In addition to expenses going up and income going down, here’s another reason why sometimes we’re spending more than we earn.
My husband and I took a money attitude quiz the other night that asked us to rate money’s importance to us on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “the root of all evil” and 10 being “what I live for.” Both of us put it smack in the middle.
So, guess where an “eh” falls in the daily to-do list of stuff to focus on? Back to 1996, actually, when I bought Beth Kobliner’s book, read it, and filed it under, “Well isn’t that interesting that I know all that now, maybe we’ll get around to actually doing it someday.”
Fast forward to today, and there are two things I know now that I didn’t know then:
- Money management is a skill to learn and master like any other, with its own secrets, mores, and subcultures.
- Savvy money management is really the key to everything else you want to do in life. (Having to put some groceries on the credit card, like we did for the first time ever this year, will wake you up to this fact in a hurry.)
But unless you’ve become a secret personal finance geek like me, out of interest or necessity, where are you hearing this?
Allow me to indulge in this silly analogy.
Why don’t I parasail? Um, because I only vaguely know what that is and I don’t know any parasailers? If I wanted to start parasailing, I might start reading about it first, and then I might take a lesson or two. If I got really hooked, and wanted to get better and better, I’d have to go hang out where parasailers congregate, if they do such a thing. The more I talked to parasailers, the more I’d be blasted with different schools of thought on the best gear to get, the best (lakes?) to try, the best times of day to go, the best clubs to join, the best races to enter…
Yes. I could just climb on the (board?) and give it a go. To those people who are born parasailers, this seems obvious. That’s in fact what we’re all doing with our money — jumping on the board. But evidence suggests that more than a few of us could use some lessons.
Silly analogy ending now.
If either my husband or I had been born into a family who joined investment clubs for fun, I suspect (although this is not necessarily the case) we’d be better money managers, too. Thankfully, we were also not born into families who drove us into financial ruin.
We’re like most people I know, who really haven’t given too much thought to how important money really is, or really know what to do even if they have. And it’s awkward to talk about, isn’t it — one of those things that is not polite conversation.
Which is a shame, because there’s really so much to learn in this realm. And it is so much more important than ever today, since generations of folks are going to live longer than ever, and most likely without pensions or Social Security.
Down with shame, up with action, I say.
So here we are, smart but also dumb (this is a favorite phrase around our house, actually), ready to learn.
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Tags: money management · parasailing · scale of 1 to 101 Comment
I learned this summer in CPE that all new learning kicks up shame, and, depending on how much shame and its depth, can inhibit new learning. We’re all inclined to say to ourselves when learning something new “Doh! I should have known that!” We are ashamed that this seemingly obvious (or not) new thing had not registered in us in a demonstrable way. Down with shame!