Getting My Feet Wet

So I got to thinking about what I wrote last week—this whole saving up for a weekend vacation to Catalina Island and I thought, “Wow, I sound like a spoiled little brat!” Here I am writing each week about saving money and being thrifty, meanwhile a main incentive for me to save money is so I can blow close to all of it on a weekend in paradise. How many adults do you know who can go on vacation, spend there money wining, dining, boating and snorkeling, come home broke and still be OK? None that I know of, that’s for sure! But see the thing is, I’m in a completely different situation and I have not completely realized until recently, but it’s one that is necessary to recognize in order to understand my perspective on saving money.

See, I have all the support I could ever want or need from my parents. My parents didn’t even pester me (too much) about spending less—I chose on my own to stop using my debit card. In addition, nearly all of my college expenses are paid for by my athletic scholarship for tennis. Being on a scholarship also lessens the burden for my parents to pay for out-of-state tuition. Trust me, it was not easy to earn this scholarship, I had to work my butt off and sacrifice a lot when I was in middle school and high school. But if I hadn’t put in the work back then, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Athletes are not just dumb jocks—in fact that notion might as well just be put to rest because it is so far from the truth. I can specifically speak for the tennis team when I say that being “dumb” would get us as much as a friendly, “thanks for showing your interest in this team, but get your grades up and better luck next time.” Of course this is the reason the women’s tennis team has one of the highest G.P.A’s in the athletic program. On top of maintaining good grades (which by the way if our grades slip we are assigned mandatory study hall hours), we practice three hours a day after a long day of classes—except for the winter when it’s too cold to play outside so we practice at 6 a.m., and then go to class. We also have a jam-packed schedule of competitions throughout the entire year even though our main season is technically spring. It literally feels like there is never any down time, so to have a job on top of a schedule like that is almost impossible.

I consider myself a determined, hard worker like the majority of student-athletes at Mason and I would love to have a job if I had any more time, but I simply do not. I understand that some people it may think I’m spoiled for getting $150 each week. I am aware that at the end of all this budgeting, if I have nothing saved I will still be OK. I won’t have to take out a loan or file for bankruptcy. I will still be taken care of by my parents. The important lesson to learn after all is said and done however, is that it is the fact that I want to budget my money and I don’t just want to take, take, take from my parents. I’ve realized early on that this money will not always be there for me and that this is a unique time in my life when I still have this safety net. At least I won’t be diving head first into the real world because I am trying my best to start by getting feet wet.