I am terrible with money! Absolutely awful! I am so bad with money my credit score was below 500! Yes I admit it, I was a credit card whore! I finally admitted defeat and gave my financial responsibilities to someone else. It was the best decision. I do a lot of things well. I am very talented in some areas. I’m so/so in others. Money I just sucked at.
So some of you are reading this and nodding, some maybe applauding my wise decision to seek help. But there are several of you who are shaking your heads in disbelief. You don’t understand how someone can not pay their bills. How someone can constantly go over the limit of their budget. How someone lives paycheck to paycheck, and not that well. This blog is for you!
I was raised in a happy home, everything I ever needed was provided for me and more. I was what some call well to do, or well off. Not wealthy by any means, but my parents budgeted, worked hard, and my sister and I were very fortunate. Unfortunately managing money was not something they thought to teach me. We never had a regular allowance, or were shown how to save it. We had savings accounts, and my dad would take a small amount out of it at Christmas for us to shop for a few things, but we didn’t even do that every year.
So how does it end up that my sister is very good at saving and balancing her budget, and I am now letting someone else pay my bills and give me a weekly allowance? I have finally gotten to the bottom of it. And no it’s not my parents fault.
Here it is for those of you who are still shaking your heads and trying to understand. I was never taught that “a penny saved is a penny earned.” 
Really no one ever really sat me down and said if you put this aside and hold on to it you’ll have more money down the road. I had a piggy bank and it was full of pennies, but if it hadn’t been shaped like Snoopy, I so would have broken that thing to bits to get to those pennies. (every now and then I would try to shake them out).
Should my parents have taught me a little more, sure but they thought they were. The real problem in my mind is the education system. Growing up in North Carolina, I know I did not have a great school system, but it was better than others. But, I’ve been away to school, I’ve been across the ocean, and I have met tons of people from all walks of life. Start asking people where they learned to save, how they learned about interest rates and savings accounts. It wasn’t in elementary school, it wasn’t in junior high or high school. And believe me, unless they were a business or finance major it wasn’t in College.
Where is the class, the lesson plan on the value of saving, and not taking risks with your money. Nowhere to be found is my assessment. Oh sure there are classes for you after you’ve sunk to financial ruin and bankruptcy, but never before. The worst is when you get to college. You’re 18 and on your own for maybe the first time in your life. You’re going out, spending money, and not paying rent if you live on campus. So there is a lot more money. And then the mail comes, and every day there are at least 3 offers from credit cards. All of them just for you.
We are all so angry at the people who put us in the “credit crunch” “the recession” but no one is looking at the root cause. We no longer teach the fiscal responsibility to our children. Many of the hedge fund managers and people who took these risks were under the age of 35, and believe me as someone from that generation, greed was taught more than savings. We were pushed to get into the best college, so that we could get a good job. We were told that certain majors had a guaranteed salary of $60,000/year, $90,000, or even 6 figures! Money signs danced before our eyes, and the value of our education and our foundation went out of our ears and flew away.
So here is my challenge for the week. Go out and educate. Sit down with your kids once a week, once a month and show them how to balance a checkbook, create a budget, earn interest on their savings. Demand that your schools teach a week of money management starting as early as age 5. Believe me, kids that young, will understand that paper coins saved up in a jar, add up to more paper money to spend on stickers, and other treats. If you know someone like me that has trouble with finances, don’t shun them or shake your head. Offer to help them, share tips and tricks that help you. Volunteer at local community centers and churches to help those who don’t know how to manage their budget.
We can come out of this crisis. We can rebuild our local economy, but it can’t just be by spending money with local businesses and saving up for the next big crash. We have to help everyone learn that “a penny saved is a penny earned” and that “a person saved is a friend earned.”
That was awesome. Thanks.