk around the parks, drink at the one pub by our school theater, and binge watch American TV shows from home. I also swam a lot at the local gym and we used to go sing karaoke a lot.

I was a pretty cheap date back then. I was also a stressed out cheap date because everything about money seemed to be held in a very, very careful balance to keep from winding up too far underwater. Or even further underwater than the $30,000 that degree cost me in the end.

So. The point of all this is that as unlikely as it may seem in your twenties, if you keep at it and track things and keep working diligently towards doing better with your finances, you may find in your thirties that you are actually ok, which is fairly awesome.