Self Sufficiency & Saving Money

Whenever I think of finances I think "ew". To me, it implies numbers, accounting, and just really boring stuff. I think about my dad sitting at the dining table staring at his computer screen, surrounded by his giant piles of all the receipts he keeps and then shredding some paper. I don't really know what he does when he sits there like that but I'm assuming it's finance-related and boring. Yet, when I think of money I think of all those possibilities--traveling abroad, new clothes, adopting a dog, etc. which, by the way, is really not good for a college student. But lucky for me, I had a mom who was a stellar bargain hunter. 

While we talked about finances in class I couldn't help thinking about her (no disregard to my dad) and smiling. She was as self sufficient as could be. When we redid our floors she bought and installed them herself. She grew a garden every summer and made tomato sauce, dehydrated apples, canned pears, and jam (I never knew how much of a luxury it was to never have store bought jam). One of our chores growing up was to cut out coupons for her. Pretty much everything we owned came from Goodwill. Not the one where everything is neatly hung up for you to browse through, but the one where everything was just dumped into these giant blue bins and you had to dig through to find "hidden treasures" as my mom would say (for the longest time, I thought that was the only type of Goodwill that existed). Those trips there supplied her with shelves of fabric (I'm not kidding--the upstairs hallway was lined with these tall bookcases stuffed with color-coordinated fabric) for which she made quilts square sets and sold them, making a quite bit of money.

Stay at home moms are a bit controversial nowadays but in class, it was interesting when we talked about how a family with two working parents could actually be losing money with other expenses that come from either of them starting to work after being a stay at home mom or dad, like having to buy new work clothes, paying for daycare, etc. I'm incredibly grateful that my mom was one, for at least a little while. Not because of the money it might have saved like that study suggests but because it offers a sense of stability my siblings and I had. I'm grateful that I know what it's to walk through the door after school and get a whiff of those divine scones, or cookies and see her in the kitchen baking and hear her ask how school was. That feeling is drastically different from the one when I came home to an empty house after my siblings went to college and my mom passed away. I'm grateful because I know what the feeling is to not have that anymore even when she started working and then never having a possible chance of that again after she died. 

I can't say for certain if we ever struggled financially because that wasn't something my parents would have talked about in front of us kids. But looking back I think part of the reason my mom, who grew up in a household where money wasn't really an issue, was so fervent about saving money and being self-sufficient was probably because she worried about money. I think it's possible that she felt like she wasn't contributing much financially as a stay-at-home mom so she compensated by doing a lot of different things. For that, I'm incredibly grateful because it gave me fond memories and habits I intend to carry out through my life, whether I'm wealthy or not.