What Come First, The Chicken or The Egg?

By Tamara Marie

When our economy took a nose-dive, so did my pocketbook, and my stable life.

In 2010, the catering business I worked for was no longer getting the usual amount of business we had experienced in the past. Week after week, month after month, my hours were continually cut to the point where I was barely working part-time. I was having a hard time paying my bills and started looking for another job or even another part-time job to help sustain me during this (what I thought was temporary) time. It finally came to the point that my employer took me off the schedule and told me she didn’t know when she would be putting me back on it.

Seeing as how I was already just scraping by, and didn’t have much left in the bank, my mom talked me into moving back home. I wound up packing up a small U-Haul and moving 1000 miles, back home to Mom’s. If that wasn’t bad enough, when I reached my destination, my poor tires on my truck were so worn from hauling the U-Haul, they were nearly bald. I had enough money to pay a couple months rent, buy some food and hoped I would find a new job very soon.

As luck would have (or maybe not), I got a job interview a few days later. As I was on my way to the interview, all of a sudden I heard a big boom, my truck swerved, and I knew I had blown a tire. I never made it to the interview. I had to call my insurance company for emergency road service and a nice man came out and changed the blown out tire for my good spare.

I had about $100 left in my pocket at the time and this is where the dilemma began.

I needed to pay my truck insurance for the month, pay for new license plate tags since I had moved from a different state and the tags were expiring that month, get a new drivers license for this state and now a new tire for the truck because the one that just blew out was trashed.

Now, I knew I couldn’t do all that with just $100. Should I buy the new tire and then not have enough money to get the tags and license or pay the insurance that month, in which case my insurance would be cancelled and the tags would be expired. Should I pay the insurance, but then I still wouldn’t have a new tire to put on the truck or the money to pay for the new tags and license, so wouldn’t be able to drive the truck any way. Should I get the new tags and license, but again wouldn’t have the insurance or the new tire, and still wouldn’t be able to drive the truck.

Talk about wanting to find a hole and crawl in! It seemed like such a circle jerk and it reminded me of the old story – which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Luckily, I have a great sister who came to my rescue and loaned me the money to get a new tire. I used my $100 to pay the insurance and get the new tags. I still haven’t made it down to get the new driver’s license and hope I don’t get stopped between now and then, but I still have a valid driver’s license. It hasn’t expired yet.


Times are tough, so I guess I have to get tough too.