This article appeared in my newsletter Road to Success. To receive your monthly copy of this email newsletter complete the form on my website.
Money Expresses Your Values.
My mother's friend recently lost her husband of 60+ years. She is 87 years old. In a visit to her home she confided to me that she had never written a check or kept track of her money. Now she was forced to make a decision. She could either let her son handle her money or she could learn to do it herself. At 87 she was opting to do it herself. She is living proof that you are never too old to learn something new!
Managing money is such an important task and yet we in the United States at least get no preparation for it. Females of my mother's generation were never taught to manage money. It was assumed that men managed the finances and everything else. I doubt men got much training in this either. In my own schooling I do not recall ever being taught to write a check. Percentages and fractions were taught in school but the topics of managing a budget or investing in the stock market were rarely discussed. It is no wonder that the government here is constantly trying to spend more than it takes in. If the schools do not teach these skills, then parents and families must take on the task. If we have never had training ourselves, are we ready for the challenge?
To teach others we will need to work on our own relationship with money. For some acquiring money and the things it can buy is an all-consuming project. Many will start to spend as soon as they have a steady check. Credit Card companies are out there encouraging people to buy on credit - and credit cards are easy to get. There is no thought of budgeting and saving for the future. Soon both current and future earnings are spoken for. With more and more debt we become less able to do what we really want to do.
A financial planner told me that he recently called on an attorney who just became a partner in a prestigious law firm. When the financial planner sat down with attorney to review his finances and plan for his son's education, it became clear that the huge mortgage and million-dollar home was preventing this attorney from saving anything. At the rate he was spending he would not have the money he needed for his son's college education. The attorney valued education and family but his financial "plan" did not honor those values.
If we choose not to plan for our financial future, we have in fact made a plan by default. Do we like where our "plan" is taking us? If not then we will need to examine our values. To make a valid plan we need to be aware of what is most important to us in life. A good financial plan must honor what we value.
Last month I walked in a walk to support a Women's Shelter. One person gave a large amount of money to support my walk. She explained her large gift to me in this way, "Every year my husband and I make a plan of how much of our salaries we will contribute to nonprofits and what kinds of organizations we will support. This one fits into our plan and so I am happy do it." That is what budgeting and planning enables us to do. It gives us the freedom to do what is really important - to fulfill our life's purpose.
No matter what age we are, planning for your money and using it wisely is vital. In addition it is important that we give our children the tools they need to manage their money and budget for the future. A valid financial plan gives us a great sense of security because we know we have the means to take care of ourselves. In addition we are modeling for our children a philosophy about money that will make them better able to cope in the future. Handling our money wisely gives us the opportunity to express who we are in a way that is uniquely our own.
Take action:
- Find a book on money management and read it. One that I recommend is
The
9 Steps to Financial Freedom by Suze Orman.
- Write out a monthly budget and then keep track of your expenses
for one month. At the end of the month compare your actual spending
to your budget. What changes do you need to make?
- Visit my website www.asparker.com and try the values assessment on
the special offers page. Is your budget aligned
with your values?
- Determine the amount of money you want to save each month and alter your budget so that you can save that amount. If you have to give something up, what will you do so that you will not feel deprived?