TechIntersect

I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for some time but finally have found the motivation needed to make it happen. Our pocketbook has been getting slammed lately. We’ve had to spend several thousand dollars on different repairs to our car in the past few weeks. Yesterday, my wife had a tire blowout on a poorly maintained county road. Luckily, she avoided a wreck and wasn’t hurt, but we’ll soon be investing in an expensive set of new tires.

I’m a relative newbie when it comes to blogging about issues pertaining to teaching & education, so I may have missed this topic. However one thing I rarely see come up in conversations about what makes a great teacher is Personal Finance.

What?!? What the heck does personal finance have to do with great teaching? I’ll admit that it does seem rather odd, but think about this for a second. Why is it that it doesn’t seem to matter if the economy is booming or if the economy is in the ditch, schools and teachers can never seem to get ahead with finances?

I’ve heard plenty of educators comment (or worse) about the low pay we receive relative to others with similar education levels, but I hardly ever hear of any potential solutions to the problem. But I would argue if your finances at home are in order, you can do a better job at work, no matter what your profession is, including classroom teaching.

Without revealing too much about my own stupidity, I will tell you that there was a time not terribly long ago, our finances were in shambles. We were thousands in debt, leasing expensive automobiles and living paycheck to paycheck. We were on the brink of disaster, and watching the bloodbath of layoffs this week brings it all back to me with crystal clarity.

The tipping point for us was when my wife became pregnant with our second child and lost her job of 20+ years when the company she worked for went bankrupt, all within a couple of weeks time. A double whammy!

I was a beginning teacher at the time, and if you think this didn’t affect my performance in the classroom, think again! I couldn’t sleep and I was a mess trying to figure out what to do.

To make a long story short, not long afterward I heard a guy on the radio Dave Ramsey, and people were calling in screaming “We’re debt free!” What the heck? Nobody ever gets out of debt do they?

I so wanted to be one of those guys, without the month to month worry of making those stupid credit card payments. So I ordered the book, read it in one night, and decided his plan could work for us.

Here’s the simple plan in a nutshell:

1. Live on less than you earn using written budget
2. Pay off debts smallest to largest
3. Sacrifice to win – “Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else!”

It took us a couple of years to get all of our credit cards & consumer debt paid off, but we are finally in a place where we have emergency funds available to handle the stuff that life throws at us, like these frustrating challenges with our vehicle. Instead of being a major challenge, it is a frustrating minor annoyance. Thank goodness we finally have some sanity in our personal finances as the world slogs through this recession.

So if you’re thinking that life is pretty tough because your finances are a mess, take heart. You can fix it. There is help available. Others have done it and you can too! I want to encourage you to fix this broken part of your life so you can do the best job that you were meant to do!

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