Mariz is a public elementary teacher. She has been in straight service for almost twenty years now. Considerably, she is earning a decent pay from her job. However, sad is that she always has difficulty in making both ends meet -- despite all her hard efforts. Her school job is not even her only source of income. She also gets paid regularly for her private tutorial sessions. Moreover, she is a very enterprising person as she supplies goods to some sari-sari stores near the school where she goes to work. The goods that she supplies, most of the time, she even personally prepares. She makes candy sweets as well as ice. She also owns a jeepney for public passenger use. She has no worries with regards to house rental as she had successfully paid for the lot wherein she had her house gradually built.
True enough, given such an industrious and enterprising individual, one will wonder what makes her suffer still financially. Well, please let me add that Mariz is married and with three teen-age daughters and a son.
Unfortunately, Mariz’s husband is exactly her opposite as far as the drive to earn is concerned. Even though he is what you can consider as skilled and talented, it seems like he prefers to simply bum around when no job comes his way. He is a master carpenter and a jeepney driver, but, he is also a drinker and a gambler. He has such grave vices, which brings out the worst in him at times. Yes, Mariz’s husband sometimes throws away and breaks things in their home when he is drunk. Worst of all, there were even incidents when her husband will not let her in to their house and leave her sleep outside through the night. More than that, her husband also has an extended family who regularly awaits financial support from him.
Mariz’s children are aged 10, 13, 16 and 17 and all four of them go to school. The eldest is a college freshman in a university in Manila, the two younger ones are both in high school, while the youngest is in elementary school. Come next school year, the second daughter will also be in college. There are times that Mariz finds herself in deep thoughts – wondering how she is to support her four kids to school considering her present financial dilemma. Almost nothing is left out of her salary every payday once all her obligations are deducted.
Mariz is living in a vicious cycle of money-borrowing. Her house was built out of long-term loans but with relatively high interests. At present, she is still paying for them. Let’s just say you name every kind of employees’ loan that you know of, and you will be surprised to know that she has availed almost each one of them. So naturally, she relies all the more with the common loan sharks around to go on with life’s necessities. She tends to borrow money so as to be able to fulfill her obligations with another. She has no qualms about borrowing money as she has always been a good payer; thus, she maintains good relationship with money lenders.
Even with her irresponsible husband, life is not supposed to be that difficult for her – that is, if, and only if, she is not deeply buried in piles of loan interest after interest.
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