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Vol. 38, No. 18 |
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11-19-2008 Positive attitudes spark stories of hope
 Vicki Fitts was the epitome of middle-class success. She and her husband brought home $85,000 a year on two incomes, supported three kids, took regular shopping trips to the mall and made significant improvements to the home in Novelty, outside of Chagrin Falls, that Vicki inherited from her parents.Though the family lived paycheck to paycheck to support their lifestyle, the thought of losing everything never entered their minds. But their income was cut by more than half when Vicki’s husband fell victim to a mental illness in 1994 and lost his job. That dropped to zero when Vicki decided to give up her own job so she could help her husband run the business they had started. With home equity loans outstanding, the bank foreclosed on Vicki’s childhood home, which her parents had built from scratch, and auctioned it off in a sheriff’s sale. “To this day my brother still doesn’t talk to me, but there was nothing that could be done,” Vicki said. The one bit of luck was the sheriff didn’t foreclose on the house for a year, so the family didn’t have to move right away. But the existence they previously knew was over. Vicki and her husband eventually got a divorce, and she was now responsible for raising her three kids, who were 16, 15 and 11 at the time. Relying on an upbringing of self-determination from two parents who never finished high school, Vicki stayed positive — the key step, she said, to overcoming adversity — and began adjusting how her family lived. Trips to the mall stopped. They cut firewood for heating the house instead of buying oil. They changed their diet, cutting out expensive meat from the budget. “We basically went vegetarian,” Vicki said. They went from spending around $150 a week at the grocery store to $25 per week. The three children all got jobs at restaurants (even the youngest washed dishes), because they could all eat for free. The only government assistance she received was free school lunches for the kids. She tried to apply for food stamps, but the kids’ work pay counted as family income and put them over the threshold. Vicki refused to take her children’s money away and decided she would make do without the stamps. “I found out there’s a whole lot you don’t need,” Vicki said. “You don’t need to go to the mall or eat out. And I got part-time jobs with flexible schedules so I could still be there for the kids. You have to be positive and you have to keep trying,” Vicki said. Vicki’s ex-husband’s situation improved and he began paying child support in 1997. All three kids have since gone on to successful careers; two are now parents themselves. But there’s a real possibility Vicki, who now lives in Columbus, could find herself back in financial straits because of the current crisis. She isn’t sure her job as a part-time social work lecturer at Ohio State will continue to exist. “But I’m not afraid,” said Vicki, who earned her PhD from OSU in 2006 and is on the Ohio State Social Work Alumni Board executive committee. “We know we have the skills to keep making it.”  Mustafa Bootwala considers himself lucky. He and his family have never been in a dire financial situation, but only because they were willing to make sacrifices to adjust to a higher cost of living.He recently got married and his wife moved into his modest three-bedroom home in Worthington, adding a second income to the household. But before her arrival, it was Mustafa’s salary alone that paid the living expenses for him, his parents and his sister, who also works but whose salary goes toward paying her husband’s college tuition. “My net income supports everyone and it pretty much disappears as soon as the bills are paid,” Mustafa said. The family never lived a lavish lifestyle, so there was little fat to trim — or so Mustafa thought — in the family budget. The four of them shared one car (Mustafa and his sister take COTA to work), they ate out only occasionally and once a week they would splurge and buy $3 loaves of sunflower bread from an upscale bakery chain. Mustafa also made sure to put away some money, about 10 to 20 percent of his net pay each month. When their gas and grocery bills jumped by 30 percent and insurance costs began to rise, however, Mustafa’s family had to make some adjustments, and they found some commonsense things anyone can do. They switched to dollar loaves of bread at the grocery store and now will buy the sunflower bread only once a month. He bikes to the gym, four miles away, instead of driving, and searches Web sites for coupons before he goes shopping. “You can save every time you buy something, and it adds up to hundreds of dollars at the end of the month,” he said. “You don’t need to go to extremes, but creative people can find ways to make it work.” Instead of eating in restaurants, Mustafa will pick up food to cut out having to pay tips. He gets take-and-bake pizzas instead of ordering from pizzerias. Mustafa also had to reduce the money he socked away to 5 percent of his take-home pay while the budget was so tight. Yet even with his wife now contributing to the family finances, Mustafa doesn’t expect his frugality to change — he just plans to put more money into savings. “I would have to get ridiculously successful to blow cash on things that I don’t need,” he said.
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