{"id":630,"date":"2013-05-30T13:05:18","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T18:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/?p=630"},"modified":"2013-05-30T13:11:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T18:11:58","slug":"money-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/30\/money-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Money! Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"whale<\/a><\/p>\n

September 2011. I am in yet another coffee shop in Minneapolis, this time on the phone with my friend Maikol. “Maikol! I need a money breakthrough.” I go on to say that I have always run profitable businesses like NO ONE’S BUSINESS. I mean, I ran the 13th most profitable Starbucks store in over 200 stores in Chicagoland and raised margins and sales while reducing overhead at EVERY retail management job I have ever held. But I digress. <\/p>\n

So anyway, I tell Maikol that while I have had consistent success in my career, my personal money habits were rather lacking. You might be able to relate to my story. As I made more, I just spent more. I never got that motorcycle or kayak or pottery wheel that I always wanted. Saving was a joke. And I am pretty sure that the only reason that I had a nice car is that it was supposed to be a gift. A gift that came with monthly payments after the breakup. Ha! And now I was opening my own business which seemed like a professional\/personal collision waiting to happen. Then Maikol says in his slow, deep Nigerian accent “Sarah. This is perfect. I am taking a wealth seminar in November here in Chicago. It’s free. Go online right now and register.” So I did.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to November. It’s the week before my trip to Chicago. I strategically scheduled my investor meeting for the day after my wealth seminar. I wasn’t sure he would like the cheese concept. I figured that he wouldn’t stand a chance if I was amped up from the wealth seminar. <\/p>\n

And I was broke. Beyond broke, actually. See, in October I took a week off to help my mother in Appleton after she had neck surgery. When it came time to claim my unemployment benefits for that week, I called in to verify that I was NOT claiming since I was not in the area to participate in job interviews or accept a job that week if one came through which is one of the agreements in the program. And I have to tell you, that took something for me to do. I knew it would impact me but the biggest impact would be if it showed up in their system as a glitch that would somehow jeopardize me from continuing to receive benefits. So I called in to verify what I was doing and to get some assurance that everything thing would be fine the following week. Which I got. After being on hold for 90 minutes. NINETY! <\/p>\n

So here it is the day before I am to leave for Chicago. I have ten dollars to my name. I call the unemployment office and am told that my case has been assigned to an adjudicator (who even knows what that is?!) and that I cannot speak to anyone because my file has been placed on their desk just that day and they haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. I am being audited. It might take six months. She assures me to keep filing for my benefits and that I could be eligible to receive them later. <\/p>\n

My knees buckle. I feel nauseous. Tears are welling up. I apologize. I say “I know you are just the messenger, but this has a real life impact<\/em> on me. I have bills to pay. I need to eat. *sniffle* I was being honest about taking that week off and I have to admit that it wasn’t easy to do that- not that I would do it any other way. But I was doing the right thing. Is there a supervisor I can speak with?” She says yes and I reply with “I can’t speak with them right now. I am not composed enough for that conversation and I have a meeting to go to. I will call back later. Thank you.” A few minutes later I am walking down my gravel driveway to my car. The sun seems unusually bright. I am in shock. I tell myself “Just put one foot in front of the other” and I feel weak. This was not even ten minutes later. My phone rings. It is the unemployment lady. “I spoke with the adjudicator and we got it sorted out. You will get your check on Monday.” I am in a different disbelief now. I start sobbing again- only this time for a happy reason. I thank her wholeheartedly. To imagine that I got this call within ten minutes of the other from the same agency that kept me on hold for 90 minutes just a few weeks before. A miracle! <\/p>\n

Only that still leaves me with just ten dollars to get to Chicago for the weekend. That hardly covers tolls, much less gas. And the wealth seminar required a promise to show up or they would charge your credit card account $100. No matter what I do at this point, I am screwed. At the same time, I am having a tangible pulling in my chest to get to Chicago. My investor and the wealth seminar are over the rainbow and I just have to follow the brick road. I tell myself that this is the perfect meltdown to happen right before my anticipated Big Win. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 2011. I am in yet another coffee shop in Minneapolis, this time on the phone with my friend Maikol. “Maikol! I need a money breakthrough.” I go on to say that I have always run profitable businesses like NO … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,119],"tags":[325,330,129,224,324,326,329,328,3,327,156],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-personal","tag-appleton","tag-business-finances","tag-chicago","tag-maikol-akintonde","tag-millionaire-mind-intensive","tag-mom","tag-personal-finances","tag-profitability","tag-starbucks","tag-tolls","tag-unemployment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7YaDo-aa","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":668,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvcreamery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}