My financial awakening: A life turned upside down

I was twenty-three, still in college, and living paycheck to paycheck—when my life came to an abrupt, life-altering event. I had met the girl of my dreams, a fellow student who also happened to have a son.

Overnight my priorities shifted. I was now responsible for a fiancee and my new son. I knew I had to get financially fit, and quick.

Although my parents helped me with rent and I’d worked throughout school, I had little to show for it. I kept a few hundred on hand, but that was it. I always had figured there was plenty of time to be financially responsible after I graduated.

My wife shared my sentiment, if not my concern for organization. She’d also run up a few small debts that we began to track down and repay. Life was good, but we were very busy.

We spent the next year getting to know each other, preparing for our wedding (spring break!), enrolling our son in a private school, finishing our bachelor degrees, building a father-son relationship, preparing for graduate school, working several part-time jobs, working on parenting issues, consolidating our households, merging our finances, and more that I’ve undoubtably forgotten.

We must be suckers for punishment because we spent the next four years, working a lot, in graduate school, teaching, getting a dog, developing raw land, buying our first new car, buying a rv, moving into a rv, having a daughter, building our house, totaling our car on a falling tree, trading our rv, living four months without power and five months without potable water, and finally welcoming our second daughter.

For the moment, life seems to have returned to normal.

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Photo by agnese irene