Paying it Forward – volunteering time and experience
| My young family (Step Dad, Mom, little brother, me and our son) right before my high school graduation. |
I was a teen parent. While my husband is the father of all of my boys, I had our first child when I was 15 and we didn’t get married until I was 22. I attended a school for teen moms during my pregnancy and the semester after I had our son. After returning to mu home school for a year and a half, I graduated and went on to college with the help and support of my mom and step dad. While being a teen parent was difficult, I thank God for that experience. That broadening of my horizons. The flip flop in my world view. The paradigm shift. The removal of my rose colored glasses. Even though I didn’t graduate college, I did go on to be a successful professional with a respectable salary and the ability to support my family with my husband.
| Staying afloat |
One of my talents has been creativity with numbers. My mom struggled financially and, while she wasn’t the most organized person, she kept us afloat. With her help in the beginning, teaching me to pay bills and take care of your family first, I have learned to make a mean budget. I feel like my budgeting skills have kept our family in the black when we might have drowned financially. My husband would agree. After we got married, we lived in low income housing. I worked double shifts as a waitress and my husband was working temp jobs downtown and riding the bus because we only had one car. My creative budgeting skills kept us with a roof over our heads and food on our table and clothes on our backs. We struggled, but we came out on top.
One of the main struggles a lot of low-income families (heck, a lot of families!) face is the lack of organization skills. They had never been given direction on how to make things work. No one had taken the time to show them, to help them make sense of the financial pieces of life. This is how much you have coming in and this is how much you have going out. No wonder why your account is overdrawn. If you don’t keep track of where your money goes and plan for expenses, they can surprise you in a bad way and could force you to make decisions between equally important things like food and electricity. Many people don’t know of the resources available to help through tough financial times. There’s help out there for food, help for electricity for low income, help for childcare, help for school lunches and child insurance through school districts. Many people don’t know how to ask for help.
I enjoy helping people make the most of their lives. At Mind Key, we can help you find the tools that you need to be successful living and working your passion. Check out the Store for info on how we can help you!
Look around and take stock of your life. Who has helped you on your path? Can you give back to the community?
