Being Rich
A personal story- Who am I, and why I am so passionate about your Rich Life, Financial Literacy, & Mental Wellness in the work place.
There I was, dressed up as Colonial (ironically) in my fifth-grade classroom for my world history class marketplace. I was proudly ready to make my first sale as a business entrepreneur. My classmates and I spent the weeks making handmade crafts to “sell” to other students and teachers at the elementary school. The class was excited to spend their wood tokens at other student venders’ tables and utilize haggling techniques that our teacher taught us about. Man, did I sure feel rich with my cloth bag full of coin by the end of that school day. My fifth-grade agora market experience left a lasting impression on what wealth can feel like. That was my first interaction with business marketing, budgeting, and how to negotiate a sale.
However, as I continued my education into high school, I never learned about financial literacy. In fact, only 29.7 percent of teachers are teaching financial education according to the National Endowment for Financial Education. I personally struggled with math in high school. I remember being in Ms. Albright’s Algebra II class and frustratingly crying out “I will never use this type of math in my life! Why can’t we learn about how to budget or make money?!” A sentiment that many educators agreed with me on. Over 89 percent of teachers surveyed by the National Endowment for Financial Education agree that students should be required to take a financial education course for high school graduation. Sadly, the U.S. Department of Education has not made this a mandate requirement for high school. This personally led me to having a bad relationship with money and understanding my value as an employee in the work force.
If you are a millennial like me, you most likely were told to go to college and get a degree. Majority of us were told nothing about vocational exploration and resume development. What adolescent is thinking about labor market research? Not me. Like many highschoolers from a low-income household, I was focused on my part time job at IHop and more worried about having enough money to keep the electric on. The idea of analyzing future career income vs. paying for the cost of tuition was none-existent in my mind. I was trying to balance living on my own and being a track athlete while maintaining a B average in all my classes, let alone calculating how much it would be to attend a university.
After I graduated early from high school, I attended private university with the future vocational goal of becoming a therapist. I applied for dozens of scholarships, financial assistance, and yes student loans. In fact, I was encouraged by family members to take out the “good debt” of student loans. No one gave me mentorship or financial advice. Never in my dreams would I think this choice would lead to crippling debt. Over 15 million millennials have some type of student loan debt with an average debt of 33K. This is more than our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. If you add the 4.99 to 7.54 percent interest to that 33K, it is daunting. The simple not so simple formula that studentaid.gov provides is “Interest Amount = (Outstanding Principal Balance x Interest Rate Factor) x Number of Days Since Last Payment”. Unless, you have taken a financial literacy class, this formula can seem complex when you are projecting future cost of student loan repayment.
My first year in college was overwhelming financially. I had moved hundreds of miles from home, and I slept in my car in the university parking lot while using the university locker room for showers, and couch-surfed with peers. All of this while attending a full course load and working two different part-time jobs. It was overwhelming emotionally and financially. By the end of my first year of college I was burnt out and feeling frazzled. So, I did something drastic; I joined the Army Reserves in hopes of financial freedom. The military’s recruiting commands have long standing tactics of marketing free higher education to target low and middle-income students. I came from a military household, was an athlete, and didn’t mind a male screaming at me for not cleaning the bathroom to perfection; I had practice in that.
So, in 2010 I shipped to Basic Training and learned some new vocational skills as a Logistics Manager. When I returned from military training, I continued my college education at Avila University and finished my undergraduate degree in Art Therapy in 2014. I utilized my military benefit Chapter 1606 Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve to pay for college. Unfortunately, Chapter 1606 does not cover as much education as recruiters lead recruits to believe. My lack of understanding how the Public Law is written and a firm understanding of finances lead me to make some more poor financial decisions, including taking out more student loans just to live and pay bills. I finished this degree knowing that there would be some natural consequences to the student loans; I just never understood that until later as an adult.
In 2016 I proudly graduated from Emporia State University with my MS in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling. I took additional graduate studies in Art Therapy and Mental Health Counseling to round out my skill sets as a therapist. My vocational rehabilitation classes in graduate school are where I learned about financial literacy. I learned about vocational research, labor market projections, work force data, and income projections. It was eye opening to learn I chose an occupation with a 11% growth projection. 11% might not seem like a lot, however, compared to a fire fighter at only a 4% growth I knew I had a good chance to recover from my student loan debt. It was too late for me to back track on the poor choices I made in undergraduate school, but not too late to make better choices for my future. The one good aspect of working in social services is you will never be out of a job. I was able to find gainful employment before graduating graduate school.
However, no one told me how to negotiate for a higher starting salary, nor how to inquire about bonus pay. I never knew a therapist could receive a bonus payment until it happened to me, in later years. Over the years, I worked as a generalist therapist, and I honed those skillsets (that helped me increase my salary) by mentoring my clients in the same techniques that I used in therapy successfully today. As a therapist I have found such pride and joy in seeing my clients succeed in their vocational goals and balancing their own mental health. That was catalyst for me to specialize on work adjustment therapy.
For most individuals it can be hard to feel mentally well and go to work. I believe the clients that make steps forward to overcome employment barriers and build an equitable society are the real influencers. I find such pride in all my clients that successfully start their own business, stand up to the workplace bully, or receive reasonable accommodations in the workplace. My goal in therapy is to give clients the resources and encouragement to building their own rich life and empowering self-change in the workplace.
- B. Jordan
Interested in learning more about what I wrote?
https://www.fdic.gov/about/advisory-committees/economic-inclusion/2011/mar3.pdf
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
studentaid.gov
