One of my oldest kids moved out several years ago. He went and joined the military. At the time he was already living with his Mom and when he left for boot camp he just left everything, got on a plane and that was it. Today, 4 years later, his room is almost exactly the way he left it.
On with the story though, the military wasn’t as good for Ira as I had hoped. He got into drinking and spending, since the military (Army) pays for almost everything you “NEED” he got used to spending all the money/pay he got and a bit more. I was constantly getting letters in the mail from his bank that he had spent more than he had. He was buying $1.00 candy bars for instance but his account was over drawn so he had to pay an extra $20 for overdraft fees. Thats a damn expensive candy bar and this would happen numerous times per month.
So, Ira finally got a chance to move out of the army. I advised his to wait until he could handle his finances better but he was intent on moving out as soon as possible.
Seeing that I wasn’t going to win this one, I asked him what his plan was going to be. He wanted to go to film school which has been his long time passion. School would start in October, it was June when he was planning to move out of the barracks. His plan was to move to a house that he and a couple of his military buddies would share as roommates. (I’ll go into the roommate thing in another blog post) He would have to sign a one year lease. This didn’t make sense to me at all due to him going to school in 4 or 5 months. “Why keep up a house and all the expenses when you are away at school?”, I asked him.
I strongly advised him to move to his Mom’s or my place again for the 4 to 5 months between moving out of the barracks to the time he moved into the dorms at his school. My advice fell on deaf ears it seems. He went ahead and rented the house and signed the one year lease.
Ok, a month and a half went by and I started getting these friendly phone calls from him. He was hinting that things were tight but didn’t say so. The following week he called and went into a long story about how his roommates were not paying, his unemployment didn’t come through, he couldn’t find a job, the utility company debited his account and took the rent money and now he was in big trouble. He went on to say he should have moved out of the barracks and moved in with his Mom and saved his money until school started.
I said “So, what do you need?”. He told me he needed $350 right away or the rent would be unpaid and late. I couldn’t help but remind him of the advice I had given him about Moving Out. I transfered the $350 to his account and I’ll tell you about what happened next another day.
