“The thing my grandmother taught me that stuck with me more than anything was this: She used to tell me all the time, ‘When you get old enough and you start working, if you make a quarter, save fifteen cents.’ I always used to ask her, ‘What am I going to do with fifteen cents?’ And she said, ‘Just keep living, baby. You’ll find out.’ So every time I made some money doing little outside jobs like washing and ironing and babysitting, I put some aside. Years later, when I was about fourteen, my mom’s granddaddy died over in Arkansas. My mom said, ‘I want to go to the funeral, I want to go see about Papa, but I don’t have the money.' I told her, ‘Well, I’ve got some.’ She asked me where I got it from, and I told her I had saved it from the little jobs I did. So we had enough money for both of us to go to Arkansas to Papa’s funeral. I felt so good that I could help. That day I felt like I had conquered the world.”
"I tried to instill the idea of saving in my kids and grandkids when they were little. The bank gave my grandson a little piggy bank and I taught him to save his pennies. When it was full, we’d take it to the big bank. I’ve never bought on credit. I save up and pay outright for what I get, and I send in the payment for all my bills on time. I don’t want to owe anybody."
More advice from Dorothy's grandmother: "You’ll meet a lot of different people in life and it doesn’t cost you anything to be polite and friendly to them" and "Not everybody who smiles at you is your friend." Dorothy adds: "I’ve always strived to do my best in life."
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