To tell the truth, I know nothing about money but I'm willing to learn about it. Everywhere I go often people told me how hard it is when their teens begging to buy this and that. Or how hard it is to make ends meet.
Well, most of us will try to give the best of everything for our kids. But how many of us aware that the best is not necessary what our kids actually need? My school teacher ever told me once: don't give the fish to your children, but try to give them a boat and a net to catch fish by themselves. In that period of time I thought it made sense, the boat and the net must be high educations and the will to work hard. But then I saw my father who is highly educated, very intelligent and worked hard, couldn't survive his own business when he had to run it by himself. He ends up poor. How ironic for a man who once had everything that most people didn't to loose everything that he had.
I still didn't understand how it happened. But now I understand better that from all the knowledge that he had, he missed one most important knowledge, i.e. money. He knew nothing about money and how money can do the work for him. In fact he spent his time to work for money.
One other thing that I learn is that most people fail to teach their children about money. Most of us teach our children to want more and more thing every day. My experience in Mexico is worse. Most Mexicans do not make as much money as most Americans, but they love parties, as it has been a part of their culture. For birthday parties, most people spend over a thousand dollars, they will rent a party place, a show (clowns etc) that cost about U$400. Where did they money came from? They simply do not save enough! From my Mexican friends I often heard about their teens who ask for cars...for this and that....
Than I notice that these kids have become so demanding, as they have been raised to feel that money is EASY, their parent will fix it for them.
This year for my daughter's birthday, I did it in her class. I gave away invitations a day in advance so the kids wouldn't bring lunch box from home as I expect them to have little party in the class. And guess what? Each of them brought very nice presents, of course I appreciated a lot. But what value did it teach my daughter? So I told my husband, for next year birthday, I won't spread the invitations, no body should know...I will simply bring the cakes, the foods, the goody bags and balloons.
I don't want my daughter to grow up feeling so comfortable that she won't know about money, like my father and me. I want her to be smart about money, and not spending it away like most women do (including me).
When it comes to money, it's not about how much we earn, but how we organize it. Being discrete about using money helps a lot. Well, it takes judgments and a lot of consideration to buy things that we really want but we don't really need.
