Music Mondays - She Works Hard for the Money

Why Music Mondays?

Before I go into my message this Monday, I just thought I would take a step back and explain why every Monday on my blog I have a music/money lesson theme. I noticed that my traffic has gone up significantly over the last few months, and I am not sure if it is because of Rockstar Finance, Budgets are Sexy, Two Cents or just consistently blogging, but either way, I realized that some of my new readers might wonder why I do this. So here is the answer.

Inspiration for your financial journey

My day job consists of financial planning for people in their 20s and 30s, and more than planning, I call it financial training. And as a financial trainer, I am always looking for inspiration to get my clients motivated to achieve their financial hopes and dreams. Training for financial goals is a lot like training for a marathon, though, and you need to find ways to stay inspired for the long journey. For me, music is my inspiration. As a young girl, every Sunday, I listed to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown, and it was my escape. I found inspiration then and I still love finding messages in music.So I create an individualized playlist for each of my clients, (back in the day this would have been a mixtape) based on their unique life situation, goals and objectives. It is my way of speaking to them, when I can’t speak to them. Like most of us, I am not a huge fan of Mondays and I thought that I would share some of these musical inspirations with you on my blog every Monday to hopefully kick off your week in a great way. Even if you don’t like the songs that I choose, hopefully you can relate to the messages.

Financial lesson from my mom

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, so I thought I would dedicate today’s blog to my mom. I have said this before, but my parent’s did not give me a formal “education” in financial literacy, and I definitely made mistakes and learned the hard way because of it. However, even though they did not provide formal lessons, I certainly learned a lot from them just by observing and bearing witness to their life journeys.My mom will be the first person to say that she is not good with money and has made a lot of mistakes along the way as far as managing her own, but she taught me one of the most important lessons in maintaining strong financial health and that is the value of hard work. Two weeks ago I talked about side hustling to bring in more income when you want to accomplish more life goals, and many people will shy away from side hustling because they don’t have the energy or ability to work hard to keep up with that side hustle.

My role model for working hard

At the ripe age of 22, my mother was married with two children. It still boggles my mind to think about the fact that she had 2 kids by the age of 22, where I could barely separate my laundry successfully at 22. Since my dad was in medical school, my mom had to work lots of different jobs to help support the family. While working and raising my brother and me my mom also found the time to get a degree in nursing.My parents divorced when I was young, and my mom remarried and had three more children. With five kids in the house, my mom had to work all the time. At one point, I remember she had three jobs to help support us. And the amazing thing was that despite the fact that she worked so much, she was always there for me, especially for the important events in my life. As a child, I never appreciated how hard she worked to provide us all with basic needs, but after becoming a working mom myself, I truly don’t know how she did it.

An example I am carrying on

A few months ago, Andrew at Living Rich Cheaply asked if we were overworked, and I think sometimes people feel as though they are overworked because they are not used to working hard. And I know that we need to balance working with other priorities in our lives, but I hope that I am showing my son, as my mom showed me, that hard work is an important component in your life journey and certainly critical for long term financial health. Every time I hear the song, "She Works Hard for the Money" from Donna Summer, I think of my mom and how hard she worked to support her family, and I thank her for her sacrifices and the lesson she taught me about the value of hard work.

What financial or other important life lessons did you learn from your mom?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0fhHLliKJI