I consider myself a simple person. I am frugal, but generous. There are many times in life where I had to sacrifice and struggle because of lack of money.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit in a middle class family. We always had enough food on the table and clothes to wear, even though they were hand-me-downs from my older sister. I was privileged to go to 13 years of Catholic schools. My struggle with money didn’t start until I was in college and on my own. Every penny I have ever earned or received I saved and went into the bank, until I spent it on my college tuition. Thankfully, I had worked all through high school as a caddie and earned enough money to pay for the first year of tuition at Michigan State. I also had a small scholarship to MSU from being a caddie but I still had to take out loans. I also continued to work as a caddie during the summers while in college.
While at MSU, I needed to find a job on campus. It needed to be something easy where I could also study. Many freshmen were getting jobs working in the cafeteria, but that wasn’t my cup of tea. Pun intended! I viewed every job board I walked by and then one day it happened. I was speaking to the secretary at the Math Learning Center and she mentioned that she was looking for someone to cover part of her shift. Well, it was only for one hour. I spoke to the professor who ran the tutoring center and she agreed to give me the one hour after A LOT of coaxing. But with each semester and each year, I got more hours and the best part was I could study when no one needed me. I also found out that behind me were all the teacher manuals of every math course taught on campus. So I did my math homework mostly at work. I couldn’t take the manuals out since they were only used for the tutors in the math learning center.
Another problem was figuring out my Sunday dinner. At the time, the school’s largest meal plan was only 20 meals. A few weeks in my first semester, I went without dinner and just ate a large breakfast and a late lunch. But then I got smart. On campus they had a take-out area. Everything was prepackaged like your OJ, milk, snacks, breakfast items and sandwiches. You had 15 points to replace one of your regular meals in the dorm cafeterias. So I figured out that if I went there for my breakfast a few times a week, I could eat a light meal and use my other points to stock up on sandwiches, milk, and/or snacks to keep for later in the week. This was the best idea, until the Lord provided something better. At the local Catholic Church, just off campus, they started making Spaghetti Dinners for the students on Sunday. They were a big hit because many of us would come. I did use the take-out for extra food when I was hungry at night just in case.
I was so poor in college that I couldn’t even afford a belt. My jeans fit okay, but a belt would have been better. My dad felt bad for me and gave me one of his belts. It helped, but it looked ugly. The belt was so worn and it looked like used sandpaper. It also looked too manly. I had some pastel polka contact paper back at my dorm that I had use to cover some of my books. I cut that in strips and used that to cover the worn belt. It actually looked decent.
Later in life, when I became a teacher I had to also be creative and go without. My siblings started to have kids and I didn’t have enough money to buy them gifts. So I started to buy them books. It was something cheap and at the time when Borders was open, they had a great bargain book section. You really had to scope out the books, but I had a budget of less than $5 and to me that was a lot. I also bought future gifts when I had seen something on sale. I also bought gifts at the dollar tree. I can recall my nephew was really into characters and dressing up. So later that year I picked up costume accessories around Halloween from the Dollar Tree and saved them for Christmas. It was a hit!
When I was a teacher, I had to do continuing education. So I started my masters. This was a huge expense and proved to be very difficult especially on a teacher’s salary. Just to put to things in perspective when you divide everything out (not including the summer months), based on a 40 hour work week (but my colleagues know we put in a lot more than 40), I was making less than $5 an hour and that was gross! Money was tight, but I thought I could do it. I couldn’t afford to pay it all upfront which would give me a discount so I had to pay in installments. I did get a discount on my tuition because I taught at a Catholic school, so that was helpful, but it still was difficult. I never bought anything for myself, if I did it was very rare. In fact, I was almost at risk of the university dropping my classes and I had to come up with some money quickly. I remembered I seen those commercials for selling your jewelry and they give you cash. So that is what I did. I took the best jewelry I had: my high school and college rings. I wasn’t attached to them so it wasn’t hard to give them away for the money I needed. But I remember thinking I could probably get more for them if I had more time. For me the hardest parts wasn’t giving them up, but knowing that I had to because of my situation.
When I got married my husband and I also struggled with money. Not because we weren’t responsible, but we just didn’t make a lot of money. We were living pay-check-to-pay-check in the beginning of our marriage. I left teaching and was working two part time jobs that didn’t equal a full time job. Thankfully my husband was working full time, but it was still very hard. We didn’t get married until our early thirties. One might think we had all this time to save money, but we both were in situations that didn’t yield the biggest payout. I can recall one day when we had to go to the store to pick up ingredients for dinner. We were walking into the store, my husband checked out bank account and told me that we can’t spend any more than $30 because we only had $50 in our bank account. Fortunately, we were getting paid the next day but we both felt like we were on pins and needles.
All these hardships taught me to grateful for what I have and to know that the Lord ALWAYS provides. Although I had to take out loans to pay for my college tuition, the Lord provided me with the means to take out those loans. When I needed a job on campus, the Lord provided the perfect job. Having those math manuals behind was a true God send! Even though as an Elementary Education major, I specialized in math and had to take more math than engineers! The Lord also gave me a free Sunday dinner at the Church and provided me a belt so my pants wouldn’t fall down! Although I had to pawn of jewelry, at least I had jewelry to pawn off. As you can see, the Lord always helps us.
These situations were definitely hard, and if you are currently in a similar situation like I was, just understand that if you remain faithful, the Lord will provide, and your situation will get better. That is a promise! I can’t promise you won’t suffer, but in suffering we unite ourselves to the Lord. When we are in a situation where we are poor, we have to rely more on the Lord (Luke 6:20). When we rely more on the Lord, we are more humble (Matthew 6:25-34).
