Fears, Family and Finances....

My family... we are geeks.

Last Thursday I was talking with a group of colleagues about the amount of stress and pressure we have come under this school-year.  We have a new teacher evaluation system being implemented this year and it has been a "Cart before the Horse" implementation, hence causing a lot of additional stress and hours for administrators. So while sitting around commiserating I found out that one of my fellow administrators had lost his mother in October, one had a mother that was very ill, and one had 3 small children at home.  Since we are all at different schools we only get to catch up with each other at our monthly meetings and we usually only have a very limited amount of time to do so. This month, however, we were lucky to have some time talk to and although it always makes me feel good to see them, I felt sad leaving knowing that they had so many family pressures in addition to work pressure.

Everyone said the same thing...that they can not take time off to tend to their families the way they felt they should.  This started me thinking that if something happened to someone in my family and I needed to attend to them for an extended period of time, I would not be able to do that at this time.  If I had to take an extended leave from work, it would only take about 1 month and I would be almost homeless, and I think many people are in that same boat at this time.  Hearing their stories made me realize even more how important it is to clean up my finances, not just for me but for my family.

So, my inspiration this week came from colleagues sharing their stories and making me realize that family is first and I want to be able to take care of them and me, no matter what.

Who inspires you to stay focused and want to be a better you?