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The $60 Pot Of Tea

posted 29th June 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Job/Career/Work, Money, Nicole Antoinette, Season 2

There’s a tea house here in San Francisco that sells, among it’s regularly priced items, a $60 pot of tea.

When I first saw it on the menu, I thought it had to be a typo. I mean, $60? For tea? I called the waitress over and asked and she told me that no, it wasn’t a typo and that a singular pot of that particular tea really did cost $60. I stared at her. She stared back.

I asked if the tea would either a) make me high or b) come over and do my laundry. She said no. I told her I was kidding. She didn’t laugh.

But I did. Well, until I didn’t. Until I realized that there are seriously people out there who spend $60 on tea. $60! On! Tea! Maybe everyone who does this is considerably older than me, I thought. Or maybe they’re trust fund babies. Or maybe they just know what in the hell they’re doing when it comes to being 25 and being smart with money at the same time.

Not that I’m bad with money, I’m not. I’m a meticulous (read: anal) budget keeper, I pay my quarterly taxes on time, I don’t have any credit card debt, and I still can’t fathom being able to spend $60 on tea without having a stroke over it. Being 25 feels like a weird financial age. It feels like an age where if you took a sample of the financial situations of the people I spend my time with, everything would be scattered and you wouldn’t get anything close to equal results.

In college, I felt like people were more or less operating on similar budgets – namely, everyone was broke.

Being broke was almost the hip-ish thing in college, wasn’t it? We all bonded by complaining about how expensive everything was, searching out the best possible drink deals, and signing for student loans we couldn’t imagine having to pay back. But after we graduated, we all went in different directions. I have friends who went the serious relationship route, joining their finances with someone else and plunging on toward marriage. I have friends who went straight to grad school, friends who jumped into the corporate thing, friends who moved back in with their parents, and then there’s me. I went from graduating early to a series of non-traditional jobs, one after another, and I’m still following a similarly road-map-free path. I’ve never had a 401K, never had any formal financial guidance, and am only now starting to give some thought to how I’m ever going to get out from under my student loans.

Which is why this little tea incident got me thinking. I mean, if being able to taste $60 tea without simultaneously crying about potentially being homeless is on my goal list, I should probably start forging a path to get there.

The hardest thing for me when it comes to money, though, is trying to figure out where to start. It all just seems so… surreal. Having enough money to retire one day? Owning a house? Paying off my student loans? Thoughts like that seem like some sick fantasy land that I’ll never reach. I took this financial fitness quiz last night, out of curiosity, and I scored a 51. Out of 100. Which seems like a rather epic failure, but apparently I’m pretty in line with other people in their 20s, struggling to find that balance between playing hard now and saving hard for later.

I find that that’s the biggest difference between people my age when it comes to money – the now vs. later question. I have some friends who will run up their credit cards for a good time, and then I have other friends who won’t pay more than $20 for dinner. Would it be easier if we were all in the same financial situation? Sure.

But, more than anything, I think it would be easier if money weren’t such a taboo topic, if friends were more comfortable discussing it in detail as if it were any other conversation.

*Disclaimer: This post is part of the 20SB Blog Carnival: Friends & Money, sponsored by Charles Schwab. Prizes may be awarded to selected posts. The information and opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the views or opinions of Charles Schwab. Details on the event, eligibility, and a complete list of participating bloggers can be found here.*

{photo credit: Photos8.com}

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