by Catsy Jones

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: June 10, 2008

My father is one of the smartest human beings I have ever known in my entire life. He mostly gained his knowledge through real life experiences. As a child, I watched him struggle as he worked first as a mailman, and than a taxi driver, and than a handyman. One of the things he always instilled in me was to work hard and to always do your best, no matter what sort of job you had. His belief has always been a job is good and worthwhile as long as it's legal and the person doing it works hard.

When I was a teenager, my father got a really good job working at Merill Lynch. He worked his way up the ropes, starting on the lowest jobs they had, and working his way all the way up to a vice president. When he was laid off along with some of the other high paid workers, most of his friends lost their homes, their cars, you name it, they lost it. But not my dad. I think that being in the lower and than middle class most of our lives, had taught him a few things. And the fact that my grandmother had raised him as a single parent, and they never had much, also taught him a few things.

The reason my father didn't lose his house, his car, and other necessities, was because he had six months of his house payment, six months of his car payment, six months of his car insurance, and about six months worth of food money, plus six months of his garbage and water bills put aside before he was laid off. He had done this in case something happened, and low and behold, as he said to me, "something did". When he received unemployment it helped a little, but it certainly was not enough money to pay for his home or his car payments. With what he received from unemployment, my father was able to pay off the other little things he needed to pay for, but he had the biggest things already taken care of.

With the unemployment, he was able to put gas in his car, to drive to different job interviews, he was able to pay the gas and electric, and because my father had never payed only the minimum on his credit cards, he was able to start paying the minimum for a little while, until he was on his feet.

My point is this, when you are changing jobs, even if you have another one lined up, you do not know if the other job is going to work out. It may not work out for you, and than you may find yourself on an unemployment line praying you can sell your house before it is taken from you by the bank. You never know when something will happen, and you will be unable to continue the new job. It's much better to save at first, and when you have been at your job for a while, and have some money saved up, than you can go ahead and knock out some of your debt.

Here is some advice straight from the mouth of the smartest human being I know, "You should have at least six months worth of your bills saved up, in case something happens, and you need to use it". As I have stated, my father is a very smart man. I have learned from his own experiences, and I hope that my readers have gained something from it as well.

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