Roommate Financial Success Story

I want to cover one of our roommates. Sometimes it does not feel like we're really helping our roommates improve their lives (financially, spiritually, mentally, etc). Yesterday though through talking with one of our roommates it appears we're having an effect at improving her financial know-how and career.

She had been working at a job that she liked but did not like her co-workers. The two ways to handle it are to just deal with it or look for another job. She asked us for some tips and we suggested the phone book to start calling businesses that she would enjoy working for and seeing if they have openings. She did and found a pet grooming place not too far from our house, paying her more than she was making at her last place and doing what she loves.

She also recently opened up a checking account. She was previously taking her paychecks to a currency exchange, having to pay a fee every time. The reason she did not have a checking account was because she had messed up one years back by not keeping an eye on the balance and was afraid of doing the same. For now she's only going to use it for cashing her check and to learn how to balance a checkbook.

She's still making mistakes along the way, but is learning from them. She quit her previous job in anger over her paycheck missing hours, which my wife and I explained will make it very hard to get that resolved. We also explained that whenever you are working hourly, you need to keep your own record of what your working, just in case of problems like this.