Growing up money was always important to my family, and not because we had a lot of it. We weren’t necessarily poor, but we had to be careful with what we bought so we could focus on the more important finances first. As I got older, I started to learn the value of money and why it was so important that you paid for your needs before your wants. In my freshman year of high school, I got my first car, the same car my grandparents drove, and I was told I was on my own to pay for my car insurance. Having only a summer job and now having to pay car insurance by myself opened my eyes to why it’s so important to not spend your money on everything and anything. I have always been a selfless person and applying for colleges stressed me out because I knew how much money I was going to need and how much I didn’t have. My parents kept saying “don’t worry about that we will help you when we can” but I didn’t want them to go into any financial troubles helping me pay for my schooling because they already have and do so much for me, I didn’t want to add “help pay daughters college” to the list of financial burdens. In my junior year of high school, I was inducted into the National Honor Society. Before that, I completed some volunteer work here and there and upon being a new arrival to this group I saw how good it felt to help people. That same year our big project was organizing a “Cut A Thon” where we had students and faculty get their hair cut in front of everyone in the school and we donated the hair to the June E Nylon Cancer Center in Sioux City, IA for wigs for children. Not only were we donating hair, but we were donating money and our goal was too high $5000 to donate to the center. We surpassed our goal of $5000 and donated an extra $300 to $5300. Knowing that all this money that we raised was going to a great cause and that I was a part of it felt incredible. The feeling of helping people and being rewarded with feeling good about myself is a feeling that I hope to experience no matter how big or little something I do. Not having to stress every semester about how much I need to pay so I don’t have to worry about debt is a dream of mine. Thinking of all the possibilities of graduating college and being able to check off “pay for school” will set me off on the right foot into my future.