Today we are on something really really important. Knowing this is one thing, doing it is another.
Pay yourself first! Acquiring this habit is one of the smartest things you can ever do. If you are a middle-aged parent, imagine how much you would have accumulated had you saved 10% of everything you had earned and on top of that, grew it.
Most wealth trainers teach this! However, the #1 mistake parents teach their kids is the left-over strategy: Savings= Income-Expenses. So many parents give their children allowance and allow them to spend first then save whatever is left! Many parents do try to teach children to spend wisely, but forget to teach them a far more important lesson: Paying oneself first. By allowing our children to save what is left is a GRAVE mistake they will continue to be practised into adulthood! I know that, because I had been doing just that!
People who have a relatively more humble lifestyle and are more down to earth will get to save what is left. For many who are always chasing a better lifestyle and are "trapped" in the keeping up with the Joneses', expenses and liabilities will grow as income increases. Following this formula will be disastrous and leave most with nothing much except for debts and liabilities!
We cannot afford to let our kids follow the same formula. We have to pay ourselves first. Only by paying ourselves first can we truly take control of our money. No matter how small our income may be, it is only right that we inculcate the good habit of paying ourselves FIRST! "Habit is everything, it means even more than the amount", as T. Harv Eker always says.
I guess it all started with the struggling. Living from pay check to pay check from the first job wasn't at all fun. The fact that my parents did not teach me much about money and that they also struggled financially did not help. Well, perhaps my mom did teach me a thing or two: to put money into the piggy bank and be frugal. She does better than my dad in finance.
Deep within, I have always want to be financially free. I wanted to do much better than living on the edge. Very classic, my first step was to read the very best seller "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. I was so very inspired and motivated by the book. I realised things I had never really thought about and understood.The book changed my paradigm.
Then, in 2007 November 23rd to 25th, I attended the Millionaire Mind Intensive with my then husband-to-be. It was a seminar that was very impactful. T. Harv Eker was a such an awesome speaker whom many of us could relate to him. After which, my husband and I signed up for a package that filled our 2008 with powerful seminars.
We kept thinking about how we wished someone could have taught us more about managing money when we were young. We looked back and saw that we were so ignorant about money. I would have thought that was because I was brought up in a not so well-to-do family. But it is difinitely a big myth. People born with a silver spoon could be taught nothing about money too. My husband grew up in a, I would say, priviledged family, being born to a doctor cum businessman. He grew up in a big house with a few maids to wait on him and at 15, he was sent to boarding school in England and all. He learnt to enjoy the material comforts and luxury. But he had to struggle financially later on in life, just like me.
We started to think how other children could benefit from our experience and be spared of the groping in the dark. Soon, I was pregnant and we started to realise we need to educate our child about money. My husband and I have a dream for our daughter, who is 4.5 months old now. That is, to empower her through education about money and that she be financially free before she finishes school. She could then choose to do what she wants to and not be sucked into The Rat Race. It would be one of our biggest gifts for her.
