If You Ain't First You’re Last

If you ain't first, you're last. You know when you’re in a race it’s easy to look in front of you and feel like you are never going to catch up.
There were many times going back to middle school and high school track where I felt I was never going to win.
The summer before my senior year of high school a friend asked me to join the cross-country team…a different kind of race. I said, “I’ve NEVER ran that far”. He said, “it’s fun. Try it“. So…what did I have to lose? I cannot say I was good at this kind of racing. I spent the entire season just training to get to the skill level others on the team were already achieving before I arrived. {Start running a race with a plan.}I spent a season running and never being first. Watching everyone pass me by. The thing was, I just ran. (Yeah, take that two movie quotes in one post)

As I now run the Savings Race with my family, ask for friends to pitch in with votes {Vote Team Kayleigh here.}, come in 2nd, 3rd, 4th in challenges and monthly standings we found ourselves saying, “this is as bad as last. We are not getting anywhere". Discouraged that we are running on a treadmill and things keep coming up and we cannot put money where we want or we missed out on a bonus we were expecting or we needed printer ink. {do we do without it or do we continue printing those additional college scholarships?}
Then remembering the experiences of high school I remember to keep running. Keep training. Keep doing what we know is healthy and we will come on top. I never won a race that season, what I did do is improve myself. I went from running 3 mi. in 30 min to 3 mi. in 23 min. I shaved 7 min. off my time in 6 weeks, earning MIP. And at that moment in time…for me being most improved was far more valuable than coming in first. It meant I came a LONG way.
Applying this to the race I take now with my family, (1) we have support system (2) The Yake Family was adding $300 to charge cards every month meaning at the end of the year the charge card balance was $3600 more every year than the year before. We WERE using cards to pay other bills/debts. One huge thing I notice is we are NOT adding to the debt any more. We have a budget to allow us to pay everything without charge cards. So…every month we don’t add $300 to our debt it’s like paying it down even if it doesn’t reflect in our goals…but we have done so much more than just “pay down” this amount.
This realization means there is more than first and last…there is everything in between.