We brewed it in his battered percolator that had probably survived a minor war and definitely survived a kitchen remodel in 1997. The coffee tasted like a compromise both sides could brag about.
We sat at the table with our cups. The jars were in front of us, fat and useful. I had paid off one small card, built an “OH-NO” that could handle at least a few “oh nos,” and stopped renting the idea of myself I thought strangers expected to see.
“I get it now,” I said. “It’s not that you were lucky. It’s that you were consistent.”
He shrugged again, his favorite punctuation. “Consistency is luck’s older brother.”
“What if I can’t keep it up?”
“Then you start again,” he said. “Quitting is expensive. Starting over is free.”
I asked if he ever felt poor back then, eating bologna in a break room while people ordered deli sandwiches with cute names.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Then I’d come home and your grandmother would put flowers on the table. And we’d feel rich. Not because of the flowers. Because we got to choose to have them.”
That night I wrote three words on a yellow sticky note and stuck it to my laptop where the delivery apps used to live.
Choose on purpose.
Months later, when people asked why I was always bringing my lunch or biking to the office or saying no to yet another expensive weekend pretending to be someone else, I didn’t give them a lecture. I’d just tell them about the jars, the hot water heater, and the lawn mower that came back from the dead and paid for my future.
Here’s the part that might matter if you’re scrolling this in a line for coffee you can’t afford: my life didn’t become a movie montage. It became something better. It became quiet. The kind of quiet where you can hear your own decisions walking down the hall toward you, and none of them are carrying a bill.
I make $55,000 a year. I still live in my grandpa’s basement. The sofa bed still groans. The room still smells like cedar and mothballs and the stubbornness of men who refuse to drown. But a few weeks ago, I showed Frank my bank app, and he patted my shoulder like I’d finally learned to tie my shoes.
“You don’t have to be me,” he said. “Just don’t pay extra to be someone you’re not.”
So here’s my viral, unsexy truth: I didn’t want Frank’s house. I wanted his habits. Turns out you can’t finance those. You stack them, one boring morning at a time, until boredom looks a lot like freedom.
Tonight we ate soup. It was leftovers. It tasted like a raise.
This is a personal story, not financial advice. Please consider your circumstances before acting.
