Teach your kids about money!

Teaching our future kids about financial stability is very high on my parental skills training list.

I spoke with my dad over the weekend, and told him about the retirement calculations that I made, and he siad," Wow! That's great. My dad never taught us anything about that, and I wish he had. I figured all that out way too late." I wanted to shout "You didn't teach me about it either!!!!!!" But it is not his fault, nor is it my mom's. I am the one that racked up the debt. I am the one that knowingly let bills slide, especially after a move. I am very glad for blogs that web pages that discuss personal finance, or I would never have known how to go about saving in a responsible manner either.

And I am thankful for friends, who are like me. I have a couple of close friends that talk openly about money issues and challenges we each face. We have a not so rough idea what each of us make, and savings and income and all the bullshit that comes along with having a job are all out the window. That kind of thinking though is so anti how I grew up.

My mom told me once that she keeps $500 in her account in case anything goes wrong. That is all the money advice I recieved growing up. Occasionaly I would run into some cash, and my mom would tell me I need to save it, but my mind had already spent it. And she would let me, after all it was my money and I could do what I wanted with it. This was the type of household that I grew up in. When I wanted to grow my hair long, I could. When I wanted to spend my money, I could. When I got out on my own, after I had my safety net, and sometimes when I didn't, I would spend my money, just like I always had.

Luckily, I did not repeat my dad's mistakes as largely as he made them. I am able to save up some cash, and still pay off the bad debt, and have a much firmer grasp on my overall financial health than my dad did at his age. Luckily I have friends that I can talk with. And while I know it's not there fault, I still wish they had sat me down to talk about financial stability.