Be Responsible

I wish I could go on exotic vacations, or go shopping whenever I wanted, but I can't. Why? Because I'm just your normal, everyday, work my butt of to make nothing kind of girl. I wake up only to go to work and barely make ends meet. But that's okay, I'm okay with it. Again, why? Because my parents, from the time I was very young, taught me how to be repsonsible and budget my money. Seems kind of lame, I know, but once I was 16 and realized how many kids don't pay for a single thing, I was okay. It makes a difference when you have something handed to you and when you pay for it yourself. Almost cliche, I KNOW. Sheesh, but it's the truth, it really is.

I've been working since I was 15, and I've only ever had 3 jobs. My first job was a good first job. I learned valuable skills that I would need to know at other jobs. I won't go into detail about each job I've had, but what I'm leading up to is each job and each paycheck taught me responsibility. Every time I got paid I'd have to set aside a certain amount for gas, tithe, and my phone bill. Then the rest would go into my savings. It wasn't fun not having a lot of money and being able to go do fun things, and my parents rarely gave me money, but I learned from it. I know skills and lessons now that I wouldn't know if my parents hadn't made me learn all of it at an early age. Growing up my brothers and I had weekly jobs we had to do. Of course they were never fun, but hey, guess what, they taught us RESPONSIBILITY (surprise!). Every evening after dinner we had a job wheel. It had our names and then it had load, unload, and clear. We turned it every night, so that everyone had to do something that evening. We also had weekly Saturday jobs to do. Whether it was dusting, cleaning windows, taking out trash, or helping with laundry. We had to earn our allowances. I hated all of it at the time, but now I look back and I'm glad I had to work for what I wanted.

When you work hard for something you want, and you finally get it, it feels awesome to know you earned it instead of just having it handed to you. It might not seem like there's a difference at the time, but that will change. We weren't allowed to have cell phones until we were able to pay for it ourselves. Dumb rule, right? WRONG. I was never anywhere that I needed to have a cell phone. If I had a softball game, or a track meet my parents would always give me one of their phones, or I borrowed someones. I got my phone when I was 15, so that's about 7 years that I've had it. So for 7 years I've had my own my phone, my own phone bill with my name on it, and 7 years I've had to make sure I had enough money so that I could pay my bill.

It's not fun having to learn all of that and be a teenager, but you know what is fun? Knowing all of that as an adult, and being able to handle all the curveballs life throws at you. Not saying parents aren't teaching their kids to be responsible, they just need to continue to teach it. Never give that up, it's never a waste of time. It prepares kids for the future when they're on their own.