--- title: How a $600 Banjo Saved My Life description: It was a lot of money for an inconsistently employed twentysomething, but that banjo gave me a fresh start when I needed it most. authors: - name: Jennifer Miller url: https://money.com/author/jennifer-miller/ former_staff: true published: '2014-10-22T10:30:57.000Z' modified: '2024-05-16T09:56:24.000Z' section: Lifestyle tags: - banjo playing - bluegrass music - jennifer miller - money well spent - Odd Spending - year of the gadfly word_count: 466 canonical: https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![09.15.14.SPE](https://img.money.com/2014/09/09-15-14-spe1.jpg) I stood in the music store beside my then boyfriend, looking up at the banjo on the wall. For $600 I could take this “starter” instrument home and indulge my new obsession with bluegrass. Six hundred bucks wasn’t an outrageous price, but I was in my late twenties and inconsistently employed. The purchase felt grandiose, especially for an instrument so often derided. Question: How do you know if the stage is level? Answer: The banjo player is drooling from both sides of her mouth. Reluctantly, I handed over my credit card. Not long thereafter, in the fall of 2007, I left my boyfriend of eight years. He liked the status quo; I wanted to get married. The split was tough. We’d shared everything—an apartment, friends. Now I felt isolated and lonely. I wanted to let loose, to dive into my newfound singledom. But I’d been in a relationship for so long, I didn’t know how. Then I remembered the banjo. It hadn’t occurred to me to play with other people. I wasn’t very good, and I lived in New York, not Tennessee. How many bluegrass musicians could there be in the Big Apple? As it turned out, a lot. The open jam I discovered at a West Village bar was like nothing I’d ever experienced. At least 20 musicians—guitarists, fiddlers, mandolinists, and, yes, banjo players—stood in a circle, taking turns improvising and singing while bar patrons drank and laughed and applauded. Overseeing the operation was a 70-year-old Dobro player in a cowboy hat who called himself the Sheriff. As I lingered outside the circle, a grizzled guitar player noticed my discomfort and offered to help me follow the chord changes. I was a disaster, but it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long while, I felt like part of something. I returned weekly, often playing until two or three in the morning. I learned to take solos and belt out songs like a Nashville diva. I made new friends and dated new men. If I ever felt alone, I had a place to go, though I wasn’t often lonely anymore. After a while, my bluegrass friends urged me to trade up for a new banjo. I’d have to pay a couple grand, they said, but I’d love the sound. I considered it, but why spend more? For $600, I’d gotten a fresh start and a life filled with music. That was all I needed. *Jennifer Miller's first novel,* The Year of the Gadfly, *was published in 2012. Look for the bluegrass bar in her next book, out in 2015.* *Do you have a purchase you consider Money Well Spent? Email us about it and what it means to you at [moneywellspent@moneymail.com](mailto:moneywellspent@moneymail.com).* **More Money Well Spent**: How One Family Discovered a Vacation in a Box ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Lifestyle", "item": "https://money.com/lifestyle/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Music", "item": "https://money.com/music/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "How a $600 Banjo Saved My Life" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/", "name": "How a $600 Banjo Saved My Life", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2014-10-22T10:30:57.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-16T09:56:24.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "How a $600 Banjo Saved My Life", "articleSection": "Lifestyle", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2014/09/09-15-14-spe1.jpg", "width": 1474, "height": 1384, "caption": "09.15.14.SPE" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jennifer Miller", "url": "https://money.com/author/jennifer-miller/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/jennifer-miller/#author" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2014-10-22T10:30:57.000Z", "description": "It was a lot of money for an inconsistently employed twentysomething, but that banjo gave me a fresh start when I needed it most.", "abstract": "It was a lot of money for an inconsistently employed twentysomething, but that banjo gave me a fresh start when I needed it most.", "@id": "https://money.com/jennifer-miller-banjo-money-well-spent/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-05-16T09:56:24.000Z", "wordCount": 466, "keywords": [ "banjo playing", "bluegrass music", "jennifer miller", "money well spent", "Odd Spending", "year of the gadfly" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Lifestyle", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Music", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music" ] } ] } ] } ```