Although I was occasionally mortified[18] by my father’s frugality, I grew up to be just like him. Even after graduating from college and landing my first job with a decent salary, I still kept myself on an insanely meager[19] budget.
That’s not to say that I’ve never been forced to make a staggeringly[20] large purchase or two. After a decade of renting a one-bedroom, third-floor apartment in New York City, we set out to buy something bigger. Our search went on for five years―partly because it was very hard to find something we could afford, but mostly because the prospect of making such a big purchase made me physically ill.
When we finally found an apartment we liked and could afford, I had a massive panic attack. On the one hand, I had saved all this money over my whole life, presumably[21] for just this kind of purchase―a home. On the other hand, knowing I had that nest egg in the bank was what kept me sane.[22]
Or so I thought. In the end, the apartment we chose turned out to need a total gut renovation[23], wiping out my precious savings completely. This had the paradoxical[24] effect of making me feel upset while returning me to the place where I’m most comfortable: having to worry about money. And when I realized later that we had bought our apartment at the peak of the bubble[25], that I had made my biggest investment at the worst possible time, well, all I could do was laugh. It was actually liberating; I had done the scariest thing in the world, and yet the earth was still spinning.
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