hanging over my head for at this point almost ten years. >> in the what-if world of her imagination, shawn barnes of a typical 25-year-old, a talented artist, shawn figures if by now she'd have a low-paying entry level job at an animation studio in l.a., she'd have roommates, maybe even a boyfriend and like her friends she still would have a parent to turn to if she got into a jam. >> i try not to think about it because i feel like the more i think of the what ifs, the more i just hurt myself in the long run. but in a lot of ways i feel like, if i didn't have to live my life completely on my own, maybe i could get somewhere. >> shawn was still a teenager when her mother's death made her an orphan. her inheritance consisted of a small life insurance payout and a pile of debt, including a mortgage on the old house she grew up in. >> i learned every type of insurance you had to have in about a day and a half and how to pay all of these bills and i cut off my cable and i got a different phone and just how to cut down all of these costs. and it was things that no one else my age ever had to think of.