Dear Elsie Jane,

It's probably not too early to talk to you about money.  You're a smart girl, so I'm sure you are going to make a good living one day.  Hopefully over the next 20 years or so, you will learn something about money from your old parents.  But I have some thoughts I have now that I want in writing, just in case.

The natural cycle of things is to start out with nothing and build wealth slowly until you have something.  Many children are only conscious of their parents' lifestyle after they have built it up, and then spend the first part of their life trying to maintain that same standard of living.  To do so, they borrow money they don't have to buy things that they don't really need (new cars, latest technologies, etc.).  Guess what?  We started out with virtually nothing--and we have great memories from those days.  It helps us to appreciate what we have now.  That includes you!

When we got married, we lived in a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment (nicknamed "the shoebox") for a couple of years while going to graduate school at Baylor.  We were right off campus on 9th St.  The rent was cheap and we couldn't beat it with a stick--so why fix what wasn't broken?  A little inconvenience was worth the price. It definitely accelerated the "getting to know you and your habits" part of our marriage by living in such close quarters for a while.  It was a challenge, indeed.  There was not a dishwasher, and we both really disliked doing dishes.  We had more books than anything else, and naturally, not enough bookshelf space.  Your dad had already been living in that apartment for two years, so I felt like I was moving in there on top of him.  And I was.  I was a terrible piler; that is, I made piles of things.  Papers, clothes, dishes, books--you name it, it probably ended up in a pile.  That drove your father crazy.  Only did having children later help to start curing me of this habit, though I'm sure that I will never fully be cured.

Your dad and I brought whatever furniture we had with us into the marriage.  He had a bed.  I had a desk and a bookshelf.  He had a TV stand from his parents' house and a futon couch that he had bought from a friend.  I had a table I had bought from a friend and two mismatched chairs from an unwanted breakfast table set at home (one of the seats was "butt-sprung" as your Papa used to joke).  He had a computer desk chair, and I had a dresser and nightstand from my room growing up.  Nothing matched, obviously.  But it was home.  Our home.

Those couple of years we had cheap fun:  we went to events on campus, we drove up and down Valley Mills Drive (known as "cruisin' the Valley").  I started teaching high school, so we went to football games on Friday nights, and we even got to go to prom together.  We would play games with friends (we were a lethal pair when playing Cranium), and we committed to a small group with other young couples at our church so that we had spritual and social fulfillment.  This is where we learned to play Settlers of Catan--love it!  Free food?  We were there.  Again, I don't know if we will ever be fully cured of this habit, either.  We also played PlayStation 2 games.  Your dad got me hooked.  Final Fantasy X, and then Final Fantasy X-2.  He played Grand Turismo 3, and couldn't wait for Grand Turismo 4 to come out.  When it did, well, let's say he was spending many hours on it.  We read comic books, rented movies, and read regular books.  Oh, did we read books.  We would be found reading in bed, side-by-side, more often than not every night before bed.

Things that were notably absent:  cell phones, cable/satellite TV, Internet, new electronics, new clothes and shoes.  Thing that was stupidly present:  new car (your dad's black 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX wagon).

Look, we weren't perfect, but we definitely knew how to enjoy the simpler things in life, things that don't involve money.  If we could go back and do it again, we would NOT buy a new car, and we would probably try to make it with fewer student loans.  But, c'est la vie.  Live and learn.  We would not trade any of those experiences for all the money in the world, though.  They were some of our best years together when we were childless.

If it isn't obvious to you now, whenever you read this, we valued education highly.  The other sacrifices were worth it to us.  And now, as we approach your 4th birthday, we are working our tails off to finish paying off our students loans.  I want to have them paid off  before you go to kindergarten, but we'll see how that goes.  They will be gone soon enough.  You and your sibling(s) will get to experience a life where we are debt-free and able to give to others.  Where we have the freedom to do whatever we want.  I just want you to know that lifestyle will not, and has not yet, come easy.  We have worked hard, and we have worked together to accomplish our goals in tandem.  We value things other than bigger houses and newer cars and latest electronics.  Life is not about stuff.  We still value education, but even more we value experiences and we value giving to others.  And we hope you will too.

As always and forever, I love you.
Mama