Gloria’s Story: A Path Toward Financial Stability

Meet Gloria, an aspiring pharmacy technician who lives with her five children in Minnesota.

Tell me more about you and your family.

In my house, it’s me and my five kids. They range in age from five months to 12 years old. We’ve been living in Saint Louis Park since June of this year. Right now, my days consist of taking care of my kids and trying to keep us all safe from COVID. We don’t go out unless we really, really have to. We’ve been more isolated these days.

What does going back to school look like for your older children?

They’re doing distance learning this fall, but we’ll see if that changes. I’m okay with their school situation since it’s probably safer for them to stay at home. They had a taste of what distance learning would be like since their school made the transition to go virtual earlier in the spring. We’ll see how things go when they eventually go back to school on campus.

Any current aspirations?

I’d like to be more stable in life. To my family and me, “stable” means many things: having a place of our own, a job where I’ve worked more than a year, and some sort of emergency savings set up. I don’t want to waste any more money.

I haven’t been saving the money that I do receive. Instead, I’ve been spending it. It’s harder right now to save because I don’t have any income coming in.

Tell me about your dream job.

I want to be a nurse. My kids actually inspired me to pursue that dream. When they were sick, I liked helping them get well. I started going to school to be a pharmacy technician, but it got to be too much with taking care of the kids and going to school.

What are you most looking forward to when the pandemic is over?

First, I’d like to find another stable job and do that for awhile. Then, I want to start going to pharmacy technician school again part-time.

Do you have any short-term or long-term savings goals?

I’d like to save at least $100 or $200 a month to start. I’m not saving for anything in particular right now. It’d be nice to have some amount of money saved up at all.

Did you learn about money growing up?

I learned how to balance a checkbook, but that’s about it. Nowadays, I want to teach my kids the things that I didn’t learn about growing up such as budgeting. When they get their own jobs, I want them to learn good spending habits like only buying what you need instead of spending money on whatever they want.

What does budgeting look like for you?

There is no budgeting right now during this pandemic. Everything I had saved up, I’m spending on things I need for my kids.

How do you feel about SaverLife?

I found out about it through an app I was using. It seems like a helpful tool!