Jaci Rae's Story
The Value of a Dollar, The Early Years
My life has been anything but ordinary. I began life impoverished, but with poverty came a street knowledge that I might not have found otherwise. It is because of my early years that I came to learn how to get something for nothing or next to it. Even though my story is quite different today, I still use these same tricks to save money and get the most bang for my buck. Something I want to help you with.
I have been to the depths of financially disparity and I don't want you to have to suffer the same. I know what it's like and I have been there pinching pennies since I was very young, which is why I can say I have been in the trenches. To give you a little bit of background, let me begin with my early years and how I learned at a very young age the value of a dollar.
So what was my childhood like? My Grandmother was truly the light of my life. I scarcely saw her as she lived far away and we couldn't afford the gas to get through the four-hour drive. My family was poor and I was the child who came home with a key around her neck.
I 'cooked' my first meal for my older brother when I was five by pouring raw macaroni and cheese into a bowl of water and graciously handing it to him. I had seen babysitters do it in the past (except of course they had really cooked it); I just didn't know about cooking or directions!
Macaroni and cheese was what we were given to eat every night except when guests were over. When we had babysitters, sometimes they would cook it for us and let us eat it, other times they would eat it and make us watch them while we stayed hungry.
Lunch at school was not available for me. I had no clue where the other children got their lunches from, and so I went hungry most of the time. Unfortunately, I learned to use food as my control device later on.
These experiences taught me at a very early age to dream big about the things I wanted, but that dreaming wasn't enough. I learned that you had to have a plan and that money made that plan easier to achieve.
The Wizard of Oz and the Sound of Music were some my all time favorite movies and from the tender age of three I sang Over the Rainbow and Edelweiss with great hope for the future.
I had my first babysitting job, unpaid of course, for a friend of my mothers when I was four. My mom would drop me off, and leave me with her friend, who would in turn leave me with her one-year-old child for hours at a time.
I would try to feed the baby, as she was left in a high chair, the food left open on the counter. The baby never liked anything, to my dismay; she would just spit it out. I figured out at a later age that I was overfeeding her, but what did I know?
I started working officially with a work permit at the age of 12 as a waitress and worked in various jobs from operator for an answering service (illegally overnight, as I was a minor), movie store rental clerk and housekeeper, all before I was 16.
By 15, I was supporting myself because I had dropped out of High School when the buses stopped coming to my area and I had no other way to get to school other than walking the 6.9 miles each way. We lived in the backwoods country.
I earned some money from my music, but not a lot, however, that was my dream. I was going to be a famous singing star! (What I didn't realize at the time was that fame didn't equate to money, it just meant everyone else got your money and you may end up with nothing!)
I re-entered school and finished my High School career with no real hopes of college and only a distant dream. I was too poor to attend college, I didn't know about junior college and I didn't have the grades for an academic scholarship.
Although I had dreamed of playing sports and even ran with the track team in their practices, sports had never been part of my life because I couldn't afford to pay the fees and so an athletic scholarship was not even a thought.
Because of my singing background, I was offered a $10,000 a year music scholarship at a prestigious music college, but the cost per year was $25,000 not including cost of living and I had never been told or heard about grants.
When I heard my classmates beaming about their plans for a future at a university or junior college, I finally had the courage to approach someone about the possibilities of me attending college and how I could make that happen.
I mistakenly asked a school counselor (who was filling in for my counselor for the week) how someone like me could attend college. He told me that I was not the type for college and I should just get a job or get married because that would be the best I could hope for. I walked away believing him.
