Rebuilding My Financial Safety

 There was a time when I was really, really good with money.


Then life happened. Toxic relationships happened. Financial betrayal happened. And when someone steals from you — especially someone you trusted — it doesn’t just empty your bank account. It rewires your sense of safety.


Now I track everything.


Every transfer.

Every bill date.

Every automatic withdrawal.


Some people might call it paranoid. I call it protection.


I’m not obsessing over numbers because I’m unstable — I’m tracking them because I refuse to ever feel financially trapped again.


I have automatic transfers set up. I move money into savings even when I don’t technically have to. I build buffers on purpose. I keep cash on hand. Not because I’m afraid… but because I’m building leverage.


I want options.


I want to move out when I’m ready.

I want to buy a car in my own name.

I want a cash cushion that means no one can corner me financially ever again.


The version of me that got stolen from is not the version writing this.


This version builds quietly.

Plans strategically.

Protects her peace.

And understands that financial stability is freedom.


I’m proud of how far I’ve come.


And this time, I’m building something no one can take from me.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Chaos to Clockwork(ish)

I used to think a schedule was something you either had or didn’t. Over the last year I’ve learned it’s more like a muscle—one that gets stronger every time I practice it with my youngest kid. When I first started tracking our days, mornings felt like scattered puzzle pieces: early wakeups, breastfeeding, diaper changes, solids, and my own shower squeezed in wherever I could fit it. I worried constantly about doing it “right.” That’s when I began using Stan—my AI app—to help me plan and log our routine. Stan isn’t a person in the room; he’s the application where I organize timing, transportation, and feeding windows so I can look at the end of the day and actually understand what happened. The act of writing everything down in that app helped me see our rhythm instead of panicking inside it. My youngest kid has experimented right along with me. We shifted bath times to evenings so mornings stayed lighter. I started showering before bed and packing bags the night before—retail life does...
Read more

Halloween

 So today is the third Halloween for my two-year-old to celebrate in his life, For his first, he was a fox for his second. He was the DuBarry boy. And now for his third is gonna be Sully from monster Inc. I’m feeling very proud of him, but also conflicted with anger because all three of these Halloween’s. I have missed. His biological father has full custody of him, but I have my parental rights and I feel very alienated and distance because he will not let me see my son outside of a mediated supervise visitation room and he won’t even tell me what my boy is doing today for the holiday. Hell, he hasn’t even told me for sure. He’ll send me a picture of my baby boy in his costume. I just wanna see my kid and be around him and it feels like every step of the way I’ve met with this aggressive nature of no. This is my son too, I have all of my parental rights and my son has child rights too. He’s a little brother. He’s been bonding with. Shouldn’t they be allowed to see each other? I’m ...
Read more

Choosing Peace: A Young Mom’s Decision to Move Forward

  Looking back on the last few years of my life feels like flipping through chapters of a book I barely recognize myself in. I was young, hurting, overwhelmed, and constantly trying to save everyone but myself. I didn’t understand boundaries yet. I didn’t understand emotional maturity. And I definitely didn’t understand what it meant to choose people who actually chose me back. In 2022, I was in a relationship with my firstborn’s father. At that time, I thought helping people meant fixing their pain — even if it cost me my own stability. When a group of people we knew were struggling during a blizzard, I drove across multiple states to bring them into our home. I thought compassion meant sacrificing everything. I thought love meant rescuing people. What was supposed to be temporary support quickly became chaos. Mental health emergencies, hospital visits, and nonstop stress took over the environment. My partner and I were still basically kids ourselves — a 19-year-old girl tryin...
Read more