OlehGirl.com
"well if you can do that…
Then maybe you should be helping me!” was my thought last night regarding the people I’m theoretically going to be helping to get their finances in order. Let me explain. Last night I attended the first training session for Pa’amonim the volunteer organization that helps people to help themselves by getting their financial situation in better shape through better budgeting. The meeting took place on the TA University campus and I was really surprised by the number of people who turned up to find out about becoming volunteers. The room was a large lecture hall and it was more than half full –I’m guessing the number of people there at around 60-70. This was definitely a surprise because, at least in the States, programs training sessions for interested volunteers for social projects generally attract no more than 20 or so people at the most, especially if it is not to be a quick meeting but rather a 2 and a half hour affair.
It wasn’t really quite what I was expecting though and I think most of the people who attended are accountants and so forth already. The first hour was taken up by a guy who was very enthusiastic but who pretty much said the same thing in various ways and didn’t give any concrete information. The next hour was to be the nitty gritty ok, so this is how you actually do the things to help people. This is where the problems for me started. They handed out an eye-blurring form that we need to learn to use to figure out people’s current expenditures and they began explaining to us how we fill it out. We got a packet that included sample electric bills and so forth that we were supposed to use to find the information to plug into the various lines of this budget thing. The explanation was where the problems first came in. The guy would say things like, “so on page 3 the correct number to put in on this line is 22,.4″ It is? Wait, there are 500 different numbers on this page and NONE of them are 22,4 –where did you get this number? He averaged something but which column did he average? Wait, wait…And then there were the numbers he seemed to pull out of thin air “why is he putting down 100″ for average dental costs there is nothing on this page even remotely referring to dental costs, there isn’t anything to average….? What, how?
And it wasn’t just me and my seriously bad hebrew that was the problem. Sitting next to me was an equally confused (well, ok no doubt less confused, but still quite confused) native hebrew speaker. The guy on the other side of me, sitting there with his calculator stopped searching and squinting through the pages of mind-blurring numbers about halfway through the exercise and simply waited for the correct number to appear on the screen. Neither I, nor the native hebrew speaker beside me, had ever heard of a lot of the things we were supposed to be searching for among this financial nightmare that is called “your average family bills.”
When we arrive to help a family the idea is that the family will have at the ready their financial records going back for a year –all their bank statements, all their electric bills, all their medical bills, and so forth ready for us to roll up our sleeves and find these funky numbers. They should be able to accurately tell me how much they spend per year on all kinds of things that won’t be in those lovely bills. Who has this information? Who is this organized? Who can make such an accurate assessment of their average yearly dental expensives, or their average yearly you name it? If you are this organized you don’t need my help, you need to be helping me!
I’m planning to go to the next training session but without my homework –calculating my own expenses for the past 6 months. I simply don’t have the hours it would take to call all the places I’d have to call to get the information to even begin doing this. And he never explained where those numbers from thin air came from so even if I had them all at the ready my thin-air numbers would no doubt be wrong…amazed ringtone lone starpals play accringtonadult warrington contacts in floridaalkaline trio ringtoneringtone alda phone cellgracies barrington amazingringtone siemens a71america ringtones siemens sl56 Map
| Print article | This entry was posted by Yael on March 12, 2007 at 12:21 pm, and is filed under Daily Israeli, Israel. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
(Photo by Dani Machlis)
about 3 years ago
OK, I’m curious. Seeing as how this is actually a complicated topic, and how “ahem” your finances aren’t the greatest right now (and you are in a place where financial systems are quite different from in the US), why would you volunteer for something like this?
about 3 years ago
Well, I must say this is surely a noble quest, since many people really do not understand how to balance their budgets and need help. However, this is, as you found out, a pretty difficult topic, and not something where one can acquire the necessary skills overnight. I often deal with these situations in my profession and I have gotten weary of self-made solutions that actually screwed up people’s lives even more.
To be a successful consultant you need to have number skills like an accountant, people skills like a counselor and a healthy dose of life experience that will help you bring the two together. For, once you have figured out the numbers, you then have to make the person you are dealing with understand them and adhere to them. And that is even much more tricky than just to understand the numbers.
Not to discourage that quest, but in my opinion this is something that should be left to professionals.
about 3 years ago
Lisoosh –my budget is a disaster (this is mainly because anyone trying to live on the amount I make would not be in good shape but I’m sure there are things I could do to better cut down on expenses too). One of the reasons I was interested in doing this was a very self-serving one: to benefit myself from knowing the best ways to budgetize. Another self-serving reason was to benefit from being in a hebrew-speaking environment where I would have to speak in hebrew and also be allowed to speak in hebrew because the people I’d be speaking to would not know english (if someone knows more than 3 words of english they insist on trying to communicate in english here). Then, of course, were the altruistic reasons as there are many people –yes hard as it is to believe –who are in much worse financial straights than me.
John –I think I’m pretty much agreeing with you here. according to the PR put out, this program is very good at helping people and very effective and so forth. But I think it is because the people who stick with the program ARE professionals –they do this for a job and thus are able to do this effectively as a volunteer. That is my sense of the situation at any rate.
about 3 years ago
Well, I could save a bundle if I cut guns and ammo out of my monthly budget. But then life wouldn’t be worth living.
about 3 years ago
I always wondered how families and normal people balance their budgets… especially in Israel
At least in this stage of my aliyah, I am still being supported by my parents, because there I have no source of income and I am paying for Hesder.
I don’t look forward to trying this myself.
Just a question: wouldn’t you be really scared to try to help someone, I mean if you tell them something wrong you could seriously mess them up?
about 3 years ago
Ha – I know what you mean about income, the worst was moving to the States and trying to explain that my previous salary of $13,000 was actually quite typical, and of course that it did not mean I should receive a comparable amount here!
Perhaps, seeing as how they are volunteers, you should ask for their help in navigating the financial minefields there – a free accountant who can help you find all of the loopholes that seem to exist would be very helpful.
I’m sure there are plenty of volunteer opportunities that would better utilize your skills. The government has all sorts of subsidized courses for people looking to retrain, perhaps you could do one of those, or put together something for schools on statistics and scientific analysis (didn’t you say your current students suck at that). There are also great mentoring programs out there, for disadvantaged kids. You could volunteer as a “Big Sister”, you would probably find that the family you were assigned to would not have very good English.
about 3 years ago
Yael … you need to write down what you are spending as you spend it. Keep a record. This is essential if you are not on a high salary. I have kept records of exactly what I’ve spent for the last seven years and it really makes you aware of where your money is going. Plus which, I know exactly how much I need to live, which also makes budgeting easier. Then you can decide if you want to change some of your spending habits.
about 3 years ago
frank –you put me in stitches!
seraphya –yep, I would be/am very nervous about just that. They don’t just turn you lose though in theory –you do a month of training and then when you do actually deal with families themselves you first do so under the guidance of someone who’s been working with the program for a long while and who “in action” trains you for awhile.
Lisoosh –yeah the discrepancy in the salaries definitely knocks people for a loop in the states! Good thing you were able to convince them that you really should be earning a normal amount!!
My biggest frustration so far has been finding a volunteer organization that is organized enough to actually get back to me or to not have conditions I can’t meet. We tried for months to get info on working with kids from ethiopia from one group and could never get them to get back in touch with us, I wanted to do the “hold a hospitalized infant” program where you go and hold the little ones who have to be the hospital for many months since the nurses don’t have time to also do this (don’t want any wire monkey babies!) but after going to the informational meeting found out you are only eligible if you already have children of your own, and the home for abused adolescents needed volunteers but only for middle-of-the-night hours (basically to guard that the kids didn’t sneak out of bed and go out on the town), the amcha organization also hasn’t ever gotten back in touch with me (provide companionship to elderly holocaust survivors). So I’m batting 0 at finding a program.
Miki –exactly. My biggest problem, beyond having no money to begin with, is keeping track of tashlomims and all the unexpected expenses and hidden charges in things that you don’t expect or plan for (the bank for instance with their many many charges for all kinds of things).
about 3 years ago
Another reason to admire you – Volunteering to help Israeli families to manage their finances.
Your generous efforts deserve much appreciation! Hopefully, you will be repaid for your kindness.