10 years ago, I went back to college as a single mom of three children…

Right, so you follow me on my social media, you may follow me for money tips (I am assuming this of course), you see bits of my life, you get to know little bits about who I am as a person but what you often don’t get to see is how I got to where I am. I often get messages about how I have it all sorted. This of course is not true because I honestly don’t think any of us have it all sorted 100% of the time. I do however want to share with you one of my biggest steps to getting to where I am today and being half sorted as I will call it!

Lets rewind back 10 years. I had 3 small children aged from newborn to 6 years old. I was recently separated and at a complete bewilderment of what my next step would be. The recession was roaring thickly in the background. I had an overdraft at its max at of 3k, credit cards maxed at 10k, a mortgage I could not pay and children I needed to feed. I had previously been employed in the preschool services but with so many of the country unemployed, jobs in this sector were few and far between.

I knew I needed to do something to sort this mess, so after much online searching and no prospect of a job I decided to retrain. I come from a long line of nurses, it was actually what I was supposed to do after I left school but decided against it at the last minute. I often look back and wonder should I have just done it then but I also think the universe had a different plan for me. Most notably I was originally meant to do General Nursing but after acquiring quite a bit of life experience by this stage, I felt Psychiatric Nursing was far more suited to me.

For me my return to college proved to be my life saver, not just a financial life saver but an emotional one. I was still young but I had a massive amount of responsibilities. I would look on Facebook and see people I went to school with busy getting engaged, married or having their first babies. I was already at the other end of all this, an end most of us do not set out to meet however, it was where I was and it was where I needed to move on from. I’m not sure if it is the psych nurse in me or just me as a person but I always talk about the emotional first.

For me attending college give me an outlet, it give me hope and it created an emotional support when I needed it most. I applied through the mature nursing route and sat the tests. This is something many people don’t know about. Once you reach 23 your Leaving Cert changes from the end all of everything to not mattering so much. Nursing points were incredibly high and especially for my local college. Demand for places were high. I sat the tests but didn’t get high for my closest campus. The following year I re-sat and secured my place in the college where I could easily commute too. For anybody doing these tests I can recommend doing math’s games on the Nintendo DS to sharpen your brain.

So I got my place, what next? I walked in terrified!! Oh I am going to be the oldest, everybody will be 18 and I will have nothing in common with anybody. I could not have been more wrong. I walked in and half my class were mature students. I am not sure if it was the recession which had us all in there but I can assure you from talking to many people over the years, learning is not for the spring chickens amongst us but everybody! You will 100% not be the only mature person there.

Now I have the emotional part out of the way, lets talk the budget part. Funding my way through was difficult. This I can not lie to you and say it was easy. The first 2 years were incredibly tight and difficult. If you are receiving a social welfare payment, you are allowed hold onto this payment for the duration of your course. You can switch your payment to ‘Back to Education Payment’ for the duration of the course. For me I continued on ‘Loan Parent Payment’ and also received the SUSI grant.

SUSI is Irelands national awarding authority for third level education grants. I am not going to go into the in’s and out’s of these different area’s as they change all the time. However, I hope by giving you the names I am able to help you work out how you can achieve your dreams. Granted if this is a dream for you!

Many people do not know about the Student Assistant fund which you apply for through your college. I didn’t know about it for the first year but when I applied in second year, this proved to be a massive help. The Student Assistance Fund is available to help with costs such as: books, utility bills, food, essential travel and childcare costs. It is not a large amount of money but it really was a help.

St Vincent de Paul also provide an Education Bursary Fund. This is to help and support students who may be struggling to stay in third level education due to financial problems. You apply for this through your reginal office.

For nursing it helped that we got a small payment to help with travel costs while on placement. Also from Christmas in year 4 you are working in your internship and receiving a % of a nurses wage.

For me the further I got into my course the easier the financial pressures became. Things in the economy started to pick up so I got a job in my third year one day a week. As I was still below my Lone Parents threshold this did not affect my payments. Plus when you see an end in sight and know you will be soon working, this keeps the motivation going.

Contact your local childcare facilities also for info on ‘The National Childcare Scheme’. This was not available when I was in college so I don’t have much info on it.

I hope this has been helpful for you and all I can say to finish up is, education really did open doors for me and changed my life in a positive way. If you are thinking about it any shape or form go for it. None of this is financial advice but I hope it helped you in some way.