The Car Accident and a Root Canal Changed My life

Table of Contents

The Upside of Financial Trauma is Opportunity

The benefit of retrospect – you’ve come a long way from the pain and trauma in the moment. Perspective is a gift going forward since the end of the story doesn’t necessarily indicate how the story will end.

2013 was a Terrible Year that Ended Up Great.

Suffice to say I was struggling. My first career position was as an Administrative Secretary making $23,000 before taxes, however I was able to upgrade to a more stressful position as a Tax Auditor Level 2 making $32,000. Things were looking up and I was always looking ahead to where I wanted to be. I was bringing in on average a little more than $2,000 a month with a $600 going to housing expenses, and $176 going to food monthly.

I was living sparingly.

How You Start Financially is Not How It Ends

To make matters worse, someone ran into me so that became on ordeal to ride around with a busted car with no AC in the dead of summer on top of a massive root canal costing as much as $1,500. Damn near one month worth of income.

Refocusing my mind, I steered toward fitness for entertainment and health and started to follow up with Spartan races and even 5K races. When money is tight, it’s the next best alternative since staying home will run up the electricity and merely waste your time.

*Free Endorphins is a great value add when broke.

After being told that I wasn’t qualified for Level 3 position, I went back to my desk and applied for a government position in DC. Long story short, I was able to pull it off by the grace of God and the story changed dramatically since. The trauma that I endured in 2013, went a long way to defining the person that I am today.

This is one of my WHYs – “Poverty is the hardest job in America.”

In the end, I took home about $25,620 and spent $23,375 on expenses. The rest went to travel and moving fees. You can definitely do what you want when you forgo doing all the things society tells you to do.

Seeing the Bright Light at the End of the Tunnel

During all of 2013, I sought to be of service to offset that fact that I didn’t have any money to give. As such, when I did have time to do any staycations in South Florida, I was teaching financial literacy. I wanted to warn the next generation of all the mistakes that I made.

You really have to find something deeper when you are pushed to a a corner. You have to try anything and everything to change. There were months where things seemed more grim but that’s the ebb and flow of life. You will hit a dark patch but you will make it through.

Sadly, most people won’t understand what you are going through mentally. Some will even laugh at your resolve. When that happens, learn to be your own best friend and learn to quite frankly love yourself. At the end of the year, I moved to DC to start my new career job paying $64,000. To get there, I had to put even more on credit card debt while living room for future issues.

Even with those plans, I didn’t know that my old job wasn’t going to cut the final check until February 2014 which made the process worst. I should have taken sick leave to offset my costs and then abruptly quit. lol

Lesson Learned. There were about Five cardinal rules as it relates to personal finances that I applied after I made those mistakes.

2013 was definitely a year in Transition

Here are some perspective driven content that can also help you on your own way. Here’s hoping you get to the opportunities down the end of your tunnel.

2013 Month to Month Breakdown

	Ending Net Worth	Growth/Loss in Dollar Value	Growth/Loss as a Percentage
January 2013	-$122,470.69	$2,529.31	2.07%
February 2013	-$121,974.79	$495.90	0.41%
March 2013	-$120,830.22	$1,144.57	0.95%
April 2013	-$120,430.97	$399.25	0.33%
May 2013	-$120,368.44	$62.53	0.05%
June 2013	-$120,397.46	-$29.02	-0.02%
July 2013	-$120,319.35	$78.11	0.06%
August 2013	-$120,397.11	-$77.76	-0.06%
September 2013	-$120,246.96	$150.15	0.12%
October 2013	-$120,036.28	-$210.68	0.18%
November 2013	-$119,504.81	$531.47	0.44%
December 2013	-$111,077.48	-$8,427.33	7.59%

These number are bit off since I started tracking here but didn’t log in all my debts.

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