All about the Benjamins... OR IS IT?!

The socio-economic "diversity" class discussion was quite interesting indeed. To me, it really put in perspective how objects like money can play a huge role on people's relationships. I have been truly lucky in life, I have a great stable family-- both emotionally and financially. I feel that even if my family wasn't so well off, that we would still be a great family. But then again, I haven't known anything else and haven't really faced problems like that before. Regardless of the fact that my family is financially secure at the moment, doesn't subdue the fact that the economy has been affecting my family, but we still remain strong. I made this comment in class, but this year my dad will only see 40% of his paycheck. That's less than half. And because of the economy, my dad has been working his tail off lately, whenever I am home I rarely see my dad-- this is extremely sad to me. My dad's company "pools" all of it's employees hours and divides paychecks up accordingly, and many of his colleagues cannot get as many hours as they have in the past, and my dad constantly finds himself picking up the slack. One of my dad's friends/co-workers even made a comment to him recently, "Thanks for my last paycheck!" It is satisfying to know that my dad works hard and is a great guy, but it really is tough to not see him very often, or even get to talk to him on the phone for that matter! My mom on the other hand has a job as a secretary one week a month at an elementary school. By no means is she the sole breadwinner, but she really enjoys her job. The school has to downsize next school year and my mom will not be getting her job back. She is really bummed, but she just told me she can play more tennis now (haaa). My older brother who lives in Vail, works at a resort hotel there and also scans lift tickets in the winter. He obviously won't be doing lift tickets in the summer, and his hotel job lets a good portion of the hotel employees "time off" during the summer in the low-season. My brother will be unemployed during that time, but he will be making more on unemployment than he does with his two jobs. 

And, in order to keep ends meet, my little brother has to work in a illegal child-labor sweat

 shop. It's facts. 

Kidding about the last part!