The Importance of Saving

I kept reading the description of this subject since I knew I would struggle with it. My parents seldom ever discussed their upbringing. They hardly ever discussed their early-life parenting practices. It's difficult for me to draw comparisons between their upbringing and that of my grandparents. My parents, who were both very young when I was born, did the best they could. It was never discussed with me, and I never had any interest in it. I'm limited to talking about my experiences as a father and the experiences I had growing up with them as parents. One thing I can say is definitely a big difference between my upbringing and my kid’s upbringing is that we talk about money. Growing up, money was never really a topic of discussion. The importance of saving money for emergencies and purchases was never a subject of discussion. Family vacations, Christmas and cars were all placed on credit cards. I knew nothing about budgeting growing up. If I wanted something, I got it. I didn’t really know how, but I knew I was going to get it.

I followed the trend an when I turned 18, I got my first credit card. I thought this is normal and everyone has a credit card. My family had tons of them and used them for everything. Then I got a car note, and of course, student loans. Now that I’m married with kids I talked to them about the importance of saving for emergencies and budgeting. It took my wife and me years to pay off our debts and we want to ensure our kids don’t follow the same mistakes we made growing up. We have monthly budget meetings where we go over what money we have going in and what’s going out.

If someone has an expense like soccer camp, school clothes and new glasses, we then add it to the budget. We forecast for vacations and have saving goals to ensure we stay on track for paying cash for them. It is one of the biggest contrast between my upbringing and the way our kids are being raised. We openly talk about money with our kids. I don’t really know why money was never discussed in our household growing up. But, what I know now is that living within your means is something that’s very important to us. Everyone wants nice stuff, but sometimes, we have to save for it. It is not something a teenager wants to hear, but we hope, these lessons will be passed on to the next generation.