Amanda is a new NINJA CPA Blogger.

If I really think about it, the beginning of my journey to CPA actually started in 1999 when I decided to join the Navy to take advantage of the Montgomery G.I. Bill. I was not completely sure what I wanted to do with my life back then, but I assumed college would be necessary.

If I could travel the world and have the Navy pay for that college education, well I wasn’t going to pass it up. In July of 1999, I left home for the first time.

I took a few classes and was trying to set my sights on what I wanted after my time in the military was up. Then, the inevitable happened; that thing that happens to a lot of people starting out in life. I met a man, fell in love, and got married.

Of course, as the saying goes, first comes love, next comes marriage, and then comes the baby carriage. With the news that we were expecting, my husband decided that he wanted to go to a vocational school so that he could better provide for his now growing family. I put my studies aside and focused becoming a mom for the first time.

Shortly after our daughter, Katie, was born, my husband and I were both honorably discharged from our military service. In the late summer of 2005 we packed up our new daughter and moved to his home town in southern Mississippi. Yes, that’s right, we moved to southern Mississippi just in time for Hurricane Katrina.

We both lost jobs, but thankfully had only minor damage to our home. Our neighbors were not so lucky. Their home was destroyed. We and our neighbors helped each other out the best we could and we got through it. Financially, though, we never recovered. With the influx of refugees from New Orleans the job market in our area was not promising.

During this time of recovery, I got my first taste of the Accounting world when I took a job processing payroll and we also discovered, much to our surprise, that we were having another baby. During all of this, going back to school was always a thought in my mind, but I knew it wasn’t feasible at the time. Our second daughter, Ally, was born in 2007.

The next few years were a blur of financial struggles and nearly constant fights about money. There never seemed to be enough of it. Then, in early 2010 my husband received a job offer for an aviation company in Shreveport, LA. This was a major turning point in our lives. We moved our family to Shreveport and settled in for the next chapter of our lives. I even got another job in Accounting.

Now that our lives were back on track, I decided it was time to finish my degree. It was not easy. There were a lot of late nights, a lot of missed bedtime stories, and a lot of tears, mostly mine, but I didn’t give up. My husband wouldn’t let me, even when I wanted to. Aided by his support and encouragement, I finally earned my degree in December of 2011.

Now I am ready to tackle the CPA exam. I know that even though my journey started a long time ago, I am still just beginning my journey to becoming a CPA.