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Essay 2
Describe a life experience that has shaped you. The goal of this essay is to get a sense of who you are, rather than what you have achieved professionally. (Maximum 500 words)
I grew up in a privileged environment and my father was a very successful figure in the local community. For nearly thirty years he worked to build a private pediatric practice that didn’t accept insurance and attracted the wealthiest families in our area. Dad grew up on a farm in Somonauk Ill and came from nothing so he always felt he had something to prove. He lived big, spent beyond his means and in 2008 everything came to crashing down for us when he was killed in an automobile accident. My dad’s poor financial decisions nearly destroyed my family, had a profound impact on my family and molded me into the person I am today.
In addition to the family that loved him dearly, my dad also left behind a mountain of debt. There was the enormous mortgage on a house with no equity value in it, the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of credit card debt, and tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans. To add insult to injury, my father had never negotiated a buy sell agreement with his pediatric practice so when he passed there was no payout for my mom f. My mother was left with nothing but liabilities.
Needless to say there was a lot to parse through so my mother turned to me for help. It was hard for me to separate the grieving process from what was expected of me but I dove in head first. I remember spending months on the phone with creditors and the bank that held dad’s mortgage. Eventually we were able to negotiate settlements for the credit cards for pennies on the dollar and have the student loans wiped out completely. We negotiated with the mortgage company and settled on a lower rate for the interest owed on the principal balance of my dad’s loan. When we sold the house last year my mom only owed a small sum back to the bank. We interviewed dozens of lawyers and hired a team to litigate the buy sell clause for my dad’s business. And though she is now living a much more modest existence than she ever wished for, I am proud to say that my mom is living debt free and is loose from the financial burdens that once plagued her.
I learned a lot about myself throughout this process. Looking back I would say I got a little lost in it all. My commitment to helping my mom may been more of a coping mechanism than a altruistic act of kindness but we all deal with tragedy in our own way. Through trial and error I gained a new appreciation for the art of negotiation. I learned a tremendous amount not only from the mistakes my dad made but the one’s I made in his wake. The situation we faced as a family helped me to grow up fast and now I make a concerted effort to live within my means. I am now working as financial advisor and I try to help prevent what happened to my family from happening to others.
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