“The best thing to ever happen”

March 5 was the day Laquita Hughes had been working toward for years.

At 10 a.m., she showed up at Guardian Title. She hugged her realtors and Advance Memphis’ financial literacy manager and then signed the paperwork. As soon as she was handed the keys, she went straight to the house. She then stood in her new home, soaked in the moment, and cried.

“I've never felt this level of joy in my entire 37 years of living,” Hughes said. “Every day I wake up, it still feels like a dream.”

Six years ago, Hughes was renting a cheap home off of Third Street. She had just experienced a divorce, had a credit score around 500, and was earning $14 an hour as a temp worker at MLGW. 

She signed up for Faith & Finances just before COVID shut down the country. Around the same time, she started studying stoicism and attending church. She knew she needed a change, and she went all in. 

“People said I changed mentally, and it seemed like it happened overnight, because I changed the people I was around,” Hughes said. “My self-esteem and confidence just changed, and I became really serious about my life.” 

When the pandemic forced a pause in the class, Hughes wasn’t content to sit around. Bryce Stout, who at the time led Faith & Finances with Ann Vance, remembers Hughes pushing them to restart it. When they relaunched it over Zoom, he remembers her being “ecstatic.”

Laquita enthusiastically took hold of the class’s teachings, especially around savings. She set an incredibly aggressive savings goal ($250 per month), which made Bryce nervous. But then she stuck with it. 

“She was both optimistic and diligent about how to make (her ideas) work,” Bryce said.

In 2021, MLGW made Laquita a permanent employee. With a better job, she didn’t want to settle for a nicer rental. She wanted to buy a house. 

She took a weekend job at Baptist Memorial Hospital and started regularly taking overtime shifts at MLGW. And she opened a matched savings account (which we call an IDA) with Advance Memphis.

In 2024, a lender approved Hughes for a home loan, and she got a home under contract. But when she got to closing, the bank balked since she hadn’t held her second job for very long. 

It was “humiliating,” she said.

We had to close her IDA, since it had been open longer than our policy allows.

Hughes gave up for a while. 

But last May, she opened a new IDA with us and started steadily saving again. By December, she had saved up enough for our maximum $3,000 match. She was able to secure another $7,000 from a first-time homebuyer fund and was approved for a home loan. 

She picked out a two-story home in Walls, MS. It has a pond and plenty of room for her nephew, who lives with her.

This time, the closing process was smooth. 

“It was the best thing to ever happen,” she said. “I'm so happy that I finally have stability.”