This blog post is an expcerpt from my book, What Your Dad Never Taught You About Budgeting. The book will be re-released this spring. I realize that this makes for a long post, but it’s worth the read. This story was cut from the new version of the book, but it’s my favorite story of all time…and it’s 100% TRUE.

Have you ever been so exasperated and frustrated in life that you stopped and asked yourself, “How did I get to this point?”

It’s a question I think every person asks at one time or another. In fact, you must utter this question before you can find change. And by the way, you want to find change.

Life has a way of offering us challenging moments that help to draft the story of our lives, financially and otherwise. These moments are meant to test our limits and strengthen our resolve.

Here’s my story of the time I spoke these words aloud and begged this all-important question. Allow me to set the scene for you: It was my first week on the job as a financial advisor. I was 22 years old, married just one month and a college graduate for two. I’d taken a job at a large financial planning company in Indianapolis, while my beautiful bride commuted two hours every day to finish some classwork at our alma mater.

As a Personal Financial Representative, I was honored to be in a position to help people with their financial lives. Of course; my only ammunition was a business degree and two financial internships.

Those were scary times. I would meet with my company’s clients and try to figure out what in the world was going on. It was a lot like being part of a book discussion—for a book that you had never read. Frankly, this is how a lot of young professionals start out in my industry.

My job went something like this: I’d get my leads from my sales manager after Monday morning meetings held in an impressive glass conference room overlooking a bustling interstate. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a sales meeting, but if faced with the decision to attend one or get a root canal, choose the root canal, A financial sales meeting is one of the most depressing settings in the world.

Here’s why: You, as the sales rep, are forced to tell the whole room how much you sold the previous week, even if you sold nothing. I quickly learned that fifty percent of the salespeople lied about their numbers, while the other fifty percent lied about lying about their numbers.

The guy who’d been with the company 15 years— yet who wasn’t successful enough to be exempt from attending the meetings—was there to serve as a mentor to me and my other young colleagues. He’d tell stories of success and achievement. He would weave tales of sales talk mastery and investment management genius. He smelled like Old Spice with a hint of Starbucks —and this was long before Starbucks had made its way to central Indiana. In other words, he was a real pioneer.

The office itself screamed corporate America. We had half-wall cubicles, more filing cabinets than the Library of Congress and even rented plants. (Tangent alert: The rented plants came from a place called—I kid you not—Rentokil. I embrace irony, but there’s something strange about a plant-rental company that calls itself rent-to-kill. Oddly, or perhaps not, the plants were always brown. I was convinced they weren’t dead, but merely asleep due to the Monday morning sales meetings.)

After my first Monday morning sales meeting, my manager, Bryan, gave me a new lead. So eager to impress was I that I ran right to my cubbyhole and made the call. I learned the lead already had accounts with the firm, but was interested in more investments.

I could not have been more excited. I knew I was going to be able to bundle all of the knowledge I gained in one week on the job—and sell something to this guy.

The appointment was scheduled for a Wednesday morning. The weather that day was terrible—marked by a cold Indiana rain, in the middle of July. I started the one-hour drive to the appointment, and man, I was looking good. I wore the sweater vest my mom-had gotten me for graduation, as well as my favorite Brooks Brothers elephant tie. Look good, feel good, I thought. There was nothing like driving to that appointment knowing the gentleman who waited for me was putty in my inexperienced hands.

Nearing the customer’s address, I turned right— into a winding gravel driveway. Not too bad, huh? First week on the job, and I’m calling on someone whose driveway was so long and winding it spanned two ZIP codes.

As I rounded a clump of trees, I saw it—my worst nightmare. At the end of the long, winding driveway of this “palatial” estate sat…a beat-up double-wide trailer.

My car came to a sputtering stop, but the horror continued. From the corner of my eye I detected the estate’s security system: two large Doberman pincers. The dogs bolted toward my car, stopping just three feet from my door but apparently ready to tear me (and my Brooks Brothers elephant tie) to pieces. I exited the car with a pounding heart, my blushing new bride on my mind. We’d had a great first month of marriage, and it was too bad my short life was about to end.

Just then, Prince Charming on a white steed charged up the lawn to save me. Only, said Prince Charming was a 400-pound shirtless man puffing away on a Virginia Slim. It was the dogs’ owner, jammed in the narrow doorway of the trailer. His Majesty barked some sort of command to the dogs, who immediately sat in stony silence.

My Prince—named Jeff, not Charming, it turned out—ushered me out of the rain and into his love jungle. I immediately forgot the horror of the previous 30 seconds, but only because of the smell that was now assaulting my nostrils. It was a smoked-pork-stale-tobacco-animal-dust cocktail, like what the set of “Hee Haw” must’ve smelled like. Jeff’s bride, who was molded to the couch, wore a Garfield nightshirt proclaiming, “Ain’t Life a Bitch.”

Yes, it is, I thought.

Jeff steered me to the kitchen table, where we got down to business—me with my spiel; and he with his meal. (I don’t know if you’ve ever seen three pounds of cooked bacon sitting on one dinner plate, but I have.)

“You hungry?” Jeff asked. “No,” I stammered.

“Cause I was goin’ make up some more bacon if you is,” he offered.

Jeff pointed a stubby finger toward a wicker chair and shooed a cat away so I could sit down. Just as I shifted my weight to sit, I noticed the cat had left a warm, fragrant little surprise for me on the seat. (I can only figure the poor beast was confused because the whole place smelled like a litter box.) I tried to catch myself midair, but it was too late: I fell through the back of the wicker chair and tumbled onto the floor.

Jeff astutely summed up my tumble. “That sucks,” he wheezed.

Yes, Jeff, it does.

Over the next 15 minutes, Jeff consumed the entire plate of bacon, smoked six Virginia Slims (“they have less tar and stuff,’ he said)—and shot down every last one of my brilliant investment ideas. I had met my intellectual match.

Soon Jeff was ushering me past a murky fish tank to the door. I thanked him for his time and handed him one of my free business cards. I bolted through the rain, charged past the dogs and collapsed in the comfort of my car.

Then it happened. I smelled myself for the first time.

My one-hour drive home to change clothes was filled with profanity, throwing up in my mouth and asking myself, “How did I get to this point?”

Cleary Jeff wasn’t the problem. I was the problem. Jeff was living his life the way he wanted. I wasn’t. I needed to ask myself, “How did I get to this point?”

“How did I get to this point?” It’s the million-dollar question you should ask yourself right now. You should ask yourself this question every time you’re feeling desperate. You should ask yourself this question every time negative things happen to you financially.

The answer to this question? It’s not something people want to hear. Because the answer is this: You caused it. It’s all your fault.

You control your financial destiny. Your life is not like Monopoly. In Monopoly, if you remember, when you land on Chance or Community Chest you draw a card that reveals your immediate fate, That fate can be positive or negative, and you deal with it accordingly.

But somehow when these random events occur in real life, people have a tendency to flip out. We know emergencies are going to occur, yet we tend not to be prepared for them financially.

About once a year I meet someone who is shocked when they have to come up with some cash to replace the brakes on their car. They are literally surprised, as though they’d awoken that morning with their head sewn to the pillow! As far as I know, there isn’t a set of brakes that lasts forever. My point is this: Financial mistakes don’t appear in the emergency —they appear in the aftermath.