Ayman Ismail

She works part-time.

So she's also not like raking it in, but she handles what we call the fun budget.

So if the family wants to go on a vacation, if we want to go to like this really expensive dinner one night, she'll pick up the tab, that kind of thing.

Yeah, when I first became a parent, that's when I first started budgeting.

And that's when I started to look up templates and try to find one that I liked.

It's not that... Struggling.

Right.

Uh, not necessarily.

I mean, I want to make my budget work as best as I can.

I have so many awful memories of like going a night without dinner or having, you know, nothing but like bread and cheese because we were that strapped.

It was rough.

It wasn't enjoyable.

I also remember like getting kind of made fun of in school because I only had like one pair of pants and like people could tell if the stains weren't going away.

So...

Yeah, it sucked.

And my dad at the time, he was working as a taxi cab driver in New York City.

My mom, actually, she ended up taking a job at the school because she needed the tuition discount and also to make money to make it happen.

So that was the position they were in.

They were like, okay, it doesn't make sense for us to do it.

We're going to do it anyways.