We wear seat belts to protect us from life-changing car crashes but how many people are protected from a financial crash? One of the best money lessons you can teach your kids is how to budget and save an emergency fund.
What does this have to do with personal finance? Everything! Money, like a car, can take us to incredible places impossible to reach on our own. However, there is a catch.
Both of these invaluable tools involve risk, and if we make the wrong move with either of these, we, as well as others, can get seriously hurt. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use them, but that we merely need to do so wisely.
At a young age I was taught that if I wanted something, I would need to use my own money to get it. Consequently, chores were made available and a wage established for each chore. This taught me quickly the value of the money I made.
These little nuggets of financial wisdom given to me by my parents have set a wonderful precedence. To this day my husband and I keep a budget, and work hard to ensure we pay our bills, save money, and spend wisely.
When we do come into financial difficulty, I hope we can learn from it and become better by it, like I did with my car crash. In the end, we hope to pass our knowledge on to our future children, so they, too, can have personal financial success.