The Real Me?


My life as a professional writer isn’t exactly profitable. Three blogs and two completed manuscripts have yet to generate a dime of revenue. At least blogging doesn’t cost anything. After paying a freelance editor to review them, I’m in the red on both books. Consequently, I’ve not yet given up my day job.

I happen to love my day job. The work itself has changed dramatically over the last 25 years, but with my current and previous employers, the objective has always been the same. Help people to make sound decisions about earning, spending, and saving money. I develop educational materials and programs and train our statewide network of educators to use them with youth and adult audiences.

Thousands of school teachers, county extension agents, and adult educators from all over the United States have attended my workshops and seminars. They take my materials home and use my programs to reach millions of people. It’s impossible to know the real impact, but individual families are likely to have collectively saved billions of dollars over the years as a result of my programs. What’s not to love about that?

My career is built upon the success of my first curriculum–a series of colorful flip charts educators could use with individuals who might not be able to read. The flip chart pages were also available as transparencies for group presentations on an overhead projector. Three of the original six are in use today and are available as PowerPoints from my work web site. Look for Paying Bills on TimePut Your Money to Work, and How You Spend Makes a Difference. The accompanying fact sheet, available here, is food for thought!

When Your Income Drops is an award-winning program we developed to help families cope with the loss of a job. The seven fact sheets, a worksheet, and the Powerpoint are available here. Hard copies of the fact sheets are sometimes available. It’s my job so don’t feel bad about asking.

Your Good Credit is a program to help consumers understand credit reports, credit scores, and basic credit management skills. The PowerPoint and three fact sheets are available here. Some of this information is specific to Georgia and may not apply in your state. Again, copies are often available upon request. We also have a program about how to get out of debt. The fact sheet is available here.

How on earth do I ever find time to do all this? Time management. And you can learn how to manage your time more effectively by clicking here!

My career has been devoted almost exclusively to meeting the needs of lower-income audiences. When Georgia mandated the inclusion of financial literacy in the schools, I shifted my attention to high school students and training for high school teachers. In the last few years, I’ve concentrated on materials for middle school students. Unfortunately, the youth resources I’ve developed are proprietary and I can’t make them available to you here. If you’re interested in resources for youth, I do have a lot of great links available here.

If you really want to know more about my career, my Curriculum Vitae is available here. That’s the list of everything I’ve ever done in my whole life. I’ve enjoyed every minute. New challenges and opportunities keep the work interesting. But if an advance with enough zeros behind the first three numbers ever came along, I’d be checking boxes on the forms for early retirement and counting down the days.

Thanks for reading. For copies or if you just want to say hello, e-mail me at mrupured@gmail.com. I’ll be waiting to hear from you, here in…

My Glass House


2 responses to “The Real Me?”

  1. Fascinating! And I love the new look for the blog, too. You’ve done a lot of stuff…much of it good and helpful…I call that a successful life. Can’t wait for the book! 😀

    • Thanks mama. All in all, it ain’t too bad being me. You’ve read the memoir so you can appreciate how far I’ve come. My journey convinces me there is a God. And He’s really pissed at a lot of his followers!