Well, this week I started volunteering at the Army's financial counseling office. (They call it their Financial Readiness Program and it is under Army Community Services-ACS.) I am thrilled to be working with the three ladies there--Bobbi, Sharon, and Beth. For right now, I will be doing administrative tasks and shadowing them as they go about their daily tasks. In the near future I will begin editing the slide shows they use for the classes they teach to bring them up to date. Not too long from now they expect that I will teach some of the beginning classes and will begin budget and credit counseling with clients under their supervision. Yay! Also, the director of ACS used to work at
Fort Campbell and that is where we are hoping to go (Have I mentioned that?), so that gives me a lot of hope for networking into a job there in the event that we actually go there. Of course, we'll likely only get 3-4 weeks notice that we're moving.
This week was also the first week of hosting Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Despite the computer we were using to project the DVD doing a mandatory reboot & install right in the middle of the lecture, everything went really well. I am not sure of the exact attendance numbers, but we had 66 people planning to come (we called and were able to confirm with almost all of them) and we had 17 people on the waiting list. I'd say that that is a pretty good turnout & really speaks to the need for such a program. We'll see how many come back next week...
I also wanted to mention that Ft Rucker has a cool vacation spot that is reasonably priced. You can rent cabins at the lake for $60-80 per night (depending on how many bedrooms you want). Also, there is no hotel tax (usually 13%) on these guys! Anyway, go
here if you're interested. We actually have to rent them for you, but as long as you promise to behave & reimburse us, that will be no problem. You'll probably want to rent far in advance for a holiday because they fill up fast. We tried to get one for Thanksgiving in mid-September, and there were no remaining openings.
Well, that's about it. I'm studying hard for my tax class and my Financial Counseling certification. The tax class ends the week of Thanksgiving and my goal for the certification exam is to take it before 11/8 when they suspend testing for 3 weeks (I have no idea why...). My schedule is pretty dang full (compared to a 40 hour work week)-- 20 hours of volunteering, 6 hours of class, and a stinking lot of studying (think something like studying 10 chapters in a textbook each week)... not to mention chores, time getting to class, continued volunteering as the Audio/Visual person at Church, a new women's Bible study at church, and making a meal for all the girls having babies at church. So yeah... things will lighten up as soon as my two courses finish. After that, I'm planning to keep volunteering, earn some money on the side preparing taxes (starting in Dec with pre-tax season training) and start studying my second course for my certification. After tax season is over and I take my second test, I'll go to volunteering probably 4 days per week. We'll see...
As for Aaron, he's just studying and working out and playing around with his
pictures.
As usual, I'll leave you with the latest estimate of how long we'll be here-- we'll probably leave sometime late June or Early July. But, as usual, WHO KNOWS!?!
Posts
