The Greatest Gift
I cried when we signed the contract for the scholarship plan. Where would we
get the $91.50 a month to pay for it? $91.50! As a one-income family, our budget
was already paper thin. The time for our children to go to University seemed so
far away; Oliver was four, Melanie three years old. My husband Willy, however,
had more faith, "This will be the greatest gift we can offer our children."
The student who had knocked on our door reassured me, "I wouldn’t be at
University right now, had my parents not planned for my education when I was
just a baby."
In 1984, $ 91.50 bought groceries for two weeks for our family. To cut that
much from our budget was hard. Before putting anything in my grocery cart, I
asked myself, "Do we really need this?" At the check out counter it was easy to
say "no" to the pleading from our toddlers for gum and chocolates; there was no
money for even such small luxuries.
Our frugal life style paid off in more ways than we expected. We found
pleasures in simple and affordable activities: camping, swimming, hiking, and in
the winter, sledding. We cooked and baked everything from scratch. We set out to
teach our children, the next generation of spenders or savers, how to manage
their money....
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