Pay it Forward or a Helping Hand in Real Life

I keep finding postings about positive people helping out people in need.  I know many of them are fakes, but still make you think and are a good read.  However, I can tell a real story about unexpected help we have received in the last 6 months.  It may not be as well written as the stories usually posted, but at least they are real.

Our newborn was underweight and losing weight every day.  If she did not put on weight she had to go back to the hospital.  We had to put her onto formula, something we had not budgeted for.  She had nipple confusion and would not take the breast.  I talked about it on Facebook, I was very worried about having to put her onto formula and upset that I was not doing my job as a mom and breastfeeding her.  One lady in our area had a huge bag of formula that her baby was unable to eat.  Her family gave us the unopened cans of formula.  My daughter could eat it and put on weight.  There was enough formula that it got us to when we had money again.  Their kindness made a big impact on the life of my family. 

With a new born Christmas was very tight, but we expected that and made plans and budgeted for it.  We let our kids know that they would not be getting very much and they needed to pick one special toy they wanted for Christmas.  On the day we were told we had to put our newborn on formula we used our budgeted Christmas money to buy bottles, formula and a breast pump.  At the time I felt like a huge failure because I could not breast feed my baby and that took away the special toys our kids had asked for Christmas.  Just before Christmas a Christmas card showed up in my mail with a prepaid credit card with $50 on it.  This really helped us out.  We used it to buy the toys special to our kids.  It also let our kids buy a gift for each other, something they really wanted to do.  A small gesture made a big impact.  I don’t know how much the $50 meant to the person who gave it to us; I just know how big of a difference it made to us.

For my daughter’s birthday we told her no party this year and we would have to wait a couple of weeks to do something as a family.  Our daughter understood, and I never told anyone, not even family, about the difficulty we were having.  Out of the blue a few days before my daughter’s birthday a gift arrived, $50.  It gave us what we needed to do what she wanted on her birthday, to eat out at a specific restaurant, and still buy groceries for the next two weeks.  Again someone made a huge difference to our lives just because they wanted to.  It may seem like a small thing, being able to take our daughter out on her birthday, but it was a huge thing for her.  It made her feel important and loved.  With a new baby in the house she needs all the reminders we can give her that she is still valued, important and loved.

I never asked for help.  I don’t sit around with my hand out waiting for someone to make my life better.  But I am willing to accept kindness for my children.  I have no pride when it comes to my kids, if my pride has to go so my children can have what they need, so be it.  They always come first.

I do see this as what goes around comes around.  In the past I was able to pay it forward, or be that helping hand many times.  I have been told that I can be a soft touch, and have a hard time seeing people in need.  There were many times when money found its way into the hands of those in need, family, friends and strangers.  Many invites for lunch or dinner were given with lots of leftovers when we knew someone was running low on food.  Sometimes it was as simple as paying for the meal of the family behind us in line at a fast food place.  When we had our business we would often suddenly need “staff” when people really needed some real money.  They would work the weekend with us and would have the money they needed without feeling they were taking charity (and they actually did do work for us).

 

When we lost the business and moved into this complex we would to buy hotdogs when they went on sale, and fill our freezer with them.  It was not uncommon all summer long for the kids in our neighbourhood to show up whenever we turned on the BBQ.  They knew we would put on several packages of hotdogs, and they could eat.  For some of the kids it was the only food they would get during the day.  We knew that, and made sure they ate.  Heck we even bought a deep fryer because a bag of potatoes was cheap and make a lot of French-fry’s.  It is not something our family talks about, we just did it because we could.  Sometimes they would show up for dinner too.  Those kids don’t live here anymore, but we helped them out when they did.  It was nice to be able to make a difference in someone’s life.  I never expected to be on the other side, but I am grateful that I was.

Times are getting harder, more families are in need.  I see requests on Freecycle for food, and formula, clothing and more all the time.  It makes me sad that so many people are in need.  I hope to be able to repay the unexpected gifts of money one day when things change and I am working again.  Hopefully when it is need the most. 

I grew up poor.  I am poor now.  I expect to die poor.  But at least I am in good company!

 

Dealing with Holiday Money Stress

The last few days (or weeks if I want to be honest) have been stressful. I know the holidays are coming and I am worried about being able to give my kids a good Christmas. I know in my hart that they will love what ever they get for Christmas, but I also feel bad knowing I am unable to get them what they want.

This year it is different. Last year we put ourselves in DEBT to give them a wonderful Christmas, and we still have not gotten out from under it. So we don’t have the credit to use. This year is going to be tighter then ever and it is kind of hard to deal with as a parent. It is a combination of the economic downturn, our retail website is not making sales right now and the fact that both of us are going back to school so that we can try and get jobs next year simply because we cannot make a living off of our retail site right now. That may change eventually, but it is going to take a lot of time and some big changes in the economy.

We made the mistake of going to the mall with the kids this weekend. It was hard because we had to keep telling the kids no, we cannot buy that. We don’t have the money. Usually we try and pick them up something small, maybe $5.00 or even $10.00 each, but this time we just could not do so. They watched people filling their carts up with the toys they wanted and you could see the confusion on their little faces and they tried to understand why other people could get the toys but they could not. We will not be taking our kids into the stores again, if we can help it, until we do have a little money set aside for them.

We are going back in a week to get a Christmas picture of them with Santa, even though that is going to be about $30.00. We will try to make sure they can pick up something small on the same day, but it is going to be difficult. What is harder is knowing out kids have been asking for the same toys over and over again, and we know that we cannot get them because they are all over $30.00 each. We are going to see what we can do about getting them each one of the toys they want. We have been explaining to them that Santa can only fit so many toys in his bag, so they may only get one or two of the toys they ask for.

The truth is that they don’t need any more toys; they just want the newest ones. Also we have been buying small gifts all year, so they actually have a lot of things to go under the tree, just not what they are asking for right now. So we are not doing that bad, IT JUST FEELS THAT WAY! It is just hard when you cannot give them what they ask for; no matter how many toys you actually have under the tree, because all I thinks is Oh, I cannot buy this and I cannot buy that forgetting what I have already gotten them.

We are signed up for a Christmas basket from the Salvation Army this year and it is going to make a difference. Each kid will get one big toy and one little toy and a few small stocking stuffers. They would like to be able to do more, but the demand is way too high this year. There are way too many other families in the same situation we are in. I am going to be writing about how to have a good Christmas on a tight budget over the next few weeks.

New way to protect yourself when using Interac

I love knowing people in the know. I found out recently about a way to keep your bankcard and bank balance safer. We all know to hide our pin number as we punch it in but there are a lot of ways to get our banking card information. Criminals are using cameras in ceilings and fraudulent pin pads to get our card information and pin number. The newest thing is a fake Interac card reader and pin pad that records your card info and pin number as you put it into the system so shielding the pad as you enter your number does not help. The device is under the pin pad to record what buttons you push, so covering what you are doing is not going to make a difference, it still gets your pin #.

The best thing to do is start putting in a fake pin number first, and then when it comes back wrong put the right one in. This works because the fake card reader will approve your transaction with the wrong pin number. What the reader does is record all your information and then says approved. It does not talk to the central server to confirm your information, it just approves it. This way no record shows up on your bank account and no money leaves your bank account. They take a loss on the product or sale because they can make it up with what they can steal, or get from selling your information.

By not recording the transaction it makes it difficult for banks to find out where the card information was stolen. If all the cards taken on day A all went to store B then it is easy to figure out what happened. However if there is no record of anyone going to store A and using their card it makes it almost impossible to figure out where the cards are being stolen. Often the fake card reader is used at the end of the month because people who receive statements will not get one for almost a month, are they going to remember what store they visited on day A and how much they spent. Chances are they will not notice the missing transaction. Though most of us use the Internet to track our accounts these days, most of us only notice what goes out, not what should have gone out. We will assume there is a delay in processing and recording the payment and that it will show up eventually. Then we forget about it.

Think about all the places you use your card then think about how many other people use their cards there as well. One day’s worth of people using their cards can be quite valuable. The criminal does not need to do this everyday, and don’t. There have been cases where an employee was paid to put the fake Interact machine on for their shift and then that is it, the criminals move it to another store the next day, the employee has some extra money and your card information is going to the highest bidder. How many people go through a corner store, coffee shop or gas station in 6 to 8 hrs?

There is only so much you can do to keep your bank information safe. The criminals keep developing new ways to get it from you. I do recommend that everyone who can needs to start using internet banking and checks their bank account daily. This way you are more likely to notice if something is wrong right away and stop it before your bank account is empty.