Beans and Rice

If you’ve ever listened to Dave Ramsey, you’re familiar with his “beans and rice, rice and beans” way of living.  He is emphasizing the amount of lifestyle cutbacks that are necessary for someone who is serious about getting out of debt.  My goal was similar, although in a sort of reversed fashion – I had to plan for ten months of living expenses in Paris on top of a massive tuition payment that was due by mid-January, all without going into debt.

As you may have guessed, I keep a pretty detailed spreadsheet of my monthly budget, a practice that was immensely helpful getting me out of my old debts and in making future projections. It even contains fancy little charts to compare monthly spending patterns ever since 2003:

Planning for one month with a steady income and relatively predictable expenses is simple; planning for ten months about a year into the future in a foreign country with the knowledge that I will have zero income can be overwhelming.  Naturally, this required a separate spreadsheet where I could figure out how much extra cash I would have each month when I entered estimated savings, the cost of rent, and things such as utility bills and transportation expenses.  Finally I reached a conclusion: save every penny.

Thus began the cuts.  Eating out was narrowed to down to once a week or maybe twice for special occasions.  Aside from some pants bought with gift cards, clothing purchases went from a few items every month down to two shirts and two pairs of shoes purchased over the past 10 months.  The money that I spent on birthday gifts decreased by about fifty percent.  Frugality also had the effect of making me forget about my own recent past - I found myself unable to handle social media for several weeks because of how materialistic and wasteful everyone suddenly seemed, particularly as we entered the holidays.

The hardest cut happened at Christmas.  Our family had the annual discussion about how we spend too much every year, how we got too caught up in the commercialism and materialism of the holidays, how we might be encouraging the children to be greedy, blah, blah, blah – but for the first time I agreed with them.  We decided to keep gift exchanges within the individual nuclear family units which meant that only my parents received anything from me.  My gift to the nieces and nephews was... NOTHING.  The year prior I took the entire family, all sixteen of us, to Disney World.  My fall from Aunt of the Year status was brutal.

Before June, I had little reason not to fudge on whatever budget that I set for myself each month which usually meant stealing from the savings till.  Now, coupled with an overwhelming desire to live in something slightly more comfortable than a cardboard box while in Paris, my biggest defense has been to translate unnecessary purchases into future expenses.  For example, a new dress might equate to a month’s worth of groceries, or that to-die-for purse could instead be a round-trip train ticket to Normandy for a weekend getaway (I never claimed to be saving only for necessities).

By now you also have probably realized that I did not go to Paris in March.  Securing a spot at Le Cordon Bleu required filling out an application and paying a non-refundable application fee.  I was familiar with this rule to an extent – I lost $35 on my Greenville Tech application – but the LCB fee was $2,000, enough to make me wait until after I closed on my house and found out the amount of my annual bonus.

It was mid-December by the time that the latter occurred and the budget was still on target.  I went online almost immediately, filling out the application and paying my fee.  A few minutes later Alexandre, a student representative that had been in contact with me back in June, called to ask if I still had plans to enroll.  When I informed him that I just submitted my application, he said in his thick French accent, “Oh, I am sorry.  The spring session is full.  But you come in June, yes?  Paris is very nice in June.”

I felt a tight clenching inside my stomach. “Well, I’m sure that it is just lovely, but I wanted to go in March!  I had the whole year already planned out!  By Thanksgiving I was supposed to have my diploma and be able to launch into my new career!” All of these thoughts ran through my head for a split second, but I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice as instead I replied, “Okay, we can switch my application to June.”

After hanging up the phone, the initial shock and disappointment was quickly replaced by a great sense of relief thanks to a sudden stroke of genius brought on by years of math training: A three-month delay meant three additional months of savings!  Those extra savings would translate into better housing options in Paris, more opportunity for “extracurricular” activities, and maybe even a little nest egg for when I returned to the states.

Looking back now I’m not sure how March would have been possible even if the school had an opening, or it would have been possible but I would be barely scraping by for nine months.  The extension has allowed me more time to investigate living expenses and I have uncovered all sorts of unexpected costs, not to mention all of the surprise expenses back home over the last few months.

The timing was perfect for more than just financial reasons, though.  In January I turned in my four-month notice at work which provided plenty of time for a smooth transition of my team and responsibilities.  Spring is one of my favorite times around the Greenville area, and I wouldn't have to miss some of my favorite events such as Biltmore’s Festival of Flowers, Artisphere, and the Greek Festival.  I would be able to come home for the holidays from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day because we have no classes. Most importantly, I was able to hold my precious nephew Reilly a few hours after he was born at the end of March.  My impatience to get to LCB had muddied my judgment, but once again God very graciously forced me onto the better path.

While the non-refundable application fee strengthened my resolve to press forward, it was chump change compared to the non-refundable tuition, and I knew paying that off would be my "no turning back" point.  The full tuition was due on April 18, eight weeks before classes began.  My payment options were a bank draft or a credit card.  The former would cost $960 while the latter would cost $550, a fee charged by LCB, so naturally I chose the lesser of two evils (almost 60,000 bonus miles on my credit card didn't hurt, either).

Taking a deep breath, I began charging one-fifth of the total to my card each Monday in March to avoid going over my credit limit and to allow time between transactions to bring my balance back down to zero.  Each Monday I noticed that my receipt from the school and my Visa statement reflected only the tuition payment and not the credit card fee, but I concluded that they were waiting until my final payment; however, that day came and went with no mention of the fee.  Instead, I received my “Paid in Full” enrollment confirmation letter the next day on April 1.  To say that I was overjoyed would be an understatement - $550 translates to such things as about half a month’s rent or my utility fees for the entire stay.

Better than the money saved, though, was the joy reading that e-mail containing my acceptance letter.  The most exciting opening in any correspondence has to be the phrase, “We are pleased to inform you,” or in this case, “We will be delighted to welcome you to Le Cordon Bleu Paris for the orientation day on Monday, June 16, 2014 at 9:30 AM.”

The house and goods sale, my move, the mounds of forms, the fees, the work notice, the countless hours of researching and planning – through all of these events my feeling had remained one of, “This kind of stuff happens only to other people, not to me.”  Not until I received that letter did my dream finally begin to feel like a reality – not the reality of someone whom I have heard or read about, but my reality.

Just Stuff

When I really love something, I figure that everyone else should share that feeling and I become almost insulted when they do not.  The last week of June 2013 with my house on the market brought a rush of showings and I was fairly certain that I would have it under contract by the end of the next month.  Who wouldn't want to buy it?  My “conservative” budget estimate put the sale of my house around August, but July came and went with the number of potential buyers quickly dwindling, and August brought almost no showings.

Apparently nobody else "understood" my house like I did.

Pulling up my spreadsheets again I calculated how much cash I would pocket if I were to use a Realtor to list my house (meaning, of course, losing 6% in fees) and sell it quickly, then I used that number to estimate how long I could leave my house listed as “for sale by owner” and still get an overall better return.  Neither option looked very promising.  The opportunity to get to Le Cordon Bleu by March was slipping away.

I'll toss in a bit of free advertising here: In late July while at the beach with my sister’s family, a flat-fee listing agent named Angie with Real Estate Advocates called me to offer her services.  She was one of the few Realtors that I did not automatically dismiss, and I listened to her spiel because I was not familiar with the flat-fee process.  At the time I told her that I would think about it, and in mid September we talked again.  For $800 she would install a lock box on my door, put up a yard sign, list my house, and handle the brokering services, and my only other financial obligation would be the 3% fee to the buyer’s agent.  As I filled out the paperwork, I took a leap of faith and raised the asking price of my house by $10,000.

Within four weeks I had two offers.  The first offer won and my house was under contract with a closing date set for November 22.

Once again God timed everything perfectly, but isn't that always the case?  If I had sold my house for the original asking price in June or July I would have made less profit.  I was cautiously low with the initial price because the summer before when I refinanced, my house appraised for $10,000 less than what I bought it for four years earlier.  Thanks to an improved housing market and another house on my street selling just before mine for an outstanding price, sixteen months later the appraisal value had increased by $26,000.  Angie’s call also saved me a few thousand dollars that I would have lost paying 3% to a seller's agent.  I am learning over and over again that when things don’t work out according to my plans, they are going to work out better.

Two weeks after the contract signing, I had my first moving sale.  Before that Saturday I had advertised the sale on Craigslist and a few people contacted me about buying some items that they had seen in the photos.  That Friday night as my parents helped me set up for the next morning, the first person arrived and plucked up two decorative pillows from my sofa, the bedding from my master bedroom, and the kitchen rug.  Later someone came and whisked away some of the first furniture that I ever purchased when I got my own place, a pair of cute little red gingham club chairs.  Not long after that I bid farewell to my most long-time companion, an electronic piano that my parents got when I was in college and that had accompanied me to a dorm room in graduate school, an apartment in Wisconsin, my sister's house back in Greenville, and two apartments and two houses of my own (I used to move a lot).

It would be lying if I said that watching people dismantle my home, every item seeming to have a story or to hold a memory while I received in return a tiny percent of what I had spent for these things sometimes only months prior, was an enjoyable experience.  Except for the exchange of money it felt like passively watching my house being burglarized.  Surprisingly, I never shed a tear.

Mom, on the other hand, was weeping, tears triggered by the sofa pillows (they WERE lovely pillows) and primarily out of pity for her daughter, and, I believe, the sudden realization that I was really leaving.  Only now as I think back on that evening do I become a little teary-eyed, not over any personal feeling of loss but over a strange feeling of pity as well for third-person Kerry, as if we are two different people and I’m watching her stoically face that night.

Please don't think that I'm attempting to elicit sympathy ("Oh, poor Kerry - she had to get rid of stuff to go to culinary school in Paris.  CRY ME A RIVER!"). My point is simply that most dreams worth pursuing will require making tough and sometimes painful or frightening decisions that can be carried out only by keeping everything in perspective - focusing on your goal.  One question pushes me forward whenever self-pity starts to rear its ugly head: "Would it be better to sacrifice this lifelong dream in exchange for taking the much easier path of keeping my life exactly the same?"  Without hesitation, my answer every time is, "What a stupid question." 

Anyhow, one unexpected result of selling off those things early was that it had the effect of ripping off a bandage – as soon as my house started losing items and looking less like my home, the initial shock and pain decreased and the detachment began to grow.  My rules for what to sell were pretty simple – whatever I kept needed to fit into a rented 5’x5’ storage space.

In the “keep” pile were photos and albums, yearbooks, other small personal items that would be of no value to anyone (e.g., diaries that I probably should have burned), and any non-furniture items that would be basic necessities when I finished schooling and moved into a place of my own (throwing in a glimmer of hope for my parents).  If the storage space still had room, I was allowed to pick out a few special items.

While my goal was to handle the whole event objectively, the “I just bought these things and I really like them” argument won out on three larger pieces that ironically could have made me the most money – two bedroom rugs and a giant round metal shelf – lest anyone think that I had completely conquered materialism.  Conquering the guilt of selling things that friends and family had given to me as gifts was actually harder, particularly when someone who shall remain nameless was frequently reminding me of it ("Didn't your sister just give that to you last Christmas?"), but my resolve won out in the end.

Saturday’s sale cleared out much of the house, but enough remained to warrant a second sale the following weekend, and several items went on Craigslist.  My growing detachment had become more apparent because I was finding more things to sell that I no longer deemed as necessary or as too sentimental in value.  Laziness might also have been a contributing factor after I grew tired of packing boxes and hauling them to the storage space.  The growing bank account didn't hurt either.  By the night before closing the entire house was cleared out, undoubtedly one of the simplest moves that I ever made.

That evening of the 21^st I wiped down every cabinet and drawer space, dusted every shelf, vacuumed and mopped the floors and baseboards, cleaned the bathrooms, scrubbed down the refrigerator and freezer, and even patched up and painted over any holes and marks on the walls.  My Pathfinder was packed from the dashboard all the way to the back window with the last remnants of things that would stay with me in my parents’ house, and “Anatevka” from Fiddler on the Roof was melodramatically replaying in my head.

As I stood by the front door surveying my handiwork one last time before switching off the lights and heading out into the pouring rain, the feeling was bittersweet – the sad foreboding of many more farewells to come but the happy recognition of being one step closer to achieving my dream.

The next step was to enter into what I like to call my "beans and rice" phase of life.

Turning Point

‘Twas the night before Father’s Day and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except Hank, my incorrigible little mutt, dropping his tennis ball at my feet or into my lap because that is what he does when I’m trying to focus on something other than him.  Boy, was I focusing.

In my inbox from early February was an e-mail from Le Cordon Bleu with their brochure that I never had the heart to delete, and follow-up e-mail in April asking if I was still interested in their program.  Whatever it was that prompted me to go back to those messages that night is still a mystery – my suspicion is that, given that it was a Saturday in late spring, I had spent the day working in my yard which always provided hours of contemplation until a snake or nest of yellow jackets sent me in a screaming run towards the house.  But The Big Idea struck – a thought so brilliant yet so ridiculously obvious that I wasn't sure if I was a genius or a complete idiot.

Getting to Le Cordon Bleu would not require 4 years of savings if I didn't have a mortgage to pay while I was away.  As a matter of fact, if I sold my house and most of its contents right away and moved in with my parents, the money from the sale plus whatever would have gone towards my mortgage could instead be going towards the LCB!

To be honest, that idea of selling my house was not completely novel, but moving in with my parents was never an option.  The issue was not with my parents – I didn't want to move in with anyone.  Up to that point I had lived alone for over ten years and I absolutely loved it.  I was a fiercely independent female equivalent of a borderline hermit.

Additionally, I adored my sweet little old house – I had spent the last five years redecorating it, updating it, and slaving over making it perfectly mine.  While most of my furniture and other décor wasn't expensive or particularly special (probably half of it was acquired from my uncle’s estate auctions over the past decade), it all came together to make up part of my big fat comfort zone.

Then there was my job – a well-paying full-time job in which I had created a niche as a subject matter expert and where they provided me with health insurance and bi-weekly paychecks – a security blanket of sorts in a rather unstable economy.  Sure, no job is ever guaranteed to continue indefinitely, but it felt safe and again, comfortable, even if it wasn't terribly fulfilling.  At least it paid the bills and I never had to wonder from where my next meal was coming.  Added into the mix were years of graduate work and expenses – almost my entire adult life up until now had been concentrated on developing myself as a mathematician and an analyst.

Over the past few months I have often pondered what motivates change, probably because so many people have asked me how or why I made my decision, and my conclusion is simple: the level of desire. We might hate being overweight, but if our desire for the foods that we would have to give up exceed our desire to lose weight, we will stay the same size (or grow).  We might dislike being in debt, but if we value owning a nice car or a big house or the latest electronic devices more than being debt-free, we will stay in debt.  Scripture is full of examples, such as the rich young ruler who desired to follow Christ but not as much as he desired his wealth (Matthew 19:16-26), or the apostle Paul who realized that he would have to count everything else as "rubbish" and "loss" in order to gain Christ (Philippians 3:8).

Just to be clear, while I am often guilty of wasting time, I did not consider my life up to this point as "wasted" despite the need for a change.  If it weren't for graduate school I wouldn't have my job, and if it weren't for my job I wouldn't have the money necessary to fund this new venture.  When I add to those things the relationships and experiences that were all integral in developing my character, I simply cannot regret the past or put less value on it than my future - everything goes into making up life's tapestry and I am grateful for all of it.

But on that evening of June 15^th a sort of switch flipped in my brain. Suddenly my house was filled only with “stuff,” and it was just another house in just another neighborhood, and I was working just another job on the tiny little blip in eternity that was my dwindling earthly life.  Clinging to those things was creating self-perpetuated hindrances, holding me back from something far more important.  At that moment giving up the house, the furniture, the job, the independence, and the security blanket seemed incredibly easy because my desire to go to culinary school superseded all of it.  The funny thing about making those "sacrifices" was that it no longer felt sacrificial in light of my greater goal.

For the next few hours I worked feverishly, filling spreadsheets with more scenarios: “If I sold my house in x months for y dollars and made z dollars off of my furniture, then combined with current and projected savings I would have enough money to go to LCB by…”

[Fortunately, my spreadsheet addiction paid off because I had an existing one for my mortgage after previously deciding that I would try to pay it off early, and it told me for any given day exactly how much the payoff would be.  Who’s the nerd now?]

... March 24, 2014.  I stared at it on my calendar for a moment before checking and double-checking my numbers, but it seemed entirely realistic.  I could do this… I was going to do this!  Looking back, I can see myself sitting on the sofa, a large beam of glittering white light shining down on me as somewhere a choir sang out a sustained “Aaaaaaah!” and Hank tugged angrily at my pajama leg to get my attention.

By then it was already after midnight and long past the time that I should have been in bed.  The last thing that I wanted to do was sleep just as my plans were taking shape, but I resisted the urge to pick up my phone and call all of my family and friends and share the news.  That night I slept surprisingly well, and although I expected to wake up to the practicality of a well-rested brain telling me that I was certifiably insane, I instead jumped out of bed that morning with an excited energy that comes only with knowing the world’s best secret.  Keeping it to myself was already becoming a burden and I couldn't help throwing out this quick little Facebook status update before darting off to church:

My sister’s family had decided to make a surprise trip down from Georgia to celebrate Father’s Day with my dad.  Not wanting to take over all of dad's special day, I waited until after lunch when we were gathered at my parents’ house.  My mom had already read my status update and again asked what the “crazy idea” was.  Taking a deep breath I blurted out: “I’m going to sell my house and everything that I own and go to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris*!”

[*For the sake of full disclosure, I actually said, "New Zealand."  My reasons were pretty profound – I heard that they didn't have bugs and I thought that the scenery in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was really cool, plus it was a little cheaper.  After a few days, though, I decided that if I was going to do this thing I might as well go all the way; therefore Paris it was!]

Whenever I seek to know if a big decision that I’m making is aligned with the Lord’s will for me, usually one step is to discuss it with my parents.  They have an uncanny and, when I'm feeling contrary, annoying way of being right.  My trepidation was a little high at that point because I knew that if they expressed any kind of doubt over my decision, it would automatically create doubt in my own mind.  Their reaction, though, was overwhelming excitement and support and it was followed by a flurry of future plans and ideas.

Secrecy was still important because it was a little early to be turning in my notice at work and the plan was young enough that the possibility of failure was high - imagine THAT status update - but I did begin privately leaking the news to a few choice relatives and friends.  The majority of them seemed almost as happy for me as I was which only served to feed my enthusiasm.  By the end of the week I had a “For Sale by Owner” sign proudly displayed in my front yard.

Obviously my house would sell quickly, right?  RIGHT?!?

The Birth... and Near Death of an Idea

After wracking my brain for several seconds to come up with a clever way to begin a blog, I decided to can the cleverness and just start from the beginning.  By “the beginning,” of course, I mean around the time that I launched into my culinary school journey.  The problem with that approach is that I’m not sure exactly when it started – obviously God knew even before I was formed in my mother’s womb what I would be doing one day, but I’m fairly certain that nobody wants me to go back that far.  Instead I’ll begin with the moment it became a little more obvious to me.

[By the way, coming up with a name for my blog was a hundred times harder than coming up with an introduction.  To give you an idea of how bad it was, “If Grandma Moses had taken up Cooking Instead of Painting” was in the top ten.]

I have enjoyed working with food for as long as I can remember.  I don’t consider myself a “foodie,” mostly because 1) I don’t even know what that means, and 2) everyone these days is a self-proclaimed foodie ever since it became almost as popular as labeling oneself OCD.  But I do love making stuff that tastes really good and watching other people enjoy my creations even more than I do.  At first I stuck mostly to baking, probably because it’s harder to poison people (accidentally) with baked goods, but in more recent years I have been trying my hand at cooking.  I like to think that my cooking skills are improving, or at least I’m no longer finding it necessary to remove the batteries from the kitchen smoke detector before beginning most meals.

The first day of a new year can be quite exciting – we contemplate those projects that we’re finally going to complete, those goals that we’re finally going to accomplish, and those dreams that we’re finally going to pursue, all with a big 365-day clean slate ahead of us.  But then January 2^nd rolls around (perhaps a little later for the more ambitious folks) and it looks very similar to every other day of the prior year – the usual daily chores and responsibilities that need to be handled and that eight-to-five five-days-a-week fifty-two-weeks-a-year office job that reminds us that we’ll NEVER accomplish anything because at the end of the day all we want to do is get home and change into our pajamas.

After going through this annual cycle for almost 10 years, I finally decided in January 2013 that it was time for a big change, a REAL change.  My job wasn’t terrible – it came as a much-needed answer to prayer, as a matter of fact – and I was actually pretty happy and content, but for me it was no longer satisfying, for lack of a better term – I could do my job well but it was missing any feeling of accomplishment.  I even posted this attempt at an edgy and mysterious Facebook status:

For the life of me I can’t tell you what else was on that “list,” because all that I remember now is the desire to go to culinary school, although at the time I was little aware of just how big of an obsession it would become.

My first step was to explore websites.  A Google search brought up Le Cordon Bleu as the top culinary school in the world.  With such a reputation, it seemed like a reasonable place to start.  After downloading the school’s catalog and dreamily perusing the pages and seeing all of the countries to choose from, I pulled up my budget spreadsheet (I’m addicted to spreadsheets), and created some scenarios that went something like this: “If I empty out my savings account and don’t buy groceries and don’t eat out and don’t buy clothes or household items and walk to work, then with tuition and cost of living in another country and keeping up my mortgage payments back home, I should have enough saved up to go to LCB in about… 4 years.”  Not that I wasn’t trying to come up with other ideas of how to speed up the process:

That subtle hint for donations turned up zero (useful) responses, so I resorted to Plan B: Apply for culinary school at GreenvilleTechnical College.

In April I figured out how to fit a class schedule in with my work schedule, made my first tuition payment, attended orientation, and about a week before classes began… dropped out.  Greenville Tech has a fine culinary program from what I’ve heard, but as the first day of classes drew closer a feeling of uneasiness grew stronger and stronger.  The idea of spending 3 or 4 years, summers included, working all day, attending classes at night, and doing homework in every spare minute of my time made me so crazy that I knew that I could survive maybe one semester.  As soon as I notified the school of my decision, a great feeling of relief washed over me… all except for the realization that I was back at square one.  The year was more than a third of the way over and I had made no tangible progress and I didn’t have a Plan C.

Then came June 15, 2013…