Here’s what I’m doing: Julie Willnerd
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Tess Vigeland: For the last few weeks around Marketplace we’ve been asking, “What are you doing?” Yes, you — and others who are deciding what changes to make in how they manage their money during this time of turmoil. Today we check in with a woman in Hickman, Nebraska.
Julie Willnerd: My name is Julie G. Willnerd. I have a husband named Charlie and two kids. We started up two new businesses. My husband is doing farm appraisals and making crop insurance and then we also have a farming operation. We’ve used quite a bit of our emergency funds to start up those businesses.
The funds we had in an account through our financial planner, which we now know was with Lehman Brothers. And now it’s frozen. With our account now frozen, our bank will of course lend us the money, but that was out backup and now it’s our first defense, which is scary to us. That’s money we worked really hard for and the one institution that it happened to be with was the one that the government didn’t bail out and that bothers me still a little. And then I remind myself, at the end of the day we’ll be OK.
Even though we’re really doing OK financially, we’re saving a lot more now because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I’m cutting coupons and save every time and nickel. My husband’s had a saying all his life: if you take care of the pennies and nickels then the dollars take care of themselves.
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