Poor

I don't know the precise definition of poor. I generally think the poor are anyone who is less well off than I am. I have never really felt poor in my life. I remember as a child always having food on the table and as a teenager wondering how mom and dad managed to do that once I had started working and realized what things actually cost.

My dad considered himself a financial failure. It hurt me to see how much it hurt him. He started a few businesses but was never able to get them beyond the barely - sometimes not quite - break even point. He was an insanely intelligent person who had no idea how to manage money or to control his impulses to work a plan long term. And he never wanted to work for anyone else. He wanted to have his own business. And they failed.

My brother Mark and I have talked a few times about how it is probably not a coincidence that we saw these businesses fail and the stress that put on our parents and that we picked the careers that we have. Mark is a postal carrier and I work for the largest retailer in the world. We might not have our own businesses, but it is a safe bet that neither of our companies are going out of business anytime soon.

I don't want you folks to think that my brothers and I shared our father's thought that he was a financial failure. Quite the opposite. We knew we were not rich but we also knew that we were fed and had a roof over our heads. We did not get everything we ever wanted but Christmas always had a full tree (thanks mom) and there were always presents on our birthdays. We were happy kids.

And we did not know everything about our parents finances either.

There was a time when my family was living on the land where my dad co-owned a small saw mill. We lived in a trailer and my dad was taking a salary of just $50.00 a week. With a wife and 3 sons, that ain't a lot of money even in 1976. You would think that we would have qualified as poor.

But like I have already stated, we never felt that way. Turns out that during that time there was a family in town that really needed help. My dad knew the folks from when he was a kid. He got with my mom and they started giving that family $10.00 each week. That's 20% of their income going to someone not related to them.

And they never told anyone. Nobody. The only folks who knew were that family (maybe just the one who got the 10 bucks) and my parents. I never knew this while I was a kid. I never knew this while I was a teen or a young man. I did not find out about this while my dad was alive.

My mom told me about this roughly a year after my dad was dead and gone while she and I were driving back from dinner in town. She made no bones about it that it was Dad's idea and that she had campaigned against it at the time. But he had convinced her and they did it for several months. And she made sure I knew it was not easy. Young boys are hungry boys and she had become an expert on just how many ways a person could serve rice.

My wife and I support an inner city missionary group that plants small churches to help the urban poor. We support our local food bank with donations and occasionally with our time. Priscilla is currently heading up a Relay for Life team at her work to help raise funds to fight cancer. I have given money to the American Heart Association almost to the day that my dad died of heart disease. All of that added up and even if you assign a wage per hour for the time we have spent helping, does not equal 20% of our total take home pay.

I have made more per year since I took my first management level job than my dad ever made in a single year from any of the businesses that he tried to get off the ground. But from the standpoint of taking care of others, the old man and my mom have run circles around me.

But Priscilla and I are finally free from debt. We are setting up accounts now with a financial planner to give ourselves the best chance to provide for a secure future. And we are going to be able to find those chances to help and support in total anonymity. You know, the way my dad did it.