Emily Hayes has long understood that money can come or go without warning.
Growing up, her father was the family breadwinner, but work was inconsistent. Some months, he earned enough for the family to live comfortably. Others, they barely scraped by. Even as a child, Hayes could see the difference in her family’s circumstances when money became scarce. “The bad months usually fell around summer vacation,” says Hayes, who is now 21. “I noticed when all my friends were taking family vacations and we had to stay home and do nothing.”
The inconsistency also put a strain on her parents’ relationship. “I remember my parents fighting about money a lot,” she says.
Trade School Vs. College
Hayes’ father discouraged her from going to college. He feared student debt would overwhelm her, and he wasn’t in a position to cover tuition costs. Instead, he urged her to go into the trades. He told her that she could learn on the job and would always be able to find good-paying work without taking on debt.
But Hayes says the trades weren’t for her. She’s always had a love of learning and is passionate about the arts. When senior year of high school came around, she decided to apply to colleges on her own, limiting her applications to schools she thought she could afford. But even going to a local college meant taking out loans to pay for her education.
When she graduated with her bachelor’s degree, Hayes set out to find work in her field—arts administration. Thanks to connections she had made in college, she was easily able to fill her summer with freelance gigs to make ends meet. Finding paid work in her field fresh out of school boosted her confidence and gave her a surge of optimism about future prospects. It felt like the decision to go to college was paying off in just the way she’d planned.
However, once the summer ended and those lucrative gigs dried up, Hayes realized that freelancing wouldn’t sustain her in the long term. She soon found herself in a financial situation startlingly similar to the one she had grown up in. Determined not to recreate the ups and downs that her parents had to deal with, she began looking for full-time employment, even though it meant straying from her chosen field.
Finding Stability
Today, Hayes works full-time in the office of a Philadelphia fabrication company, and she’s relieved to know where her next paycheck is coming from. “Even though I don’t love it, I’ve committed myself to staying there for two years so I can take a big chunk out of my loans,” she says. “I can pay my bills, eat and put something away each month. That’s what matters right now.”
When Hayes began her full-time job, she also started saving. She’s been teaching herself about financial planning via online video tutorials and podcasts that promote financial literacy. Each month, she puts some money into an IRA and some into a high yield savings account. She’s still not confident enough about her finances to automate those transfers from her bank account each month, but she’s working on it. “My goal is to be able to set up automatic deductions by the end of the year,” she says. When she can do that, she’ll finally feel like she’s broken the cycle of financial unpredictability that she grew up in.
Hayes misses working in the arts, though not enough to go back to relying on freelance gigs. For now, she’s cautiously optimistic that she’ll eventually end up in that field. “I like to believe that my degree is actually useful and that I’ll be able to find steady work in the arts at some point,” she says. But right now, she’s committed to paying off her loans and collecting a regular paycheck. “If a decent full-time job in my field came along, I’d take it—but not at the expense of financial stability. I don’t want to feel like I’m on a roller coaster my whole life.”
Donna Sellinger is a writer and educator living in Philadelphia. She loves spending time exploring the city’s parks, museums and riverfront.
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