My second year at UC has been a very long and eventful one. At the end of finals week of Spring 2019, I found myself looking back at the beginning of the year and it felt like I was looking through a telescope at my younger self. A lot happened during the 2018-2019 school year… I went through Organic Chemistry (that’s a whole story in and of itself!), I became much more involved on and off campus with things like GlobeMed, the Student Government, and Research, and I grew some more as a person and became less apologetic. Most importantly though, I got jobs, paid jobs, for the first time in my life!

        Allow me to provide a little bit of context. I grew up in the United Arab Emirates, where if there were any work opportunities for teenagers, I was not aware of them. I really struggled with this growing up, because I always wanted to start making money for myself. To add to that, my parents were a little reluctant to let me have a job when I started at UC. They thought it would be best for me to focus on my academics instead. Because of all of that, getting a job this year was absolutely thrilling! It was an experience that was both informative and transformative.

        Before working, I had a very unrealistic and incomplete understanding of how money works. I had ambitious financial goals, which were essentially realistic, but definitely not within the timeframes I had set myself. I was hopelessly optimistic to say the least. Those goals were all adjusted when I started my first job, working at the Robert S. Marx Law Library for minimum wage. I don’t mean to complain, and I am definitely very grateful for that job, but I did struggle during the Fall of 2018 to have money left over between payrolls, which was shocking because I only needed to spend money on food and gas. I couldn’t even begin to think of saving up. I only realized how major of an issue this was when I had time to reflect on the semester during the Winter Break. I started to realize how essential financial literacy was, and I became very concerned with my lack of it. I remembered my Year-in-Review piece from 2017-2018 and my concern about homelessness back then. I could see the potential partial role of financial illiteracy in contributing to homelessness. I decided that I wanted to tackle the issue I had before attempting to help others.

        Spring of 2019 was a little better, with me managing to save some money during the second half of the semester. I still have a lot to learn though, including how to create a budget and stick to it, how to save, how to invest… I am now taking the Summer Break to set myself some more realistic financial goals and develop solid plans and strategies to achieve them. I am also currently enjoying a copy of Investing All-In-One for Dummies by Eric Tyson et al. I have yet a way to go with this journey before reaching the level of financial independence and freedom I aim for, but I am certainly less concerned about this problem now that I’ve identified it and started working on it!