As a child in Algona, Iowa, Jean O’Neil wanted to be a veterinarian. Now, the Engineer Research and Development Center retiree tackles a different kind of animal.

“I’ve always been good with numbers — I like numbers. I’m not afraid of them,” she said.

O’Neil is a Money Mentors volunteer with Mississippi State Extension Service. She and the other mentors offer free financial help for Warren County residents.

“We see everything from people who are in a tailspin to people who just want another person looking at their finances,” O’Neil said.

But after three years with Money Mentors and 36 years in Vicksburg, O’Neil and her husband are preparing to move to Massachusetts. She has already checked for a Money Mentors-type program at the University of Massachusetts, to no avail, but she’s considering a similar program through the American Association of Retired Persons.

One way or another, she plans to continue her pro-bono budget assistance.

“It’s just my personality,” O’Neil said, “the way I’m cut.”

Money Mentors began as a pilot program in 2006, and now has about 20 MSU-trained volunteers, from accountants to bankers to O’Neil, a retired ecologist.

When O’Neil’s parents realized their young daughter was serious about being a veterinarian and asked a local vet for words of wisdom, he told them it was not a field for women. O’Neil’s parents wouldn’t pay tuition for a dead end, and she couldn’t cover the costs by herself, “so I went into school and learned the closest thing to veterinary sciences,” O’Neil said, “and ended up in ecological biology.”

From working with the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis, O’Neil moved to Vicksburg in 1973 for an ERDC job, where she worked until her 2005 retirement.

“I wasn’t bored in 33 years,” she said.

O’Neil made her first move toward her future in Money Mentors when she started taking care of her father’s finances following her mother’s death.

In the three years since the program’s inception, O’Neil has worked with about 60 clients.

“She’s really quite a remarkable lady who has helped lots of very needy people in our community,” said John Coccaro, Warren County’s Extension director.

On a whole, Money Mentors sees between five and 20 clients each month.

When people hear about the program, they call the Extension office and are assigned a Money Mentor volunteer. Clients are expected to bring their credit report and the start of a budget to their first meeting, and they go from there.

Some of the most common problems, O’Neil said, are budgeting, paying bills on time and avoiding money traps and scams.

“I just didn’t have any idea how many people get themselves in trouble and get behind on bills,” said Money Mentor volunteer Curtis James. “Managing money is very hard for lots of people, it really is. There are so many people out there who are ready to take your money, so you have to be just really knowledgeable.”

The tightening economy has also put an obvious strain on many checkbooks, and even taking a cut in work time from 40 hours to 32 a week can slash a budget.

“Sometimes it’s brought on by a pay cut or certainly with somebody who’s used to getting a lot of overtime and now they don’t get any overtime,” said Money Mentor volunteer Bill Greer. “(But) I think most people get into problems just because of the (lack of) discipline in their spending.”

O’Neil said many finance tangles were a long time coming. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. People didn’t get into financial trouble overnight. It takes time, and that’s just the way it is.”

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Contact Andrea Vasquez at avasquez@vicksburgpost.com