Until 1996, I was searching for the key to my life. With two failed college attempts in 1991 and 1993, I went through a mild depression, feeling useless, unfulfilled. It wasn’t till I took a huge gamble and moved to Washington DC, with little more than a trunk full of clothes, a sleeping bag, a bunch of CD’s, an Amtrak ticket and a hundred dollars, and began a journey that jump started my career and began to fill a great emptiness in my life.This journey started off as a real test of mettle. I happened to find a help-desk job literally days after moving to the area, but my first days were a struggle. I had to make the money stretch as far as I could resorting to eating Ramen noodles, French fries with cheese slices, and not much more. Hell I was so broke I couldn’t even afford a lamp, so when the sun went down on a cold winter’s day, that was it. Sure things got better after a while. My father brought down some of my essential items from my apartment like my futon, a lamp, my dresser, a few kitchen items, but I still lived like a pauper for quite a long time. This life wasn’t bad, hell it seemed so much better than doing nothing in Northern NY.

I hit one of my first major setbacks in mid-1997 when I lost my job, and couldn’t find another. I had to abandon the notion of living in DC, and moved back to Northern NY, the same ol’ area that beat my sanity down in years past. I took a few months off working to contemplate my next move. Living off my unemployment checks gave me larger paydays that pretty much any job I could find in the area. It wasn’t till the beginning of 1998 when I got my career back on track, finding a job in Northern NY that was about an hour away from my father’s house paying again a paltry sum. I managed to get by, largely due to the fact that I lived with my father. I did well enough that I was able to own my first new car, a 1998 Dodge Neon R/T.
Then came the year that tested my sanity, put me in virtual financial ruin, and almost destroyed my life. In February of 1999, I decided that working for pennies was not going to be my mantra, and I began a search for a job back in the DC area. I found a job that was going to pay almost 3x the salary than I was currently making, and of course as soon as they offered it I took it without hesitation. I remember driving back from the breakfast interview with my friend Scott I kept on screaming out “fifty-five thousand dollars!” I decided to help my friends who were struggling to move down with me, and share a nice rental townhouse in Rockville MD. I really felt that I had finally made it, that I was now getting paid for what I was worth.
Of course all of this got to my head. I felt beneath the brand new car that I had just bought and quickly dispatched of it, opting for a one-year used 1998 Golf GTI VR6. The payments were close to double for what I was paying with the Neon, but who cares, I am getting paid, right? But quickly my new found empire crumbled. The new job that I got fell short of cash, and I lost my job. No big problem I would just find another one, but I let my big head get in the way of the big picture. I landed a new job a couple weeks later, but I saw ethical issues with it and left within a day. After that I could not find anything on the market. To make matters worse, my friends that I had brought down with me decided to move back to Northern NY. So here I was stuck with a huge rental payment for a townhouse, a car payment that was nearly double what I was paying, and out of a job. So I had to swallow my pride and move back to Northern NY again.
It took me many years to help fix my credit after this debacle. It just wasn’t the car payment, but credit cards, phone bills; I am still paying for these ‘lack of judgment’ issues to this very day. With the help of my wife I was able to right myself financially. This isn’t to say that we didn’t spend money wisely all the time. It’s only now after re-visiting the lessons of the past that we are able to put things into perspective. We now live in Upstate NY, I make good money, and we are smartly planning for the future.
This entire long-winded story has a purpose, to help remind people that we can settle for just ‘good’. To continue to strive for the very best will put most people in the poor house. Even if you are able to achieve top status, usually it’s at a terrible price. Overextending your credit, living well beyond your means, working ridiculous hours to make up for the lost wages you need. There is another solution, to settle for your personal best without going overboard, to say “no I don’t need a Hummer H2, I can settle for the nice new car I already own”. Sure there are splurges that are necessary, when they are affordable. That nice new LCD TV is not outrageously priced if you save for it in advance. Impulse purchasing is what business wants you to do. They want you to pay just the required payment on your 14 credit cards so you are in debt to them for 10, 20, 30 years or more. This is why they continue to push your available credit limit higher and higher.
We as a society need to learn that keeping a car for over five years is not a bad thing, or that owing a $250k home is smarter than scraping every nickel and dime for a $600k house that the shadow of foreclosure looms every day for years. Once we have learned to settle for what we have, with the caveat of owning what you can afford, only then will we not only financially better off, but finally happy with ourselves. I can say I am much happier now that I have ever been.