Homeless to Financial Stability in Under a Year

Think for a moment what you would do if you lost everything. Let’s say tomorrow you wake up and find everything is gone. Your house, your car, your job, your savings, and everything else. The only thing you have is your family. I don’t know about you, but that is a scary thing to think about. What would you do? How would start building your wealth again? Would you get a job, or try and start a business? The reason I bring up these questions is that I heard an amazing story about a man and his wife who went from being homeless to financially stable within a year.

A good friend of mine works as an HR manager at a construction company and he told me that a guy came and interviewed with him and shared his life story about how he was homeless and fought his way to financial stability. The story is a short one, but it has a lot of hope and triumph in my opinion. We will call the man Fred.

Fred was a man of 37 years old, he had seemed to have nothing go right in his life. He bounced around job to job, but could not hold a job for much more than a week. He was down on his luck and had no place to go and no one to turn to. Fred slept under a bridge and went around begging for his next meal. One day he met a homeless woman, we will call her Sally. Sally and Fred got along really well and became infatuated with one another. As they were talking one day they both decided that they wanted to start a life together and a family, but they did not want to do that in their current living conditions. They decided to get to work. Fred took the first job he could find as a laborer, and Sally found work at a fast food restaurant. They worked hard, the only thing that kept them going was their love for each other and their dream of having a family together. They showered at truck stops and ate as little as possible to set aside enough money for an apartment. Eventually, they had saved enough to purchase an apartment. But, they hit a wall when no one would rent to them because of their poor credit. They got discouraged many times looking for an apartment or any place where they could call home, when one day their prayers were answered and they found an apartment that the renter was kind enough to look past their credit and realize all that they had been through. The renter gave them the keys to their apartment and they went inside with tears in their eyes. They had no furniture, there was nothing but blank walls and bare carpets, but they didn’t care. They were just happy to have a roof over their heads. They started off small with a simple one bedroom apartment and Fred went to work. Fred increased his income by moving up the ladder at his job and eventually came before my friend for his job interview.

After hearing Fred’s story, my friend basically hired him on the spot. He knew he was going to be one of the hardest working employees they had. What is so great about this story is Fred and Sally’s mindset. They had a goal and they knew they needed to work hard to achieve it. They both had troubles keeping a job, but when they came together and made a goal it became easy to work. It is hard to just save money for the heck of it, you need a goal. It can be anything, a glamorous vacation, your dream car, buying your first house. But whatever it is just make sure it is something that you want so bad that you are willing to change the way you live and spend less money to achieve it. Without a goal you will get discouraged. You will see friends spending money on things and want to do the same, it will be much easier to succumb to peer pressure and impulse purchases. So my challenge for you is the find a goal, make it attainable within a year but make it hard enough that it will push you. Don’t make it too hard or you will get too discouraged. It is a fine line to walk, but if done correctly the goal will help you achieve even greater things with your finances.

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