Arizona woman saves 10% of paycheck
Saving for Financial Independence
Two years ago Vivien Vargas was at a crisis point. When her 15-year relationship ended, she and her three children “lost the house, the cars, everything.” To add to her troubles, she had no experience with the basic tasks of managing money, like paying bills and making a budget. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I was working. I knew I had to work. But that was all I knew.”
Today, she has a car, she’s buying a house, and, when her father died recently, she had the money she needed to hop on a plane the next day and fly to his funeral. She has also nearly completed her bachelor’s degree and recently landed a new job with the county that comes with a pay increase.
She credits the help she got from the Labors Community Services Agency and Arizona Saves for her success. “That program got me where I am today,” she said.
It was Labors Community Services Agency that introduced Ms. Vargha to Arizona Saves, when they brought in a campaign representative to speak to their renters. What attracted Ms. Vargha was what the speaker had to say about “being financially independent.” “I was tired of living paycheck to paycheck,” she explained. “The motivation was really in myself. I just needed to hear the excitement from another person.”
She signed up as an Arizona Saver and started saving 10 percent of each paycheck. To find the extra money to save, she trimmed her expenses in a lot of areas – by cutting back on her food bill, switching to basic cable, and monitoring the family’s electricity use. As she tells her children, “You budget, or you go without.”
The one thing that helped her more than anything else, she said, was putting her budget in writing. “The most important thing is put it on paper. You’ve got to visualize it. That’s the only way you can stick to it.”
To help her keep track of her spending, she made folders for each budget category with manila envelopes attached. She puts her receipts in the envelope and keeps a record of all her expenditures.
On a couple of occasions when she “needed direction,” she called her Arizona Saves wealth counselor for advice. Gradually, her savings began to grow. “It didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “I can’t describe how hard it was. But I had a goal in mind, and I stuck to it. I really had to believe there was a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Now she’s working on rebuilding her savings, which were “wiped clean” with her recent house purchase. And she needs to buy furniture and other items for her new house. “I have to figure out what’s the best way to complete this task. It’s going to be really complicated to me until I get a plan in force.” But with the same determination that has already brought her so far already she adds, “It’ll get done eventually.”
“I was tired of living paycheck to paycheck.” -- Vivien Vargha