In this weekly feature I answer your personal finance questions.
Dear Emma, WTF?!
I really enjoy your blog, but I’m getting sick of your snotty advice. Sure, you’ve got it all going on: your great career and your beautiful kids and your fabulous life in New York. Well, guess what, not everyone had all the advantages you did. We all can’t just become successful entrepreneurs hiring house cleaners and laundry service and babysitters while we go partying with our slutty single-mom girlfriends on weeknights.
I’m 24 and I have three kids ages 5 and under by two different guys — neither of whom is around. I always dreamed of becoming a teacher and had really good grades in high school. But instead of going to college I got pregnant. I live in a small town with a terrible economy and the only job I can find is at a daycare where I barely make enough money to get by. I would love to move to a bigger city — one with a university — get a teaching degree and start a new life around interesting people doing interesting things. But my whole family is here and this is all my kids know. I’m stuck, and I don’t need you rubbing my face with your blog posts three times a week. In fact, most single moms would identify with me more than you. So fuck off.
Irate in Iowa
Dear Irate,
Every night when I tuck my kids into bed we do what we call, “SayWhatWe’reGratefulFor.” We take turns listing a few things that we appreciate in our lives. With my daughter, I often include this:
“I’m grateful that we live in a time and place that women can do whatever we want.”
Our grateful exercise is about reminding ourselves of how rich we are. I also use it to rid myself of excuses. If I recognize how abundant my life is, I find few reasons not to be happy.
On reading your letter, my first impulse was to give you a rundown of all the hard knocks I’ve suffered in life, and then tell you how I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and assure you that, Yes, you can do it, too! And all of that would be accurate, but here’s the thing: You’re right. I do have something that many people don’t have: I had a mother and grandparents and aunts and uncles who supported my dreams to go on and do great things, even if we were all in a small town where things were far less than perfect and no one was doing anything that I thought was exciting. I had people who expected me to be who I wanted to be.
I can tell by your writing that you are very, very bright. You have a big personality (bitch- no one tells me to fuck off!), and you have big dreams. Plus, you’re pissed. This all makes for the momentum you need to make a change. Whatever happens next will be scary. You relocate with your kids, you move away from everything you know and risk falling on your face. Scary! Stay put and you risk hating yourself for the rest of your life for not living out your dream, becoming a (even more?) bitter person and mother and set forth the cycle of poverty and blame and excuses for your children. WAY MORE SCARY, right?
So here is what you will do:
1. Decide where you’re moving. Not where you’d like to move. Where you will move.
2. Find the best education school in that city. Make an appointment and go to that school. Talk to the dean of admissions. Meet with someone in financial aid. Get a grip on what it will take to go there- financially, logistically.
3. Walk around the campus. Walk around the neighborhoods. Imagine what it will be like to live there. Look at the people. Won’t they be cool to know? Take your kids. Talk about what it will be like to go to school there, play in the parks, eat in the restaurants. See it and feel it. This will be your new life.
4. Make a plan. Not a 10-year-maybe-if-I’m-lucky plan. A real plan for one year from now. Your plan will include making it happen financially — rent, a new job, and school for your kids and you. The plan will include you envisioning packing a moving truck, saying goodbye to your friends and old life, loading the kids up and the four of you driving down the freeway towards your dreams. Your vision will feel scary and thrilling and hopeful and even more scary. You will think of driving that moving truck down the freeway and feeling and thinking all of those things. The sun will be shining and you and your kids are laughing.
5. Read stories. Stories about people overcoming adversity. Oprah, J.K. Rowling, Jay-Z, David Geffen. Here’s a run-down of 20 business leaders who started with nothing – even less than you in most cases. Being poor in America with dreams of teaching school in a city starts to become a normal, everyday thing.
6. Only tell your plan to a very few select people. Not people who may be jealous or doubtful and will steal your thunder. Maybe you don’t have anyone like that. So you will email me, and I will forgive you for telling me to fuck off and write you back.
7. Take a moment and be grateful. Grateful that you are smart and willful and a determined mother. Be grateful that you have a city and education and career that you can dream about. Feel gratitude that you live in a time and place that as women, we can do whatever we want.
8. You will do it. And it will be so, so hard. And you will cry and want to give up. And then it will be OK. And you will not be able to believe that you ever thought about staying in your hometown.
9. When you are on your feet you will fly to New York and we will go out drinking. On a weeknight.
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As someone who knows what it’s like to be on the receiving side of Emma’s stop-whining-bitch-and-do-it brand of life coaching, I can say that damn, yes, she can get under your skin! With her feminist “you can do anything” rants, her “stop making excuses,” her superhuman ability to juggle it all and –blech — her limitless optimism. But here’s the thing, Irate in Iowa: You and I both know that whining is a cry for help, and real help doesn’t come in the form of passing Kleenex and saying, “sucks to be you.” Useful help gives you the tools you need to change what is keeping you from your vision of success. Real help is telling you, without a doubt, You Can Do It. I’ve heard it from her; I’ve believed it and it’s helped me get over myself and move forward.
Now sure, sometimes Ms. WSM should shut the eff up. But not here.Not now. She’s spot on. Listen to her. Make it happen. And I’ll join you two for drinks.
I too am a mother of 3 kids, two different fathers that do jack shit for me and my kids but i will say this. I moved to Houston, TX sight unseen (thankfully my job paid for the relocation). I am now 9 years later making $30k more than I was when I came here. I STILL haven’t finished school, I don’t own a house and I am nowhere near rich…I don’t have money or childcare to go out drinking with my friends, I do my own damn laundry and clean my own house.
What I am saying is my life is mine, I created it with God’s help. I didn’t have friends here or family I just made the move because what I was dealing with a the time was not going to be my story. I am from a small town to…it’s called Nebraska (ok I’m being a smart ass about the town part) but I didn’t feel that I could achieve what I wanted there so I left…with my then 6 month old daughter. She is 12 and she and her brothers see Mommy making it happen every single day.
I am blessed beyond measure not by what I have but by WHO I have and what I believe is still possible.
Thanks for your support guys. Cynthia – I had no idea I was so annoying! Penny – you and I need to talk about that laundry ….
You’re not annoying. I was trying to be snarky but leaned too much on hyperbole. You’re very inspiring in the exact ways I mentioned. Your success makes me strive for my own because you show me it is possible.
When my grandmother was 40 she went to college, got her teaching degree and then worked for 20 years. She is retired now with a pension. She also was a divorced mom of three kids back in the day when divorce was rare. She got married a couple years ago to her third husband (both of them are in their 80s). Some people choose to wallow; others just stfu, get off their butts and craft their lives.
I love that story Morghan, and I know it has been a huge inspiration as you have paved your own amazing path. Love you!
and Cynthia — I know, just being snarky back. But most of all: THANK YOU.
Um, LOVING your advice Emma. It’s true, Irate in Iowa is angry. She’s just taking it out on the wrong person. I mean, she doesn’t need you rubbing it in her face? Are you physically going to her home and pulling a Clockwork Orange on her and forcing her to watch your blog? Doubt it. WHy is she reading it? She’s envious and wants what you have and fears she cannot do it herself. So she’s mad at you.
She might as well write to Zappos and tell them to stop rubbing it in her face that she can’t afford $300 heels. It makes about that much sense.
I think your advice is spot on, and props to you for rising above a petty comeback, transcending her negative smack to the face and being a source of inspiration and info. If she doesn’t like it, she should, well, not be reading your blog. Period. But you’re right–her punch comes from the fact that she is angry–and perhaps angry enough to create change. It’s a far better use of that energy, to propel her to a new spot, then to take pot shots at those who have done it.
Emma:
Very well-stated, and good advice. I, too, am from a less than progressive place, and though I did not get pregnant until my late thirties, I knew that I had to buckle down if I wanted to overcome my circumstances.
I believe if we as women will learn to bond, rather than bash, we can get a lot more accomplised. To Miss Irate in Iowa, I would also say to you to volunteer in a school system, so that you can get a full understanding of what teaching a 21st century student entails.
I taught high school for 13 years, before I made the switch to college, which means, even with three degrees (each one higher than the next, and none being an associate), I have found myself to be single, pregnant, and underpaid.
So what am I doing? Headed to get a new certification in a different field. You are in an excellent position, as this country is dying for new blood in education. Ensure that you have money to take and pass the certifcation exams, because they are not cheap.
Additionally, the day care you work at–do you get a discount for your children? Utilize your resources. Type/edit papers; offer to do resumes; run errands for people; baby sit, but definitely get back in school sooner than later.
As Captain Planet said, (dating myself, here), the power is YOURS!
I’m doing the same! And yes I will admit to some whining along the way. But you know what? I AM blessed! I am gearing up to make that move. I don’t see myself or my kids being able to thrive where we are right now. And I have family and friends that are rooting us on! We just have to believe in ourselves. We as single parents are given one of the most difficult, yet rewarding jobs on this planet. We are celebrities in our own right! (At least our kiddos see it that way). But the only one holding us back is ourselves. We are blessed to be born in a time where we have so many resources available to us. Use them! And if they aren’t readily available where we currently are living, then we must step out of our comfort zones and seek them out. Sending love and well wishes to Ms. Irate. I commend you Emma for turning something so potentially energy draining into a positive message for all.