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COMMENTARY | Earlier this week, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made headlines when he said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." While this statement raised more than a few eyebrows, Romney is right.
About Me
By all accounts, I was doomed to a life of poverty. I was a teenage mother of twins, living on welfare. I received food stamps, Medicaid and even a housing subsidy. According to every "expert", I was destined to fail. Statistics said there was little chance I would graduate from high school. In the court of public opinion, I was sentenced to poverty, for life.
Welfare to Work
Even though I had two tiny tots to care for, I worked and went to school full time until I was 16, when I graduated with a 3.83 GPA. For several years after that, I worked two jobs. I was barely scraping by, even with government help. I wanted off welfare; I wanted to dictate my own future. Even though everyone else had written me off, I hadn't.
However, the closer I inched to independence, the harder it became. The more money I made at work, the more I lost in support; loss not based on equal margins. Welfare was "all or nothing", making it a hard habit to kick.
The Birth of an Entrepreneur
One day I was cleaning my house and I had an epiphany. I realized that I was going to be stuck cleaning other people's houses or working for someone else, stuck with a chronic welfare dependency for the rest of my life if I didn't make a change. I needed to do something drastically different. So, something drastically different is what I did.
It was 1999. I scrimped, I saved and I bought my first computer. I still worked two jobs and I was still on food stamps, but now, I was a woman with a mission.
I taught myself web design using free online resources. I launched my first cyber business in 1998. After a few months, I was bringing in enough money to kick my welfare dependence and quit both of my jobs. I was hooked on a new drug: entrepreneurship.
From Then to Now
In 2001, my online business joined scads of other dot com fall-outs and closed. I could have easily jumped back on welfare, but I didn't want that life. I deserved better and so did my daughters. I rose up, and I did it again. Now, I have several successful online businesses and two books coming out this year. I went from very poor to middle class to upper middle class, and my star is still rising because I lift it up. It's my choice, my destiny.
It isn't the system that's broken, it's the people using it. Social safety nets are designed to be temporary, to lift people up when they are down. They are not meant to become a secondary addiction, yet (for many) they are, just not for me. I kicked my wicked welfare habit. And if I can do it, anyone can.
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