My Greatest Accomplishment Ever

I was never great at sports. I was good. I played on a lot of competitive hockey, baseball, and volleyball teams throughout my youth. I never won anything huge, though. No provincial championships, no MVP awards, no All-Star teams.

I have never had major success with music. I’ve played in numerous bands, and have had the opportunity to travel parts of Canada and the US, as well as record a few albums. I’ve played with a number of fantastic bands, but haven’t really “made it” in any real sense.

One thing I’ve been very good at, however, is failing. I’ve made more mistakes than I could ever begin to expound in this short space. Some mistakes I’ve learned from, others I seem to repeat endlessly until I simply give up trying to correct myself.

One of those mistakes I kept making until about a year ago was with regard to my money.

When I was in high school I got a job in the tenth grade at a grocery store. I worked about 30 hours a week, which combined with school and the reality of living in a small town left very little time to really spend any of the money I was making. By the time I moved on three years later, I had saved up enough to buy my grandmother’s car, which I bought off her estate when she passed away.

Saving when you live at home in a small town is easy. It takes little discipline, because unless you can get to the closest city, the most you’re going to spend money on is food, which I could avoid most of the time by eating recently expired sandwiches from the store deli. The biggest items I purchased in high school were my guitars and a few guitar accessories.

When I left for college, I had no idea how to manage my money. I didn’t get a job, even though looking back I realize that time spent playing xbox likely could have been better spent doing something a little more productive. The food at college was absolutely horrible and they did not provide us with a student card that could be transferred to neighbouring food services, so we were either stuck eating deep fried k-rap every day, or spending money on something at least mildly fresher from Subway across the street.

I gave a lot of my money to Subway.

When I dropped out of college, I got a job at the grocery store I worked at through high school. After about six months of that, I quit and joined a band that took me around Ontario and the US. Those four months were some of the most memorable months of my life.

At the end of those four months, I had $12 in my bank account.

Fast forward just under a year, I had been hired by a church in Central Ontario as the music pastor. I was hired through a contract, which meant I wasn’t paying taxes on anything I was earning. I lived in the home of a sweet lady and her son, renting a room for a few hundred a month. I was working quite a bit, most weeks 50-60 hours a week, which didn’t leave a lot of time to prepare my own meals (not that I would know what to do anyway).

I ate out.

A lot.

I also bought a new bike, a pedal case for my guitar pedals, a MacBook, paid for personal training, and likely purchased a few other things as well.

At the end of my year in Barrie, I had saved nothing.

And owed over $5000 in taxes.

I had about $2000 on my credit card.

And owed my father about $5000.

$12,000 in the hole.

Thankfully, my dad is brilliant with his money. When my parents were 30 (5 years before I was born), they retired.

At 30.

My dad was incredibly helpful with helping me come up with a plan. The plan was:

figure out what expenses I had, such as phone, car, gas, etc.
figure out how much spending money I’d need per week.
cut that figure in half.
live on next to nothing (I lived at home, and had food and board paid for at about $100 per month. Love my parents.)
put everything else towards paying down my debt.

This was a hard adjustment for me. I had lived as though my debit card had no end. Starbucks stops, Subway lunches, trips to the movies and paying for dates were part of daily life.

I signed up for a PC Financial credit card, which at the time was offering to transfer your credit balance from another card at a rate of 0.99% for 6 months. During those six months, I put my money towards my tax debt, as it had a higher interest rate. When the six months were up, I split my payments.

My credit card was paid in a matter of a couple months.

My tax debt was paid off not long after.

The only debt remaining was with my father, who agreed to a payment plan of $200 every two weeks until things were paid off. The difference between that amount and my expenses/spending money were put into savings.

In July of this year, I was able to purchase a MacBook Pro, fully loaded.

With cash.

This past month, having ensured that I had enough saved up in my emergency fund, I made the decision to accelerate my payments towards my debt with my dad.

Two payments later, and as of last Wednesday I am completely debt free.

At the end of it all, there was no award ceremony. There were no cheering fans. There were no autographs to sign (not even on a cheque; I paid cash).

Just the feeling of pride of having accomplished the greatest task I had ever set out to achieve.

I got my life back in order.

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