The Great Thanksgiving Listen Project 2023- Faith Wood

00:01 My name is Faith Wood I am 18 years old. Today is November 26, 2023. I'm speaking with my dad, Donald Wood who is my father. And we are recording in our house in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. What was your childhood like and how did you grow up financially?

00:31 Well, as a child, I had a mom and dad that lived in the home. I had an older brother, I had an older sister, and I had a younger sister. We lived in a small city in rural west Alabama. Started out living in a town called Gordo, Alabama, which was a small town. And we moved when I was about five years old to Aliceville, which is another small town. But it was. And an upbringing of a real. We were not poor, but we did not have extra money. My parents, neither one of them had college degrees. They had to work real hard for the money that they made. My dad sold tractors all of his life. My mom worked various jobs. She was like a cashier at a grocery store. She did that for a good while, and then she eventually got into selling Aflac insurance. But again, we just had meager means as far as my upbringing, you know, we didn't have a lot of extra clothes to wear or multiple pairs of shoes or that kind of thing. But we never went hungry. We always had clothes to wear and that kind of thing. But I don't remember too many vacation trips we took. I remember one time going to the beach with our neighbors down, like, to Gulf Shores. I remember going to Chattanooga Lookout Mountain one time. We did go on a couple of trips with the church on mission trips. But yeah, even though we had no excess financial money and material possessions, we were happy. We didn't feel like we were missing out on anything. We were pretty much like most of the people, most of my friends. That's just the way it was back then. I mean, there was really no such thing as a credit card. They didn't come around till probably my high school years. I'm 59 years old, so, you know, we're talking 40 years ago kind of thing. But no, if you didn't, you know, if you didn't have money to go to the grocery store, there was no credit card to put it on. You just basically had to figure out how you were going to make the groceries you had make it till mom and dad got paid kind of thing. So, yeah, it was totally different than it is today. You know, I tell people that during a week's time now, people eat at home once or twice and go out to eat the rest of the time. Back then you always ate at home. We may have gone out to eat and there was really nowhere. There was a hamburger place there. And we could have gone over to Tuscaloosa or Columbus, Mississippi, but maybe once a month we would eat out from home. Always took my lunch to school, that kind of thing. But yeah, it was, it was a good upbringing. I was brought up in a Christian home and we went to church and that's what I'm most thankful for. But second to that is my work ethic. I just knew that, you know, to take my dad's example, to make it in the world, nobody was going to provide for you like my dad. He figured out. He got married real young and he just figured out he's got to provide for his family. So he had to go to work every day. And he instilled that in all of us. And I got my first job when I was probably 12 years old. We lived near a country club. And I just went up to the head greenskeeper guy one day, I just said, do you need any help cutting grass? And he said, do you know how to drive a lawn mower? I said yes. He said, do you know how to drive a tractor? I said yes. And he said, well, come to work. So as a 12 year old, I started making $50 cash every week. And that back then was a big deal. And I was working all day cutting grass on the golf course. So it just started there and continued on ever since then.

07:12 What was life like when you were a teenager and what were you like?

07:19 Okay, life as a teenager. So I played sports. I played football, basketball and golf. I always worked in the summers, but yeah, just going to school, played football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and played golf a couple of years. I was always active in school. I was class president every year, I think only because nobody else would take the job. But in high school I was student council president, honor society president and continued on from there and went to college at the University of Alabama.

08:19 Did you have a job in high school? What was it and what did you make?

08:24 Okay, as I stated earlier, as a 12 year old, I started out working in the summers for $50 cash. In the summers? In high school I would work in the summer. I worked for the county. One of my friends, dad worked for the Pickens County Commission and we got jobs building bridges on county roads. So we were building concrete bridges and wooden bridges and I think we made like. We got paid once a month and I think we got paid like $600 for the whole month.

09:08 Did you have any other jobs in high school?

09:13 Then I worked at a grocery store there in Aliceville bagging groceries. And I think that was about it in high school.

09:27 What was school like for you and college like? Education wise.

09:34 So school, the public school system where I grew up was not real good educationally. So my parents sacrificed and sent me and my three siblings to a private school in Pickens County. Again, it cost them a lot of money. They were working jobs to help us to go to school and owe them a lot for doing that. So yeah, it was a small. We only had 42 people in our senior class, so it was real small. So then I decided to stay close to home and went to the University of Alabama. I started out in engineering, did that for a year, figured out it was the wrong major for me. I actually got frustrated and didn't do well because it was not for me. I dropped out of school for a couple of years until I got my head straightened back on and then I went back and majored in accounting and I finished my degree.

10:50 Where did you attend college? What did you major in and did you change your major?

10:56 So I did go to the University of Alabama. I started out in electrical engineering. I did not have a good math background so I was way out of my league in science. In engineering, like I said earlier, I dropped out for a couple years and then I went back and I was working at a bank part time. I was working, I cleaned doctor's offices on the weekends and I also worked some work study with the university, like grant kind of work study. So yeah, I worked all through college and was blessed to get my degree.

11:50 Did you work in college and how did you balance everything?

11:55 So it was real tough to balance everything because I was in accounting and it was pretty tough stuff. And then I would work after school every day at the bank. I worked in the balance in the check processing area. So it didn't start work until like three in the afternoon. And then after all the branches closed, all the checks would come in and we'd process them. So it was good flexibility wise. You know, I went to school during the day, worked at night, but then I had to stay up there after work and a lot of times would just study in the night, into the night again because it was pretty difficult. But having stayed out for two years, I grew up a lot during that two year hiatus and just figured out for me to be successful I needed to buckle down and do well so that I could have a career.

13:12 What was your first real job out of college?

13:15 So I was blessed right out of college. I interviewed with an accounting firm at the university, a firm called Till, Edelman and Hester. And they were in Birmingham. And I interviewed and I got the job and moved up here immediately right after I graduated and graduated in May and I think started to work in June. So yeah, I was, I was blessed.

13:54 What was a good salary when you first started working compared to now?

14:00 So my first job I made $22,000 a year, which is roughly $10 an hour. That's what I made back then. Minimum wage was I think 335 an hour. But yeah, I was tickled pink to be making 22,000. And actually I worked there three months and they adjusted my pay cause they hired another guy in that was on my same level and they hired him in at 25,000. So they bumped me up immediately to 25 so we would be even. So yeah, I was tickled pink.

14:44 So like compared to now, what would you say a good starting salary?

14:48 So a starting salary in accounting today is probably 60,000, maybe 70. Especially now they have a shortage of CPAs coming out of school. So it's at least three times what it was back then.

15:11 What are some financial mistakes that you made as a young adult?

15:19 Well, looking back, I waited a little while to start putting money in a retirement plan. I would tell people this young people to immediately start putting money into the 401 plan. Because the earlier you do it, the more it will grow when you get my age. Also I bought a new car pretty close to right out of school. And I had a college professor to tell. He told the class not to do that and I did that. And looking back, I mean it wasn't a real expensive car, thank goodness. But yeah, I would just say right out when you go to college and when you get your first job, just try to live like you did back in college and just save. Make as much as you can, save as much as you can and give as much as you can.

16:34 How did you learn from those mistakes and make changes?

16:41 So yeah, you. I just. We've always kind of been frugal. Thank goodness my wife is frugal. And what I would say to people is spend less than you make. A lot of people this day and time, like I mentioned earlier, credit cards and just they try to keep up with what everybody else is doing. Everybody else has got a new car, so we've got to get a new car. Everybody else is going to Italy, so we've got to go to Italy. You just have to live within your means and spend less than you make or you're going to be stressed financially and that will lead to other stress in your relationships and on down the line there.

17:45 What did you do during the two years that you took off from college?

17:50 So I almost joined the Navy. I called KK and Pop one night, my mom and dad and said, hey, I was struggling. It was like the winter semester, taking some classes that were real hard. My roommate, he was struggling and he's like, let's go to the Navy, let's join the Navy. And he actually went down to the Naval center and got some information. And so I called my mom and dad that night and said, hey, Mark and I are talking about joining the Navy. And mom had answered the phone and she started crying. She said, let me, let me let you speak to your dad. So dad got on the phone, I said, hey, Mark and I are looking at joining the Navy. And he said, well, he said, we're going to support you whatever you do. He said, you know, your Uncle Chub was in the Navy, your dad was in the Navy. He said, but I think you need to come home and let's talk about it before you do anything. Like I said, we're going to support you and do whatever, but we just think we ought to just talk about it. So I went and talked to them like the next couple days and they said, well, before you do that, why don't you, let's call Uncle Johnny who lived down in New Orleans. And he said, let's just see if he's got a job, maybe go down there and work a little while and if that doesn't work out and you still want to join the Navy, then you can do it. You can join the Navy at any time. So that's what we did. I got the job in New Orleans. Thank goodness I only worked there a few months and got laid off with a group of other people just because of the economy and stuff and had to move back home. Best thing that ever happened, got me back home, started working a full time job at the bank, not making a lot of money, and then did that a couple years and just like, okay, I need to go back to school and finish my degree. So that's what I did.

20:06 Thank you.

20:07 You're welcome. Thanks for this time. It's been great.