Dream #2

Another dream came true this week; a different type of dream this time. I started Grad school! I have been toying with the idea off and on for sometime, but never could commit to the direction I wanted to take. And watching friends suffer through the pain of changed academic dreams encouraged procrastination.

Several years ago, I really started to flesh out my ideas on community development. The first plans were grand and optimistic and a tiny bit socialist. Have you ever wanted to own an entire town? I used to fantasize about this as a little girl playing with my stagecoach cowboy set (I don’t know if my parents bought me these types of toys or if I inherited them, but I actually really enjoyed that stagecoach cowboy set.) I would set up the stores and saloons and have my stagecoach drop off passengers and they all had very exciting lives and lived in many different places. As an adult my town wouldn’t have welfare, gangs, child abuse or crime. Everyone would learn how to read, and use a computer, and go off to the big city and use all the skills they learned in my town.

Last year, I took a new position in my company and reoriented myself back into financial planning. It’s not a ‘sexy’ job, but I’m good at it, and I really feel like I am helping people with something that is important in their lives. Money. With this new job I started restructuring my DREAM socialist plan, into a REAL capitalist plan. Money. I understand it and I understand how it controls and affects our lives. We live in a country where the gap is growing between those who have it and those who don’t. I can’t give it to those who don’t have it, but I can help them understand how to use what they have to their advantage and maybe making the playing field a little more even for a few hundred people here and there.

Now that I have a REAL and completely doable plan in place, it’s time for Grad School. And while all my fellow class mates are shaking in their boots at the capstone thesis project, I’m eagerly looking forward to it. For the next two years I will squeeze out every opportunity for focused learning and application on financial planning, community development, and business management and then, then, to put passion into print for an honest-to-goodness workable financial planning business for low-income community. Without becoming low-income myself.