Community & Economic Resilience: Two Personal Experiences

By Travis Jones & Stuart Smith

This month, we are taking a look at financial resilience and how a lack of community can increase a lack of resilience when financial hardships arise. Financial resilience is one’s ability to remain stable when hardships arise, such as the loss of a job, a major medical emergency, or other circumstances. This often looks like living paycheck to paycheck, racking up debt just trying to keep the bills paid, or taking on multiple jobs just to stay afloat.

To start off our discussion of this topic, Stuart & I are going to share some of our own personal stories of how we have seen community, or lack thereof, affect our financial resilience in the face of difficult circumstances. We hope this helps broaden your perspective on how our neighbors may be struggling financially.

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Stuart: My family and I had a unique opportunity to live and study abroad in the country of Hungary. Nearly all of our funds went toward tuition which meant we lived on less than $800 a month. Yes it was as challenging as it sounds.

Already a fulltime student, husband, and father of a 10 year old boy, God placed before us the opportunity of adopting a little girl. Some of the first people we met after arriving in Hungary were a wonderful couple by the name of Tomka and Lily. They had adopted Hungarian children and we mentioned that we longed to adopt as well.

Unbeknownst to us, they took action looking into what the process would look like for us as American students. We had no money, no understanding of the language, no space in our tiny dorm, but we had a host of Hungarians willing to walk us through the process of adopting. Fast-forward nine months and little Sophia was brought into our home for the first time on Thanksgiving day 2016. There were a lot of legal obstacles and even the threat of deportation and separation, but our Hungarian community rallied around us to ensure all our needs were met, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and of course relationally.

As I look back, our family faced a lot of uncertainty, financial stress, frustration, and more. But it was the community God placed around us that brought us through each barrier!

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Travis: As we loaded up our U-Haul and prepared for a 5 day journey west, my wife, Carmen, and I were excited for what the future held for us. Though there were many unknowns, we were more excited for what we did know was coming. We knew we had an apartment ready for us in Vancouver, we were going to visit family that we hadn’t seen in years, I would be going to bible college, and that we would figure the rest out.

Fast forward a few months, and we had settled into our new apartment, I had started school, we got to visit our family, and I had found a part time job. However, the part time job did not pay nearly enough, and so we had used up our savings trying to stay afloat and we were maxing out our credit card to pay bills for that November. The money I made from my job was hardly enough to pay for groceries each month. Meanwhile, my unemployment benefits I applied for months before were stalled indefinitely, and my education benefits through the VA still hadn’t kicked in yet.

Everything was up in the air, and I had no clue if I would be able to finish the semester at school, let alone keep our apartment. We were still new to the area and had only just begun attending a large church where we still didn’t know anyone. It was a stressful challenge to face without a supportive community nearby.