You know those moments, that happen oh-so-frequently in your 20s, when you realize yet another super-fun aspect of being an adult that no one ever warned you about?
Maybe it’s the amount of tax that really comes off of your paycheque, or the reality of how much car insurance costs.
Maybe it’s the real cost of living in your dream city, or how quickly those after-work drinks can add up at the end of the month.
Or, if you’re anything like me, maybe you made it to 26 years old without anyone telling you that you need to renew your license plate every year on your birthday. At least, you do if you live in Ontario.
See, no one ever explicitly told me that.
Sure, like most of the comparable how-to-adult information out there, I probably should have known. There are probably hundreds of thousands of websites out there that can tell me this in dozens of different languages. There’s probably even a book called How To Adult Properly With Your Car in Ontario.
I must have skipped over that one on my last trip to the library.
Anyways, someone finally told me about it. That someone was a municipality in Quebec, whose law enforcement officers so kindly sent me an entirely French letter and ticket in the mail after they noticed that my license plate, sitting in a Quebec parking lot for an afternoon, had long since expired.
(Honestly, props to my mom for putting me in French immersion way back when so I even understood what was happening.)
So what did this lesson in adulting cost me?
$300.00 for the infraction.
$114.00 for the processing costs.
$40.00 for the act of sending me the letter.
$4.00 for the ability to pay the fine online.
Total cost? $458.00.
So in a month where I had already planned to fit in a vet visit for The Dog, a year’s worth of new contact lenses, and rustproofing for Little Car who endures so much in the Canadian winters, I now had a surprise $458.00 lesson in how to adult properly.
Plus the $108.00 it’ll cost to actually update Little Car’s license plate.
Luckily, there were two things that put me solidly in the “I’ve got this adulting thing down pat” category, even though I was woefully uninformed about the basics of license plates.
#1. I have an emergency fund.
Even though I took the scenic route to a solid emergency fund, detouring through how not to set up an emergency fund first, in the past few months I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping a separate account earmarked just for emergency expenses. While it’s intended for The Big Stuff, like losing a job, it’s also a remarkably effective buffer against unexpected lessons that come out of nowhere. Or more accurate, out of the woods in rural Quebec.
That’s the thing about figuring out how to adult the hard way. Sometimes all it takes is time, but others? It takes money. Money that might come as a total surprise, and blow a big hole in your expected monthly budget. That’s what setting up an emergency fund is for.
It has your back, even when you probably should have known better.
#2. I track my spending.
Let me break down how this exact same month would have gone at this time last year.
I didn’t track my spending, so I wouldn’t have known what a relatively big – or little – chunk this unexpected ticket would take out of my monthly budget. I certainly wouldn’t have been looking at how to fit several large purchases into my monthly budget responsibly.
Instead, I would have straight-up panicked. I would have paid it, sure, but I would have been a puddle of stress and most likely, tears. I wouldn’t have known one way or the other if I could afford it, but instead of taking steps to figure it out, I would have buried my head in the sand – and kept right on buying my favoured $5 lattes.
Thank god I started tracking my spending.
When the ticket arrived, I think my mom was more stressed about it than I was. I read it, realized what it was, and shrugged.
Was I happy about losing an unexpected $458? Of course not.
Did it ruin my night? Of course not.
I simply accepted the lesson, transferred the money out of the account I keep for exactly this kind of situation, entered it into my tracking spreadsheet and adjusted a few other plans for the month. I earmarked some extra income this month to beefing my emergency fund back up, and called it a night.
Those two things – having an emergency fund ready and waiting, and knowing what my monthly spending looks like at a really detailed level – made all the difference in how I was able to handle the curveballs that come with adulting. Honestly, remembering how things like this used to throw me into a stress spiral only makes me even more committed to both of these things.
At the end of the day, maybe adulting properly isn’t so hard.
Maybe it just means being prepared to handle a curveball or two along the way.
Ok you guys, confession time. I know I’m not the only one who’s been hit with this kind of out-of-the-blue, didn’t-even-know-about-it expense related to Things Adults Do in their 20s. There are just too many logistics involved for nothing to have fallen through the cracks. You should probably tell me about yours so I feel moderately less like a doofus for just not knowing I had to renew my license plates every year.
My big “how to adult” moment had to do with speed cameras disguised as something else. I remember driving somewhere, seeing everyone slow down, and I, in my youthful impatience, just went around everyone. Everyone was slowing down because they knew about the speed camera. I didn’t because I wasn’t yet savvy to the ways municipalities extract money from the population… boom. Ticket.
Oh what made it worse? I did it for a whole week. Fortunately I didn’t get dinged every time and it wasn’t expensive ($40 a pop) but I spent a lot of time googling how to fight a red light ticket before giving up. 🙂
I have been there my friend!
Oh no! In fairness, that seems like it’s entirely not your fault other than the speeding thing, haha. How did everyone know if the camera was concealed? Maybe they all got tickets too, but they just got theirs ahead of when you got yours.
I’ve always been able to see the red light cameras in town, so I feel like a logical assumption is that my municipality has a law against concealing them. Because really, *not* concealing them is probably about as effective as standing a bunch of cop cars by the side of the highway and expecting to catch anyone speeding.
Either way, thank you for sharing your story Jim – it makes me feel better about my ridiculous license plate saga!
I strongly feel that adulting involves far too many demands on one’s memory. It really doesn’t seem fair. It’s hard enough for me to remember to buy more oatmeal before I run out, let alone remember to renew registrations for things by a certain date. Somebody needs to do something about this, pronto. Perhaps a strongly worded letter to…whoever is in charge of these things.
Anyway, so I had an educational experience this past summer in which I went to student health services on campus (I’m technically a student so have student health insurance) and was referred to an outside physician at a local hospital for a diagnostic test. So, you know, I went to the local hospital for the diagnostic test. And then I got a $500 bill in the mail for the diagnostic test. I reeeeeeeeally should have known better than to think that just because I was “referred” to the hospital, the test would be covered, but somehow I didn’t think to check. It’s a tough call because I’m glad I got the test (and I’m fine), but seriously, half a thousand dollars for a 15-minute appointment?
So yeah, lesson learned. Next time I’ll ask first and see if there’s a cheaper option.
Oh that’s such a tough one – because yeah, in the grand scheme of things, it’s awesome news that you’re fine! But in the less grand scheme of things, that really stinks, and I’m so sorry that happened. The closest I’ve ever come to something similar is paying for whatever my vet recommends, without every shopping around or asking about the cost. And yes, it’s SUPER different, but I can imagine it still feels awkward to bring up the money thing in any kind of health care situation, canine or otherwise. Anyways, I am just the absolute most sorry that happened. Half of a thousand dollars!
Also, my boyfriend has figured out a system where he sets future reminders for himself – like, when he changes the oil in his car, he’ll set a reminder to do it again in six months, and his phone takes care of the remembering for him. He’s such a Grown Up. Instead of, you know, doing the same thing, I just pester him until he adds some of my more critical reminders in there for me.
I am so not a Grown Up someone help me.
You are so much better than me! I received my registration letter in the mail and then forgot about it! I luckily flew under the radar for 8 MONTHS without renewing before I realized!
Adulting is hard.
Adulting is so hard. SO hard.
Everyone keeps telling me I should have gotten a renewal notice in the mail… which makes me wonder if maybe I did and just entirely blocked the memory of it? I mean honestly I wouldn’t put it past myself to have done that. Either way, I’m so glad you didn’t get dinged with a ticket!
Also true confession: the parking lot was at a spa. I was literally at a spa when I got this ticket, so it’s not like I really have a leg to stand on to complain about it, haha.
HAHAHA you are too funny.
Oh no! Adulting can be incredibly rough sometimes, but what’s great is your can-do attitude to just shrug off the situation and keep moving forward. 🙂 It’s nice to have that safety net/emergency fund prepared & recognize your monthly expenses to know that the unexpected isn’t going to tear you down.
One of my biggest lessons also came with my car! I was driving down the freeway and COMPLETELY blew out my tire. I had to pull off to the side of the freeway, and frantically call anyone that may be able to help. Luckily, I had a co-worker who came to my rescue to change my tire so I did not have to resort to calling a tow-truck. I drove straight to the dealership to get a new tire. Little did I know that it’s pretty much not recommended to only buy one new tire (since all the other tires had much wear and tear) – that it’s better to replace at LEAST two tires simultaneously. Then learning how much two new tires cost to replace (it was astronomical, I had no clue!). Unfortunately, it’s a situation where you can’t just drive on out of there. I bit the bullet and purchased two new tires on the spot. Yikes. Luckily, I was in the same boat where I was conscious of my spending, and had a large amount of savings prepared for these situations. Oh, the joys of adulting!
I was baffled when I heard about the not replacing only one tire thing too! (Also, having a tire blow out while driving is my literal nightmare, I am SO sorry that happened to you!) I had one tire with a slow leak, and because I knew nothing about anything car related, I was going to pony up for two new front tires.
Then my boyfriend took it to a tire place (who knew they had specific tire places?) and it cost $15 to fix.
Basically, what is up with cars and the amount of knowledge they require. I think that’s basically my takeaway here. And again – I’m not over how scary that must have been, and I’m so sorry that happened!
Adulting is hard and can be so frustrating. When the IRS sent me a letter about failing to file my taxes last year, I was convinced I was going to jail. Turned out my so-called accountant forgot to pay them. I had to pay interest and fees up the wazoo. I was so mad and am now back to “if I want something done properly, I have to do it myself” mentality.
Oh my god I would have had the exact same “That’s it, I’m definitely going to be incarcerated” reaction – I’m so sorry that happened! I’ve been lucky to always have dead-simple taxes with my full time job and a little bit of side hustle income, so I tend to do it myself, but I’ve found the software options in the past few years have gotten absolutely fantastic. It’s too bad you’re not Canadian otherwise I’d have some stellar recommendations for you – but I feel like the not-having-Canadian-winters thing might make up for it, haha.
Also, I love love love your new blog look and feel, and I’m so glad to see the Pinterest consulting and freelance work is going well!
The fact that the letter didn’t ruin your night is HUGE! Hooray for adult you!
To make you feel better, here’s just a small smattering of surprise expenses we’ve incurred through stupidity or ignorance.
Many bills for health care services we did not properly anticipate. We now know to ask questions before saying yes to things.
Massive overages on cell phone bills for both talk and texting, before we realized that you pay by unit on these things. (And now work pays, which means that once we’re tasked with paying for ourselves again, we’ll likely make some more dumb mistakes.)
Several speeding tickets, which cost $500 a pop where we live (I am not exaggerating), because the mr. refuses to slow down. Me: “Why would you risk a $500 speeding ticket when you get upset over a $2 charge on your cell phone bill?” (This one is not strictly a problem we had in our 20s!)
Thank you guys SO much for adding your stories, haha. It’s so heartening to know I’m not alone on this – and oh my god your speeding tickets! I’ve so far avoided any speed-related fines, but I honestly think it’s more luck than anything else, especially given how fast normal traffic goes on the highways around here. We have one that’s notoriously fast, and you just kind of… go with the flow and hope for the best. So far, so good? (I’m awful.)
And I feel you on the cell phone thing. I’ve had two months in a row of data overages, and they’re *painful.* I’m turning my data off now as a habit, so that if I really want to use it, I have to go in and turn it on. We’ll see how long that lasts… But hopefully it helps!
Yikes! Sorry! After my last child was born, I lost track of time and money and actually had to pay a late fee and interest on my credit card! Ouch! We’ve all been there one way or another. My favorite was my husband spent his birthday in the DMV because he realized that morning his licensed expired on his birthday! He’s much better than adulting than I am… I would have waited at least a day to avoid the DMV on my birthday!
Wow, what a champion! I don’t know if I would have gone that day either, haha, especially if I wasn’t working that day. I probably would have tried to avoid driving because getting caught that day would have been just my luck – but still, the dedication is strong with your husband!
Multiple speeding tickets can result in the loss of more than money–one’s 20-something self might have been on the verge of a suspension. :/ Lesson learned, indeed.
Oh no! Well I’m glad it didn’t quite get to that point – and you’re in VERY good company. These kind of lessons (which oh my god seem to really centre around cars and driving!) are sometimes hard-fought, haha. We all got there eventually, right?
A lot of mine center around not budgeting for elasticity. Like, I’ll buy a plane ticket to somewhere I have a place to stay for free, and think that somehow that’s the extent of the money I’ll spend on the trip. Nope! I’ll definitely buy dinner or groceries for the person I’m staying with, I’ll pay for admission to whatever, there’s the $8 here and $15 there for transit to/from the airport….
This is, however, a good kick in the pants: I moved a solid 10 months ago and have yet to get my driver’s license updated. So. Time to deal with that 🙂
Yes to the elasticity thing! I’m the exact same way – I’ll think that if I book my flight and a rental car on points, *then the trip is free.*
The trip will not be free, because I’m not doing a water-only diet cleanse while I’m there, haha. I think we’re probably in good company on this one though!
PS. I also just updated my address on my drivers license! And I moved… a year ago. Yay not getting caught on that one too!
When I first started budgeting last year – I completely blanked out on the fact that I needed to pay property tax on our home! That was like a $2k payment. We did have an emergency fund that I pulled from so it wasn’t anything major in the end.
In addition to an emergency fund, we also allocate money for things such as home maintenance and auto repair in separate buckets. I put around $150 in each category and just let it build up each month in the event something happens. Last month I had to do major repairs on my car (to the tune of $1400) and I was easily able to pull from my car repair budget because we’ve been saving all along for it. So while my wife was stressed about it – I simply showed her that there was already a pool of money for it so we wouldn’t have to dip into our true emergency fund savings.
Oh no! Property tax has been the biggest wakeup call for me in terms of calculating how much it really costs to own a home over a year. Right now, my boyfriend rolls it into his mortgage payments, so it’s taken care of bit by bit over the year, but it’s also easy to ignore the fact that at the end of the year, it’s $3000! I always, always make this point to friends who are buying new places for the first time, because if I went from renting to owning, I would have had no idea.
I feel like auto repair is one I really should break out into its own category, but at this point (and this is horrible, I know) I’d probably cover it from my vacation fund, or maybe my emergency fund if it was that bad. I cover routine maintenance month to month, but what with saving for five different goals at the same time, I figure I’ll speed towards those, pull from them if something bad happens to Little Car, and once they’re funded I’ll ramp up my Car Fund quickly!
I’ve definitely ended up with a fine for not knowing to renew something on my car, no one told me so I never knew. Now I do, though I’ve moved and the rules have likely changed, what a good reminder that I need to look them up.
Right?! There is so much that people just assume a first-time car owner will know about how to own a car. There seriously should be some kind of manual – or a section in drivers’ ed to teach you about the basics of car legalities and upkeep, haha.
Actually, that would be brilliant. I would have actually paid attention to that in-class lesson.
Oh yes. Those lovely surprises that come along and kick your money butt when you least expect it. Been there. Done that. If you keep up your emergency fund, hopefully these types of things just become minor annoyances rather than major setbacks. 🙂
That’s the goal! It’s been so handy so many times that I have that cushion, so I’m extra motivated to keep it up. Thanks for the encouragement K!
Those expensive lessons are the ones we remember.
Hahaha unfortunately it’s a great way of making sure they stick.
I actually had two “adulting” moments with my car. I had no idea that cars required oil changes for the first 3 years I owned one until my dad asked me out of the blue when the last time I’d gotten one was and I replied “a what? Nothings wrong with the oil in my car. Why would I change it?”
The second was when my car title was actually transferred into my name instead of my parents and I registered it. I figured once it was registered, I was done until I didn’t own it anymore. Turns out you have to renew that registration every year. What a scam. I didn’t learn that until 2 years in.
Oh no! I hope your car survived the oil change drought, haha. That one I’m lucky on, since my boyfriend has a calendar reminder set for both of our cars, and he’ll pester me until I do it. After the giant ticket cost of not renewing my license plate, I’m sure he’ll pester me to no end every year to remember to renew my plates! I’ll never live this one down.
It’s so easy to think that registration is a one time thing. They really should have some kind of section in drivers’ ed where they review this stuff. This was an ed I did not get before I became a driver!
Ahhh shoot. I’m pretty sure I need to check my car’s registration….
And I know about these things. Life gets so crazy sometimes it’s easy to forget until you get a ticket!
Mine was when my partner bought me white lilies as a nice surprise and neither of us realized that they could poison our cat.
Over $1000 in a 48 hour emergency vet stay to flush out her kidneys and monitor her blood, plus a call to animal poison control which was $68 USD and the driving to and from the vet twice (once at 7am in the morning so I could get to work on time after picking her up) and the stress and guilt that came with it.
My cat was fine despite chewing on the lily leaves (even breathing the pollen can cause kidney failure in cats), but it was such a preventable cost.
If we had only done our research, been responsible pet owners and known what things are harmful to cats, we never would have brought the flowers home.
Oh nooo! Kate I’m so sorry, I can’t even imagine how stressful and horrible that must have been. We’ve all been there (ahem, time I took my dog to the dog park and he cut his paw on glass and needed four stitches, aka the most stressful day of my life) and I think you sound like a great, responsible pet owner because you did what it took to correct it! We all make mistakes!