Cost of a Mistake and a $4.5k Swing

Day 15 | $24,666 paid | $66,051 till freedom

I brought the bike back to Bicycle Sport Shop yesterday since they have a 7-day return policy. Unfortunately, returned bikes must be in "like-new" condition, which mine definitely wasn't. The seat post was scratched and dented up after having a trailer hitched to it three times, the crank arms were scuffed, and I had cut the handle bar grips to accommodate the bar-ends. Consequently, BSS pro-rated the return, and of the $620 I spent on the bike, I got $540 back for a loss of $80, which I consider fair. Add to that the cost of getting my pedi-cab license, which includes the criminal background report, defensive driving class, driving history report, notary for the application, and the application itself, and I'm looking at a loss of $80 + $100 = $180. I made $55 pedi-cabbing (+$72 to the first night, -$17 the second night) for a total cost of my mistake at $125.

And yes, this is my mistake. When I brought my bike back to the store to return it, the salesperson told me that the pedi-cab market was over-saturated. When I look back on it now, of course I remember seeing a bunch of pedi-cabs on every street corner without any fares, and this is before I even knew I wanted to be a pedi-cabbie! Why didn't I factor their inactivity into my decision to be a pedi-cabbie? Such a rookie mistake.

Hopefully I won't beat myself up over this for too long. For now, I'm replacing the pedi-cab job revenue of $4,480 on the roadmap with ($125). I now have line of site to about $81k of my loans being paid off in ten months, with a delta of about $9k.

Where will I find it? How will I bridge that gap?