Dedication: My mom, 10 years ago.
My mom has always said that I had a good head on my shoulders in terms of saving money, which is true. I am not the type of person where money tends to lose value in my hands because I’m just spending it on things that I don’t need. I only buy the things that I really do need and I only use money when I really do need it. Which is why I always have money left over. My mother is always saying, “ You know if you don’t use the money it loses value as well, right?”
Though It feels like I can never truly save my money because whenever I accrue a large sum, as soon as hard times hit I have to give up that money to my mother so that we can move past it. This summer I saved up $600 from graduation gifts, the money I earned from doing this summer program with the Department of Education, and participating in medical trials with a local University. Making my own money made me so proud so you can imagine how I felt when I had to give that up. It just feels so unfair…and it’s so much. Every time I think about the amount of money that I have made with my hard work I realize how much money I’ve had to give up… I should really start keeping track of my money in and (undoubtedly) out, I know it’ll make me feel better.
Right now we are in an especially hard time that’s why I had to give up my $600 that I earned this summer… all of it, not a dollar left. Let me explain the situation cause it’s not my mom’s fault here. We have these tenants and we rented them our home cause it’s a two-family apartment so we use the second apartment for a little extra income and the system has been working for a long while, we’ve never had problems, but these people kept breaking the rules: they were smoking inside the house, they secretly snuck a dog into the apartment (which is against the rules as stated in the application that they signed and agreed with), and in September they were three weeks late on rent. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for my mom and so she gave them an eviction notice. They ignored our eviction notice and our efforts to get them to cooperate with the covid payment organization and they stayed in our home for months, unpaid. We had to take money out of our own pockets and from family members which we never had to do before and that completely ruined our finances. Luckily they move out Nov. 12th and I am counting down the days with growing foretaste.
My mom isn’t the type of person to give her kids food that’s not fresh since we moved from being poor to substantially middle class. All the vegetables that she used to buy were fresh and all the food, I guess you could think of them as high quality. Since this began we have not been to the actual grocery store we’ve just been to food pantries trying to eliminate the cost of food which has been a huge drop in our diet since we’re not used to that life anymore. I’ve never had an overwhelming-blinding sense of pride. I’ve always been extremely grateful for where I came from and where I can go in the future…nevertheless this has been extremely humbling…I’m going off on a tangent but writing this made me feel better.