Today I want to talk about a topic that I love… and sometimes hate. Money. Specifically, I want to talk about how important it is to spend a little bit of time on money. Whether you listen to podcasts or read books or talk to a financial advisor, it is imperative that you make it a priority to learn the basics about money.
Of course, this means learning about how to manage you money and the basics of investing money, but I would argue that it is even more important to understand the ways in which we think about money.
What are your beliefs about money right now? How were you raised to view money? Did your parents talk about money freely or did they only speak of it in strained tones when they thought you weren’t listening? Did your parents teach you about saving money? Earning money? Spending money?
It is hard to believe that something so important and universal is discussed so little. Well all know that money is important–even those who claim that it doesn’t matter, because even those people have to eat and pay rent and buy clothes, don’t they?–but it is a difficult topic to talk about for most people. It brings up a lot of emotions, from stress to anger to shame to excitement to fear, and it is often much easier to run from these emotions than to sit in them and understand where they are coming from.
I was raised in a household where my father was the sole breadwinner. My mother was a nurse but she quit her job when her second daughter (me) came along, and she went on to raise me and my three sisters while my father built his own business and was by all accounts a very successful man. They lived well below their means and I would say that the money lessons that was drilled home more than any other was these: live on less than you make and save, save, save.
Because these lessons were drilled into me so thoroughly, it is no surprise that when I grew up and starting making money of my own, I lived on less than I made and I saved. Neither of these things were easy to do, considering that I made so little in my first few jobs, but I believed it was the smart way to behave with money.
Another principle that my parents imparted to my sisters and me was that debt should be avoided where possible, and paid off quickly if incurred.
To this day, I think that these principles are important, but I also realize that you can develop tunnel vision on and not even know it. I focused so much on these three principles that I didn’t allow myself to explore other money principles much until I was older. For example, after I finished graduate school, I used every extra dollar from my paycheck to pay off my student loans. I lived below my means by eating at Taco Bell (or cooking at home) and not engaging in fun activities like skiing or concert tickets or weekend outings.
Looking back, I think I could have created a little more balance during that time in my life. I did the things I did because of the lessons I was taught. And while I will always be grateful to my parents for sharing money advice and teaching me many great money values, when I grew up I forgot one key point: learning should never stop. I took the money lessons they gave me and spend a few years just getting by rather than using those lessons as a place of starting, as a beginning of lifelong learning.
We should never get to the point where we think we know enough. We should never stop learning and growing, whether in the area of finances or parenting or fitness or whatever other areas of life that intrigue you.
