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.