Kerry Jade

My car was struck first from behind, then on the passenger’s side by drunken men who’d decided to street race one another. I was eighteen years old, driving alone on the Harbor Freeway in my newly adopted city.

The Harbor Freeway is the nation’s oldest. It has abrupt turns, stop signs on the on-ramps, and no shoulders. It is a terrible place for a car accident.

Airbags deployed. I was knocked unconscious, and when I came to, I could smell gunpowder but could see nothing. My eyes required immediate emergency care, and four weeks in darkness in order to heal.

I was at the beginning of my adult life. I had no savings, and since I was new to town, I did not yet have friends to lean on.

To make matters worse, the drivers of the other vehicles had been tourists in rental cars. They’d fled the scene, and by the time their cars were turned in and the damage was matched to the report of my accident, they were on planes somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, safe from US repercussions.

I was broke with very little credit history, and at the end of this ordeal I still needed a new car.

I looked at small, used sedans that had been other people’s first cars. These were the responsible choices. I could pay them off in under a year.

But here is the financial advice that even working in a financial management company, I’ve never heard given: sometimes, responsible is synonymous with limiting, and it’s imperative to your overall happiness that you know the difference.

Think of it like this: your life is a box, and everything that comprises you, from bills to goals, fits within that box. When you’re in balance that box is nicely packed with both obligations and enjoyments. There’s room for all of it and still some space to grow. When you’re out of balance, the box is packed with too much of one and not enough of the other, or it’s too empty, or, and this is the most common scenario; the box is so full that it is bulging at the top and sides, tearing at the seams, ready to burst, and that’s no way to live a life.

Advice usually follows the “see what you can cut out” mentality. Downsize your data plan, or your cable. Switch providers to someone cheaper. And here’s the thing, that’s good advice. But it doesn’t address the fundamental problem of living in that constricting, beat-up box.

Sure, if you’re happy with your overall picture, a few minor changes that allow you to rearrange, but not drastically change anything might be all you need. But if the box itself is the problem, if it is simply too constricting for the life you want to lead, then continuing to sacrifice in order to stay within its confines is not only irresponsible, it is self-defeating.

At the time of my car accident, I was strapped. Making rent each month felt like a miracle.

Maybe for a temporary period, I could have jammed everything down that much harder to fit one of those cheap, used sedans into my picture. But I would have resented every payment I had to make on it, and who knows what damage harboring that feeling would have done to other aspects of my life.

So I left those lots where men in striped suits were hawking cars with rusted hoods, cars they’d never drive themselves.

I went down the road, and bought the vehicle that made me feel good, not the vehicle I could afford. It was a simple action that could even be called irresponsible, but in that moment that I committed to something better, without necessarily realizing it, I had committed to bettering myself.

I’m not telling you to live recklessly. I didn’t buy a Ferrari. But I did stretch my limitations rather than allow my boxed-in condition to determine my outcome.

I didn’t struggle to make the payment. In fact, it got to the point where I looked forward to making that payment on time each month, because while it was a loan agreement, it was also a contract I’d made with myself.

The new car had become a catalyst for necessary change. The job I had been working wouldn’t enable me to make the payment. I could work more hours, which would take up even more space in my already crammed box, or I could have a lesser car, reinforcing the idea that my life would be an amalgamation of lesser quality than I desired. Neither was a winning option, so I switched jobs. And after some months at the new job I was able to move into a new apartment, this one in a better neighborhood than I’d lived in before.

It wasn’t a responsible choice, because to make a responsible choice at that time would have been to make a choice in response to a set of circumstances I didn’t actually want. It would have been a commitment to limitation.

I’m no longer eighteen. My eyes have made a full recovery, and now as I look around, I see it’s time for another change. I’ve outgrown the old, and to continually rearrange the components of my current life is starting to feel like settling. I am beginning a new career, starting my own business, and while I can’t guarantee success, I do take heart every time I look out the window above the desk in my home office, and see the new car in the drive, recently purchased and ready to carry me beyond my old horizons.