Jacob Arnold and his mother Paula Arnold talking about her youth

00:01 My name is Jacob arnold. I am 17 years old and today is November 29, 2023. I am speaking with my mother, Paula Arnold, and we are in Birmingham, Alabama, at our apartment. Tell me about what you were like in high school.

00:18 I was in sports. I was into basketball, volleyball, softball, golf. I didn't spend a lot of time studying. I got Cs and Bs. My first job was at Burger King for $1.73 an hour, and then I went to be a waitress. After that I worked in my junior and senior year part time and then spent all my money on skiing in the winter.

00:48 How did your family's income affect your life growing up?

00:51 My dad was in the service, so my mom had to work because there was five kids. So we never really had a lot of money. But I was the youngest of five. So by the time, you know, I was in high school, you know, they had more money. My dad had been retired, he had a job. My mom quit working. And so it's different when you're raising five kids versus one.

01:13 What part of the service was he in?

01:14 He was in the air force for 20 years.

01:17 20 years. When did you realize you wanted to get a college degree and what was it for?

01:23 I knew right away in high school I was going to get a college degree and I wanted to be a teacher. So three days after I graduated from high school, I started college and summer school and took three classes. I was going to get it done in three years and then I ended up meeting my future husband and got married and had kids and put it on hold.

01:44 What grade did you want to teach?

01:46 High school.

01:47 High school. When you know a subject or probably history. History. I think that's where I got it from.

01:53 Then probably.

01:56 What was your financial status five years after college?

02:01 When I finally graduated, yes. Okay. Middle class. I mean, it was, you know, six. Low six figure income with my spouse.

02:11 What about after you dropped out and met your future husband?

02:16 Oh, I didn't finish when I first met.

02:18 I know. When did you. So you dropped out? Yeah. What was that like financially?

02:23 We work for ourselves and, you know, just probably lower middle class. Not a lot of money. We didn't have jobs that you needed in education for. It was more labor jobs. Like I was a painter. He made signs, we cleaned carpets.

02:40 So just a bunch of side hustles.

02:41 Yeah. We didn't really have jobs. We didn't work for anybody.

02:45 How many kids did you guys have?

02:46 3.

02:50 Is there anything you regret about your high school or college experience?

02:54 Well, I certainly wish I had spent more time on academics in high school. College would have been a lot easier. But I figured that out finally because I graduated with 3.87 grade point average. From college.

03:07 From college. Why didn't you take Ms. Seriously in high school?

03:12 I never thought I was smart because I would struggle learning things I read. I was a good reader, but I didn't really do well at math. And science was okay. History was my best history speech, but, you know, those weren't the core classes.

03:29 Did you like school?

03:31 I like the social aspect of it.

03:34 So like lunch and oh, after school.

03:36 Sports, my friends. Yeah, I was voted class clown if they'll tell you anything.

03:41 Was there anything else you were voted for? No, just class clown.

03:44 I was a captain of three sports. I won the conference championship in golf two years in a row.

03:49 So what sports were you captain of?

03:53 Basketball, softball and volleyball.

03:57 What did you do on your free weekends during high school and college as like a young adult? Skied every weekend almost in the winter.

04:06 As much as I could. Or just hang out with friends, go to movies. I remember going to movies, just walking, just going over my friend's house and we'd walk around.

04:18 What city did you grow up in?

04:19 Fridley, Minnesota.

04:21 What was that like?

04:23 It was very middle class, suburban. It was a nice suburb. When I was growing up. It was about 15 minutes north of Minneapolis and it was nice. Everybody had a mom and a dad and three to seven kids. And everybody went to church. Different churches, but everybody went to church. It was just different than it is today.

04:46 Was. Was high school back then like it is nowadays, where there's so many different types of kids, or was it just one big high school?

04:57 It was only 10th through 12th grade. We didn't have middle school and high school. We had junior high, which was 7th, 8th and 9th, and then a high school, 10th, 11th and 12th. Everybody was about the same. Economic. There was not any diversity at all. All weights.

05:21 What is one lesson you learned at a young age? Relating to finances?

05:27 Pay your bills in time. My mother was a stickler of that. She'd sit down with me and show me how she paid her bills. And she never paid the minimum payment and always paid what the interest was and pay your bills on time or early?

05:41 What is one lesson that you wish you would have known as a young adult? Relating to finances.

05:47 Not to overextend credit.

05:50 I'll come back to that question, but how did you explain that more?

05:55 Not get too many credit cards, you know, save for stuff. I grew up in an era where Everything was instant gratification because I'm pretty old to be your mom, as you know. And growing up during the Vietnam War, I mean, some of the activities we did on weekends was go watch race riots at the University of Minnesota or protest against the Vietnam War. I mean, in high school, kids were being drafted as soon as they graduated and we'd go to going away parties and some of them never came home. And so that era, you wanted something, you did it. You want to buy something, you got it. And that's been a bad thing for this generation.

06:38 What is your fondest memory of that time period?

06:43 Wow. Probably lots of them, I think. Give me, give me two, two fondest memories. Pretty much everybody was friends. I mean, there wasn't as many clicks or, you know, the, the jocks versus the geeks and all that. Everybody was friends with people. Like I grew up behind live behind me was the valedictorian of our class and we walked to school all through school, elementary, middle school, high school and. But then I had my friends that I did sports with and my best friend was a dance on the dance team and I played basketball. I mean it was, it wasn't clicky.

07:29 At what age do you, did you consider yourself financially stable or above average?

07:35 At what age? At one life.

07:37 Yep.

07:39 Probably 45.

07:42 What, what is that bar? Where. How do you make that line? How did you choose that age? At 45, the.

07:49 I had disposable income. I didn't live paycheck to paycheck and I had a savings account and if I wanted to buy a new car, I could buy a new car and it didn't strap me.

08:05 What is one lesson you want me to learn as a young child, young adult, as far as money or both?

08:13 Life.

08:13 Money and life.

08:14 Well, don't overextend yourself and do for a career something that you're going to enjoy. A lot of people get stuck in a career that they fall into it. It's not necessarily something they dreamed of being. You know, if you have a dream, you should go for it.

08:34 For your great, great grandchildren listening to this years from now, is there any wisdom you'd want to pass to them? What would you want them to know?

08:43 I think just to be a good human, be kind, don't criticize people. Everybody has a value and they need to learn that early.

08:56 What is three things that you want them to know about you? You had to pick the top three.

09:05 Things that I was fun and I knew how to have fun in life, so I enjoyed it. I can honestly Say I have no regrets about anything. Don't live your life having regrets and find your soul mate and spend the rest of your life with them.

09:23 Going back to the credit. When did you learn about credit?

09:29 I learned about credit probably right after high school. I didn't use credit when I was in high school because I always had savings account. But you know, it was easy to get credit cards. It was easy just to go to the store and buy a sofa on a credit card. And you know, it was easy. You know, cars, when our first new car cost $2,800. So I mean, but that's like $40,000 today. I know that sounds crazy because when I drove, gas was 26 cents a.

10:02 Same thing as with your wage at Burger King.

10:04 Exactly. So it's, you know, it's different today. But it's hard, I think for kids nowadays to be financially independent early because things just cost so much. I don't know how somebody out of high school could get an apartment and drive a car and pay for insurance and pay for $1,000 cell phone and a hundred dollar a month cell phone bill and car insurance. I don't know how it can be done. You need roommates or whatever.

10:34 How, when did you get your first credit card?

10:38 Probably when I was 19.

10:41 How did you, how did you like take that on and how'd you like deal with that? How did it go?

10:47 Well, I went to buy something and said, did you want a credit card? Sure, I'll have a credit card. They didn't. I think the credit rating wasn't. The system wasn't the same then either. I mean everybody got a credit card and then you either had, you either paid it or you didn't and you'd get bad credit.

11:02 Did you have bad credit?

11:03 No, I did not.

11:05 Ever in debt or nothing?

11:06 Oh, I was in debt for sure, but I didn't, I didn't have any accounts closed or anything like that.

11:14 Did you, do you still have debt to this day or is it all paid off?

11:17 Oh, I have debt, sure. You know, because for me, I mean, a lot of times it's no interest on things.

11:24 Yeah.

11:25 So if I want to buy a dishwasher, I go to Best Buy and I use their money. I could write a check for it. But why take money out of my savings account when they'll let me pay them $75 a month?

11:36 So you have modern debt? It's. Yeah, there's nothing.

11:39 It's debt I choose to have and I do have a car payment.

11:41 Yeah, it's nothing that and a house payment, like haunting you from when you were a child?

11:46 Oh, no, no. And I. It's. I could still get. My credit rating is in the excellent.

11:53 So I know my sister Kristen had trouble with credit. Yes. How did. Did you help her with that? How did you help her with that? How did that whole situation go?

12:04 I did not help her with that. She went to one of these credit places where they would pay off all your credit cards at a lesser rate than what you owe, and then you owed them, you paid them. And she did that for like three and a half or four years, and then she never extended credit again.

12:25 How do you want to be remembered?

12:29 I think just as a nice person, that my friends liked me and I don't know, I don't ever think about that.

12:39 I'm going to need a little bit.

12:40 More than that, that I was a nice person.

12:43 Most people are a nice person.

12:44 What was responsible?

12:45 What do you want? What do you want? Your kids are like when you. When, when, when we meet someone and we tell you about. What do you want us to say?

12:53 Well, I think it's important to stick to it. You know, if you have problems in your relationship, don't quit on it. So easy. Divorce is very easy. I mean, I did that mistake once, but, you know, to show my kids that times can be tough, but you can work through them and make it happen.

13:13 What's the toughest time you think you've went through?

13:17 Oh, toughest time, as far as I think probably losing my parents. You feel like an orphan once the second one dies. So that was tough. And they lived far away, so I wasn't like there with them.

13:33 Where do they live?

13:34 They lived in Florida and I lived in Minnesota.

13:37 Do you have any fond memories of going down to Florida?

13:40 Oh, sure. We'd go down one time, we went down for a whole month. The whole month in January, in the winter. It was nice. And we'd go down for Christmas a lot. I said after they died I'd never go back to Florida. And I've probably been there more since they've died than when they were alive.

13:56 What is one specific memory?

13:57 You have one specific memory. The first time I went down there when my oldest son was born, Joe, he was like three months old. And my mom and dad took me and my husband and Joe to Disney World. And we never did stuff like that when I was a kid, so that was pretty cool.

14:15 Felt like a kid again.

14:16 Yeah, I did. Well, I was only 20, so.

14:18 Oh, yeah. When did you have Joe?

14:21 I was 19.

14:22 19.

14:22 And I turned 22 months after he was born.

14:26 When did you have your other kids?

14:29 Kristen was two years after Joe, and Laura was four years after Kristen. So I was 26 when Laura was born.

14:39 When did you get married to John?

14:41 I was 18. That's what you did then? You got married and had kids?

14:46 You people got married young like that? Yeah, it was a common thing to do.

14:49 Yeah, a lot of people got married right out of high school. Again, you were living for the moment back then?

14:55 Yeah. Why? That was because of the war? Yeah.

14:59 I mean, when you're seeing your friends dying in a war, worrying about what their draft number would be or the neighbor next door didn't ever come home.

15:07 Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for taking this time.

15:13 You're welcome.

15:14 I love you.

15:14 Love.