Why I committed to financial independence
If you’ve been reading my blog for long, you know the story that really got me started thinking about financial independence for teachers. My best friend’s infant son had a health issue that caused him to ‘seem’ sick based on the criteria of his daycare. He wasn’t sick, and he had a note from the doctor to attest to the fact that his body just worked a little different from the norm. However, the daycare didn’t seem to care. Consequently my friend was getting 1-2 calls a week to come pick him up within an hour. Not an ideal situation for a busy high school English teacher.
I saw how stressed she was. I saw how she felt like she was failing both at work and as a mom. And I decided right then that I had to do something so that I could choose not to teach if I needed to. I needed to put myself in a position where teaching was a lifestyle choice not a financial requirement.
Taking action
I watched my expenses, increased my income, and stashed the extra away. I’ll skip the gory details – ok, they weren’t that gory, but they could be boring, so we’ll cut to the chase. Let’s just say that put me in a position fairly early in life to choose whether I wanted to teach or not. At four different points in my life, I’ve been able to step out of the workforce for various reasons. And each time, I’ve gone back to a job I liked even better than the one I left. Even better, each time I have returned to teaching with more energy, more joy, and more enthusiasm than ever. My breaks from teaching have made me a better teacher.
But I would not have been able to check out and check back in if it weren’t for the fact that I didn’t need my teaching paycheck. And as I watch what is going on in education, I desperately want every educator to be able to make the choice of whether to continue teaching or not, especially today.
So why is financial freedom for teachers more important now that it ever was before?
Reason #1: Mental health
The pressures put on classroom teachers by administration, parents, and society in general are taking a huge toll on teachers’ mental health. According to a 2017 survey of 5000 American teachers conducted by the AFT, 58% of teachers polled indicated that at some point in the previous 30 days their mental heath was “not good.” (By comparison, just 2 years earlier, only 34% had responded similarly.) In personal experience, I have been amazed by the number of teachers who have told me they were on anti-depressants because of the pressures of teaching.
Look, we all want to be there for “our kids.” But at some points in time, you have to prioritize your own mental health. And let’s face facts, our students really deserve to have teachers who aren’t stressed and depressed. Just as importantly, we deserve to have professional lives that don’t require an anti-depressant to cope with the stress of our jobs.
Reason #2: Transition and uncertainty
Education is in transition right now. In some states, there are movements to privatize public schools. In most states, a teacher’s and a school’s value is based heavily on standardized test scores. And with the impact of the global pandemic on education, who knows when classroom teaching will return to ‘normal’ whatever that is. Even teachers who would never choose to leave the field of education might not have that choice. And if a teacher who loves teaching with every fiber of her being is pushed out of the classroom, the last thing she needs to be worried about is money.
Reason #3: Force for Good
In my most recent job, I was touched by an angel. No, not the Hallmark-esque 90’s TV show. A former teacher who made my classroom a lot more like heaven. Marla Tasch was a former classroom teacher who volunteered in my English as a New Language classroom 2-3 days a week. It was the best thing ever! You know how you sometimes wish you could clone yourself because there is Just. Too. Much. To. Do. Well, having Marla in my classroom was like having that often-wished-for clone. She still wanted to work with kids, and she had the skills and empathy to do so. But she didn’t need the paycheck. So she made my life better, made the kids’ lives SO much better, and I think we made her life better, too. Best of all – get this – she didn’t have to grade papers! Sounds to me like everyone lucked out.
But seriously, she was able to hold onto the parts of teaching she enjoyed and let go of the ones she didn’t. What kind of impact could we have on education if we had an army of Marlas? What if all those people who were leaving education to go into some other field, instead just hung around and helped out all the teachers who are still in the trenches? It would be a revolution in education.
Reason #4: The tough stuff
Strikes. There I said it. Across the nation teachers have gone on strike these past few years, not just for themselves, but for their students, as well. Kids deserve small class sizes; they deserve competent school counselors, nurses, and other support staff; they deserve specials like music, art, and PE. But if we teachers don’t stand up for them – and stand up STRONG – they often don’t get those things. Financial freedom means that if – God forbid – your school decides that a strike is the best way to stand up for teachers and students, you won’t be wondering what those days of lost pay are going to do to your family.
And then there is doing what is best for kids. I was once put in a situation where I had to speak up about some very popular and powerful people who were harassing students. Make no mistake, I would have done it no matter what. But it was super stressful, and I’m glad that the “How will I pay my bills if they make up a reason to fire me?” wasn’t part of the mental calculus I was doing.
But aren’t teachers above all that money stuff?
As teachers, we are often kind of told that we shouldn’t think about money. After all, teaching is a calling. And when you are doing something so noble, you shouldn’t even think about money, much less about having more than you need to pay for the bare necessities, right? Isn’t financial independence for teachers just selfish?
Hogwash! (Sorry, that’s the country girl coming out in me.) Being paid like the professionals we are, having extra money for things that just make us happy, and even financial freedom – these things can ease the worry and actually make us better teachers.
So if you are ready to learn more about financial freedom and how to make it happen for you – whether you want to quit teaching as soon as possible or never in a million years – read on. This blog is for you.
And remember, you’ve got this!