It’s two years ago, and I’m running late for a meeting at my first Adult Job. Rush hour traffic in Toronto is something I’m experiencing for the first time, and finding parking downtown is equally maddening. I spot that mythical beast of wonder—a parallel parking spot—carefully park my car there, and run.

When the meeting is over, I return to move my car (there’s a one-hour parking limit, of course), and see two gigantic disability signs on both sides of my car, pointing directly to it. I’m screwed—there’s a ticket on my windshield. I imagine the parking enforcement officer’s eyes must have lit up with dollar signs when he or she spotted my car without a permit. The damage: $450, which is a hefty fee for being an asshole, but I suppose it’s warranted.

I was dating a paralegal at the time who had traffic court connections. This is all specifically applicable to Ontario traffic court laws, but U.S. drivers have found similar success when showing up in court. I was told that I had three options if I wanted to contest the ticket (contesting the ticket, for the most part, means pleading guilty with a reduced fine).

Option 1: Contest the ticket and hope that it takes more than a year from the date of the ticket for your court date to be processed. If it’s been longer than a year, there is a form that you can fill out, and the fine will be cleared. My court date was within the timeline. Option 1 is out.

Option 2: Show up at court and hope that the parking officer does not show up. If he does not show up, the fine is cleared. I was told that since it’s a large fine, the officer is very likely to show. My paralegal friend was actually wrong about this. When you plead guilty with a reduced fine, you forfeit the need for the officer to show up in court. Option 2 is out.

The third option is, I think, the most likely outcome for anybody who contests a parking ticket. You originally have something like two weeks to pay the fine, or you can line up with all the other suckers at the parking violations office and ask to plead guilty with a reduced fine. I arrived at the office at 7:45 a.m. in time for 8 a.m. opening and was able to make it to work in time for my usual 9 a.m. start. I feel this is an important point to make because time taken off work, costs to park at traffic court, and so forth have to be weighed against the ultimate benefit. I saw people contesting $30 tickets, and I’m not sure that’s really worth it.

I eventually received my court date and present myself on the appropriate day. Here, I had to take the morning off work but I was able to make up for the lost hours later in the week.

Here is how traffic court worked: The prosecutor went around asking people what they were hoping to get. In my case (anything, god ANYTHING), she told me she would be asking for the legal minimum fine which was $300. We went into the courtroom, and the judge called each case up one at a time. He had a list of questions that you’re basically supposed to answer yes to, and if you go off script, the judge clarifies with slight exasperation. “Are you pleading guilty to this?” (“Yes,” should be your answer.)

I had my whole story ready to go, but it seemed to me that having a story was largely unnecessary. My paralegal friend said as much—that just by showing up in court, your fine would be reduced by half. Actually, it was more like two-thirds. Most commonly, $30 tickets were reduced to $10. Something I learned that day was that FedEx and other delivery companies employ a person whose job is to show up in court so they can have their parking tickets reduced. This person (a paralegal?) did not state any case, or give any story, they just stood up, presented ten tickets, and had them all reduced to a fraction of the original cost. Business secrets!

My case was a little different. I had the highest fine in the courtroom. The prosecutor asked for the legal minimum fine of $300. The judge looked at me and said, “$450—that’s a very large amount of money, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

He asked me if I wanted to explain what had happened, and I gave him my sob story: new at work, first big job, late for a meeting, run run run. Then he lectured me a little bit.

“You know, a parking officer can’t know the circumstances of your situation, those circumstances really don’t matter.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” I said, putting on my shameface.

“And you will be more careful in the future?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

And he reduced my fine to $200! Success! Two hundred dollars is still a large amount of money, but I walked out of that court room with a big smile on my face anyway.

In addition to having my fine reduced by more than half, there’s an added benefit to contesting a ticket that you’re unable to pay in the moment: You’re given over a year to scrape together the cash. First, you’re spared the amount of time it takes to set up the court date. Then, once that date arrives, the judge provides various payment options: Pay right now, one month, or two months. In my case, I put away $450 in a savings account over the course of a few months after I received the ticket, because I was determined that my future self would not have to pay for my present self’s idiocy.

So in the end, it was like I had a bonus $250, and I didn’t learn my lesson at all! (No, I still learned my lesson).

Alissa Powell lives in Toronto and occasionally has to drive for work. She has no web presence save for a plethora of incriminating comments sprinkled across the Awl network.

Oshawa, Ontario: $850/Mo. for Room and Board
The first place I lived that wasn’t my parents’ home was an on-campus residence at Durham College. The first suite I was put in was open concept, which meant there was a 1.5-meter high by 1.5-meter wide dividing wall between two beds. My suitemate was a girl in an “Intro to Design” program who stayed up until 5 a.m. drinking (often times my gin), watching Friends, and sleeping with her boyfriend. This sucked. I stayed in that room for two months, and then moved to a private suite with a girl in my program, who really loved her parents. She’d call them every day, spend two hours on the phone with them, and then drive home every weekend to see them. The move was probably the worst decision I could have made.

Living in the new building put me closer to my hard partying engineer/sports management/dental hygiene friends. And while I had way more fun in the new building playing drunk-parking-lot football, drunk soccer and mastering Kings, I drank all my money away and ended up moving back in with my parents with a huge amount of debt, and a 30-pound beer baby.

Billings Bridge (Ottawa), Ontario: $0
While living at my parent’s house, I met a guy who had a pretty sweet apartment near Billings Bridge in Ottawa, about an hour walk from downtown. The best part was that it wasn’t my parents’ house, and was near a bus line that brought me to work. I probably spent four days a week at his house, and was all set up with my own pillow, toothbrush, and loofah. Sometimes I would stay for a week if he was away, and watch the cat until he got back. He asked me to move in with him, but I was allergic to his cat, didn’t want to spend more money on Claritin, and honestly, just liked having my own space. So we broke up.

Val Tetreau (Hull), Quebec: $620/Mo. One-Bedroom
I spent a year and a half at my parent’s house after coming back from the Dirty Dirty (this is what people call Oshawa), getting out of my massive school/liquor debt, and then found a super cute one-bedroom in Hull. Ottawa is also called the National Capital Region, which includes Gatineau, and Gatineau/Hull is on the Quebec side, which makes it a safe haven for drinkers under 19 (and pretty much all acts of debauchery). The apartment had tile floors and a washer and dryer, plus a cute little patio and was a three-minute walk to the beach. I was also about a 15-minute bus ride from the bars and work. The terrible part was that my landlord lived in Montreal and travelled for work, so any repairs I needed (dryer stopped working, door fell off cabinet and a ridiculous influx of earwigs from the poorly sealed windows) were not addressed. I got really tired of being poisoned by RAID, and having to sneak into my parents house to do laundry. I terminated my lease and moved in with a very good friend of mine.

Hintonburg (Ottawa), Ontario: $995/Mo. Two-Bedroom
I was so excited to live with someone I actually liked, and was anxious to get away from the earwigs and have a fully functioning washer/dryer again that I didn’t follow any of my good senses. I saw the new apartment after my friend—let’s call her Mary—had already seen it. Mary told me it was fantastic, and that it was a great location between both our work places. When I went to visit the place, the power was out from a storm, so I couldn’t really see the bathroom/shower stall very well, and then the basement where the washer and dryer was located was pitch black.

What I could see was the huge, bright kitchen, two parking spots, backyard, and lovely front porch. So I said, “Sure, let’s do this—it seems good enough.” We moved in about a month later, and the problems started immediately. If our neighbors upstairs used hot water, our shower was freezing cold, and if they used cold water our shower was scalding hot. I immediately started noticing a new and horrifying bug called a house centipede that ran super fast and crawled out of the walls. The basement was a shit show of horrors: Its walls leaked when it rained, and the ceiling was so low that I had to crane my head sideways to use the W/D, and I always sported a headscarf as I was afraid of spider/house centipede attacks.

But the absolute worst thing was the upstairs neighbors. They screamed at each other non-stop and we heard everything. The woman was unemployed, and when not screaming at her boyfriend, would smoke darts with a fury—the smoke coming into our apartment because of shared vents. She was very confrontational. I planted flowers in the front after speaking with her about placement, and she screamed at me for doing it wrong (it looked fabulous, I must say). She would yell at Mary and me about where we put the garbage can, where I put my bike, and about our cars being parked in a manner restricting her access to the back yard. And if she wasn’t yelling at us about something, she would become nice, stand out front and engage in conversation with us about whatever the topic of the day was, and then would get mad if you told her you had to leave.

It got so bad that Mary and I had to strategically plan when we were leaving and coming back to the house. We would listen for movement upstairs, pray that she stayed up there, and then flee the property as quickly as possible. We would sometimes drive by the street and see if she was outside, and then if she was, we’d go shopping or hang out in the park until the coast was clear. We did basically everything we could to avoid her. We talked to our landlord about the smoke and the yelling, which he then talked to our neighbor about. That made everything worse, but the rent was so cheap so we ended up staying for 16 months until we couldn’t deal with the craziness anymore. I have to admit, I had some excellent parties, I was super belligerent and was pissed at the crazy lady, so I would have my friends over after the bar and sit out back and in the house until 6:30 a.m. shouting, drinking, and acting like jerks. We also had a very successful bachelorette party, and an awesome welcome home party for my friend who was back from overseas. If I had better neighbors, the parties probably wouldn’t have been as legendary.

Centertown (Ottawa), Ontario: $644 Studio
I love my current place. There is absolutely nothing I can complain about. The neighbors are quiet, and respectful of my privacy. I live within a 25-minute walk to work, 30 minutes to my favorite bars, and a 15-minute walk from my best friend’s house. It’s somewhat small, but that’s fantastic for me because when I have space ,I become a clutter bug. The bathroom is nice and big, and I’ve a wee fire escape of my own. Another big plus is the huge amount of kitchen cupboard space, which is floor to ceiling and deep. There is a washer and dryer in the building one flight of stairs below me. It’s only a 20-minute drive from all my family members (we like our distance). I pay for electricity and heat, which is no big deal since the cost is minimal, and I also pay for parking which is only $25 a monthe. I’m hoping to stay here for at least a year or more. I’m only on a month to month lease so if I choose to up and drop my responsibilities, I can (unlikely, but so romantic).

Natalie lives in Ottawa with two plants she will surely neglect and kill. Follow her on Twitter @hunezna for deep thoughts on work, food and general Ottawa amazingness.