Dave Ramsey vs. Food Stamps - Faith in Action

Just a few years ago I was a classroom teacher and, if I may say so, a pretty good one.  I don’t say that out of pride or the need to blow my own horn, but based upon the feedback I have received over the years from students, parents, and other teachers alike I believe I was good at my job.  But unfortunately, as is true too often in the public school sector, I was ultimately punished for being good.

 

Now the punishers surely wouldn’t describe it this way, they would say they were helping students by using their resources wisely, but the cold, hard truth is that good teachers – the ones who follow guidelines, who don’t live in a time capsule, and who actively engage with students where they are – are the same teachers administrators tend to funnel “problem” students to because they are the teachers willing to go the extra mile.  These are the teachers believed to be able to reach those hard to reach kids.  The teachers who seek to see students as individuals and not clones of the students from last year, or the year before, or ten years before that.  The teachers who can make a difference.

Now, you might be asking, how is this punishment?  Isn’t this a good thing for those at risk students?  Isn’t that using resources wisely like you said?  Isn’t that exactly why good teachers are in the classroom?  Well, the answers there are "yes", right up until this helpful streamlining of bodies gets out of control.  I truly believe that all teachers have the potential to be good teachers if they are willing to put in the effort.  Many teachers have the ability to be really good if they have the passion and the drive, and there are handfuls of teachers who have the God-given innate ability to be great, but no teacher has a chance once the cards are stacked too high against them and that is when using a teaching staff’s resources wisely turns into punishment for effective teachers.

My last year of regular classroom teaching I taught on a team with three other teachers.  We had approximately 90 students to share between us and thirteen of those students were documented severe classroom behavior issues.  Thirteen.  Roughly 15% of our students.  Thirteen.  Enough “issues” that even split evenly among us throughout the day there were at least three major behavior issues in each of our classrooms every period of the day.  And that does not even take into account any other student on our team who might be having a bad day or have issues of his/her own.  Anything beyond those thirteen was merely icing on the cake.

Now you may be thinking, “Wow! That’s awful!  What school was that!?”, but before you pack your belongings to move away from such a delinquent ridden area, let me give you a few more facts.  1)  Our team was one of three teaching teams at our grade level.  2)  The second team in our grade level had three students identified as severe behavior issues.  3)  The third team had one student identified as a severe behavior issue.  4)  Toward the end of the school year a member of our administrative staff openly admitted that our team had the huge number of behavior issues we had because “Your team can handle them.”  See what I mean?  We were good teachers.  And, not saying anything negative about the other teachers at our grade level, we were a good team and had the reputation for being so.  But that year we were not.  By spring of that school year, every member of our team felt ineffective, frustrated and overwhelmed.  Three out of four of us had such high levels of stress that we were in physical therapy for neck and back issues, and the fourth member of our team was being treated for extreme high blood pressure and risk of heart attack.  Being good at what you do is a wonderful thing, but what does that matter if you are rewarded for your success by being forced into a situation destined for failure? 

At this point you may be wondering why in all the world I have just spent a chunk of time writing about my experience as a teacher if I promised you talk about food stamps and faith, but the circumstances of that year have been on my mind a lot lately.  See, in many ways I am back in that type of situation again... Really successful to the point of receiving negative consequences for being good at what I do.  I am a very fiscally conservative person, I budget my money well and work hard to stay out of debt, but I am finding all of that is quite unhelpful when seeking aid for my low income household.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Dave Ramsey, but he is a financial adviser via radio and the web whose primary focus is getting out of debt and living debt free.  Anyway, a few years ago Dan and I made a commitment to work Dave’s plan, to eliminate our debt, to build up a substantial emergency fund for security and to move forward living a debt free life.  And thus I went to work - following Dave's advice each step of the way.  As Dan was away a lot I had been the financial guru of our household for years and I took this commitment to heart.  We worked to pay off both our cars, to eliminate the small amount of other consumer debt we had, and then we begin building up our emergency savings.  Things were looking great.  And then God told us to adopt.  Right then.

As many of you know, when we began Jack’s adoption we had absolutely no money in the bank to put toward our efforts.  We had recently moved to Maryland, had used the proceeds from the sale of our TN home to pay off our final debt and had a very small emergency fund in the works.  But that was okay.  We trusted God and knew that He would provide for the path He put before us so we took a bit of a hiatus from stockpiling that emergency fund and jumped into the adoption game once again.  And then Jack came home and things went back to normal.  Or not.   

Once Jack and I were home I was once again able to put money away in savings, and everything continued to be paid in full without credit, but then the bottom fell out of everything when Dan announced his departure plan and I suddenly became a single mom with five children and very limited options for any income beyond legally stipulated support payments.  Don’t get me wrong, I am very blessed to have no debt beyond the car payment we acquired right before Dan deployed.  And I am very blessed to be very good at managing money and thus have lived so far as we have with as little income as we have.  And I am very blessed that even after moving my household across the country I still have a bit of money left in savings.  But given that I do have some money in savings and that my children and I not completely destitute I am limited with what low-income help I qualify for simply because I have money in the bank at all.

You see, there are funny little rules about qualifying for government assistance.  (Rules that I've honestly never thought about before because I never imagined I would have a reason to worry about them, but rules that I am gaining a working knowledge of quickly.)  The reality is, when it comes to monthly income, my household qualifies for quite a bit.  When it comes to savings, however, anything beyond $2000 in the bank disqualifies us from getting help from several places.  So, thus is the dilemma and the punishment for being good.

I have worked hard over the past few years to get out of debt and get some money into savings.  I spent a large amount of money to relocate my family, but I did so as frugally as possible and with some help from family and friends.  By keeping money in the bank, however, my household does not qualify for several social service programs that would allow me to keep an emergency fund of greater than $2000 in the bank – a must in my mind as I am the head of my household, the sole caretaker and transportation provider for my five children, and have no unallocated monthly funds with which to pay off a debt were I to acquire one.  But... if I were to be fiscally irresponsible, blow all the money I have in savings and keep very little money in hand for any emergency that might arise – then I would qualify for government assistance.  Disqualified for being responsible, rewarded for being broke... So what to do?

The Dave Ramsey in me says keep the emergency fund.  Use it sparingly if I must, try to build it up a few dollars here and there if I can, and trust God to provide beyond my limited means each month as He has provided for everything else thus far.  The mother in me says seek out whatever resources are available to aid the feeding and clothing of my children knowing that without assistance of some sort my limited savings will slowly dwindle away and I'll be left without an emergency fund anyway.  And all the while my pride and my desire for self-sufficiency declare that government aid and charity services aren’t meant for my household anyway, they are for people in real need, which I realize deep down denies the fact that my monthly budget contains numbers well below the aid eligibility limits across the board  And so I struggle

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Do I continue with what I’m good at?  Do I do all I can to stay out of debt, keep an emergency fund as best I can and be punished by “the system" for being as fiscally responsible as possible and doing as much as I can on my own?  Or do I work within the system and fly without a safety net in order to acquire a less dependable but more consistently attainable one?  Everything within me says go the first route, and I simply cannot bring myself to choose the second.  So... here I stand, forging ahead on the path my then-household chose years ago.  A path of personal responsibility and tough choices.  And a path I know well.  But everything within me also knows that this path comes with great risk and will require great faith.  A faith that God will provide everything we need as we need it even if we can't see it coming.  Not everything we want – a hard lesson we will be learning for a long time – and not nearly what we are used to, but everything we need.

A wise friend told me a couple weeks back about how her family is going through similar circumstances, living on an extremely limited budget and daily trusting the Lord to provide.  As she put it, “It does not work on paper but God [provides] miraculously.”  And that is where I am – looking at my Excel spreadsheet, my monthly expenses and my projected monthly food budget knowing that although it looks rough on paper, God is not limited by what I can see in black and white.

So, remember that year of teaching?  The one stacked with behavior issues and beyond stressful days?  I’m happy to tell you that all four member of my team survived, and we even went on to teach again the next year.  But I also must tell you that I was forever changed by that experience.  In some ways I was changed for the better, and unfortunately the effect of some changes was bad, but most of the changes that year came in my walk with the Lord as I spent a lot of time soul searching just trying to make it through the day.  I didn't yet truly realize my need for utter submission as I have been humbled to admit daily now, but there is no way I could have done any effective teaching that year without the help of God.  It was simply too big of a challenge to handle alone.  And the same is true now as there is simply no way I can do any effective budgeting at this point without the same Heavenly guidance.  

Dave Ramsey is great man and I love his forthrightness and his methods, and I will continue to incorporate his ideas in my financial planning as best I can in my circumstances, but ultimately God must be my banker and my most trusted financial adviser.  None of what I am about to accomplish financially makes sense on paper, but in faith I know it will all work out.  I have some hard lessons to learn and I am continually being humbled by what I, the fierce independent one, must allow others to help me with, but I am committed to trusting in my Lord and Savior to provide beyond my means and I am committed to being content with what He provides.  So bring on the challenges, the "issues" and the need for blind faith.  My God is in control of all of it and He will never punish me for being faithful.

Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.  1 Timothy 6:6-8 

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:6-7

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

On a side note - If you have never heard the song "Gratitude" by Nichole Nordeman, I highly recommend taking a listen.  It is a wonderful expression of just how humbly we should approach God with our prayers and petitions, accepting each and every one of His answers as an opportunity to grow closer to Him, even when the answer is "no".