Growing through Gratitude: The Power of No

I used to be terrible with money.  I can remember living from paycheck to paycheck and paying bills when I had the money to.  At one point I got laid off from my job and I was collecting severance pay.  I found another job before my severance package ran out so I was collecting two paychecks.  Even with this being the case I still was living check to check.  I found out about a computer certification class that I could take that I thought would further my career.  I didn’t have the money immediately to pay for it so I asked one of my relatives if I could borrow the money from them to further my career.  Now this relative was someone that I had borrowed money from before because he was more stable than I was.  So when I asked him, for the first time he said no.  He didn’t say that he didn’t have the money, he didn’t ask me how I would pay him back nor did he give me reason as to why he wouldn’t.  He just said no.  To my surprise I was not upset but I was just shocked because he let me know he had the choice to just say no.  At that point I realized that I had enough money to do all that I needed to do I just needed to manage it better.  So I learned the magic of automatic bill payments.  Even if I didn’t have money left to do a lot with on payday my bills were still paid and I did not have the stress of how I was going to pay my bills.  Those payments eventually started to become credits on those accounts and when I moved from that house I had money coming back to me instead of owing money as well as the ability to start utilities in a new place with no hassles.

I am grateful for a lot of things from that experience. The first thing I learned was that I had control over what I did with my money and I didn’t have to be a slave to debt.  The second thing I learned was that I did not have to put myself in positions to have to borrow money from people to create even more debt for myself.  At this point I also started paying for everything with either cash or my debit card.  I created a separate account that was strictly dedicated for bill payment which also stayed in the credit.  I learned that you could say no when someone asks you for something and that what they are asking for is yours to begin with so you have the option.  Finally, this is when I determined that when I would lend people money that I should look at it as giving them the money because I may or (most likely) may not see it again.  This gave me more confidence in saying no if they ever came back for a loan.  All of these results made me grateful for experiencing that “NO” because it taught me a lot of things that I did not expect.  I was so grateful that I asked that relative to be one of the groomsman in my wedding because of the respect I still have for him to this day.

What are some experiences that you have gone through that you are grateful for now that you did not see being appreciative for when it happened?