Georgia student helps family save
Saving for a Bright Future
“I had known that I needed to save beforehand,” she said. But, like many of her peers, she hadn’t really thought about how important it was to get started. Then, at a class introducing the Saves campaign, one of her teachers started talking about the things young people might want to save for – a car, college, being out on their own.
“That’s when it hit me,” Ms. Tarbush said. “College is going to come sooner than you think. I realized I really need to start saving or I’m just going to be stuck later on.”
When she signed up at the start of the last school year, her immediate goal was to save enough money to cover the cost of the many trips she would need to take during the year as a state officer of FCCLA. By babysitting for her mother and doing jobs for her grandmother, she managed to save $600 to cover the cost of her trips with more than $200 left over to help pay family bills and to place in a college savings account.
“Whenever I got money, instead of spending it like I really wanted to, I would save at least half,” he said. Instead of going to the movies, she and her family started renting more movies and “doing more stuff at home.” When she went to the mall, she’d either window shop or check out the sales rack.
At the same time that she signed up as a youth Saver, she brought home an adult Saver enrollment form for her mother. Her mother’s now also signed up as a Saver, with a goal of getting out of debt. “We were just doing it together,” Ms. Tarbush said, trying “to see how much money we could save.”
Her brothers have also gotten interested, she said. And, although they are not signed up as Savers, they have started to put money aside. One benefit the close-knit family has reaped from its added savings is that it has money to keep in touch by phone with her older brother, who is stationed with his family at Fort Carson in Colorado and has recently returned from Iraq. “It’s touched our whole family,” she said.
As she starts her senior year in high school next year, Ms. Tarbush’s main goal is to save for college. She’s lined up a job at a child development center starting in the fall, when her less rigorous travel schedule will make it easier to hold a steady job. Although she plans to apply for scholarships, she realizes that she still needs to save a lot for college, she said.
Her advice to other young people is to “look at your future. You have to save for it now or you’re going to be lost later.”
“I realized I really need to start saving or I’m just going to be stuck later on.” --Carmen Tarbush