This morning, my dad and I started exploring options for moving all of my stuff up to Minneapolis. There are about a zillion options – full service movers, shipping containers, trucks and trailer rental – and none of them are cheap. All morning, my dad kept pushing one of the most economical options –cardboard PODS. Somewhere in the midst of discussing their sturdiness and stability, I stated that I didn’t trust corrugated cardboard to protect my fairly nice pine furniture, adding that “at the end of the day, it’s my money and therefore I need to feel good about the decision.”
That phrase is one that has come up fairly often in conversations between my dad and me – over topics like prom dress prices, cell phone plans, and out of state tuition – only now it’s coming out of my mouth. And it sounds incredibly foreign.
And that’s when I realized that there is a strong transformative effect in achieving financial independence. I spent the first 18 years of my life making decisions with parental supervision because I was a minor. And for the next four years, they still had a level of authority over my decisions. They paid for my tuition, rent, insurance, and groceries, so where I went to school, where I lived, and what I ate were all subject to their influence. For the first time in my life, I’m able to make decisions regarding what I want completely on my own, without negotiating anyone, and without compromise.
It sounds minor, but it’s not. For one thing, it teaches a level of financial competence and self-reliance. You learn how to file your own taxes, invest your own money, and negotiate your expenses. But you also learn a great deal about yourself. How we spend our money and how we spend our time say a great deal about who we are. Making big financial decisions forces you to make priorities and really parse out what you value. See, the average new UNC grad makes $43,000 a year – more than two times the “living wage” for the most expensive North Carolina counties. We have a lot of expendable income and can afford just about anything – material things like a house and designer shoes, but also things like philanthropic donations, investments in our future financial security, and visits to our far flung college friends. Just not all of it at once. We have to plan accordingly and sacrifice in other areas. And research has shown that the ability and confidence to make these decisions has a huge effect on happiness and well-being. It’s not the money part of financial independence that makes people happy; it’s the autonomy to decide what to be and go be it. Personally, I think that keeping a budget and managing my 401(k) will be the easy part. I’m more overwhelmed by the task of making decisions and creating the most fulfilling life with the resources I have at hand. See, I like a lot of things: visiting my friends and family, yoga, hiking, books, my church, the idea of being able to retire early, making aimless purchases at Target – I could go on for days. The budgeting requires you to attach order and magnitude to the things that you value, which is daunting. So more than anything, I’m really intrigued to see what young professionalism reveals about me.
I’m also really curious about what happens if you skip this step entirely. For three years in college, I was on the “ring by spring” trajectory. It’s crazy to me that, at this point, I would have been leaving one shared nest only to start laying the groundwork for another. With joint checking accounts comes joint priorities – joint priorities that are intertwined with “his & hers” agendas and further complicated by the fact that I have values that haven’t been tested and proven in the real world. It kind of scares me to admit this, but to put it frankly, until then, I can’t be completely sure of my own nature at this point in my life. (My dad’s a test engineer. Clearly the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.) I don’t think I would’ve been able to figure it out with all of the negotiating and compromising that happen when someone else’s values are so closely entangled.
Now, I’m not saying that getting married early is ubiquitously wrong or that there's a minimum amount of time someone should spent being on their own. People are different. Couples are different. Their circumstances are different. And I don't suppose it matters all that much if you luck out and marry the right person for who you are and who you become. I just think that there’s a tradeoff. Just as getting married at an older age puts some women at risk for missing out on motherhood, I think that getting married young puts some women at risk for seeing themselves more as part of a couple and less as a complete person. Therefore, I do have a bit of apprehension regarding the whole idea that being attached adds to your perceived social worth – where “a Southern belle is nothing but a pretty face and pearls without a man to eat her cooking and appreciate her cleaning.” And I worry about girls who are raised to believe that goodness and Godliness come from being an obedient and submissive wife. Because it all sends the message that happiness and self-worth can’t be achieved on one’s own. Especially not for girls.
But don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a feminist manifesto about how “I don’t need no man.” I do want to get married one day. I' m thinking someone like a hunky orthodontist who likes to read philosophy and go hiking and build things and fix stuff, but as I said, I can't be too sure. Nonetheless, a guy who makes me feel soft and dainty, feminine and warm. I want to live a happy life and have a good relationship full of compromise, communication, and negotiation. But first I want a little bit of time dedicated to me. I want to have a strong sense of what I’m least and most willing to compromise over. And know the difference between compromising and keeling over like a doormat. And I want to have surety that I’m accompanying this fellow through life because I truly enjoy his companionship – not because of the way he takes care of my tax returns or worse, because I can’t make decisions on my own or that I need to be loved by someone else because I don’t love myself.
Some people think it’s a little crazy – to find a sense of excitement and empowerment over getting cut off from mom and dad and getting nudged out of the nest, but I think my Chinese fortune cookie from today’s lunch has it right on:
