Best Financial Advice I’ve Received
I had a passion in finances from an early age, partly because I was simply interested, but also because my dad really prioritized teaching me. We used to have “Stock Talk Tuesdays” after dinner. He would pull out annual reports from companies, and we would examine the information they reported. He showed me Value Line research summaries that he had photocopied at the library earlier in the week. We talked about compound interest and taxes on capital gains. It may sound boring to you, but I loved it. Growing up I thought everybody did this!
I am so grateful for my parents’ nurturing my financial comprehension and teaching me healthy habits. Parents, teach your kids! We did a blog series a couple of years ago on Teaching Your Kids about Money that you should check out!
I also learned recently that our local high school provides a Financial Literacy class, and the students study Dave Ramsey’s curriculum. So useful! Classes like this, and reinforcement from you, will give your kids such a strong foundation when they enter their adult world.
Through all the advice and wisdom I’ve gained in finances throughout my life, I think the most applicable piece with the biggest impact came from a guy named Treb Praytor. Treb was a spiritual mentor to my wife, Kaimey, and has had a huge impact on her life, faith, and ministry training. Kaimey worked for Treb for several years during our dating, engagement, and early marriage days.
When we were engaged Treb told us, If you want Kaimey to stay home with your kids one day, you should start your marriage only living on Scott’s salary. That way, when she stops working, you don’t struggle with the financial change.
He may not even remember saying this. I remember it being a passing comment while we were in a buffet line together. But I thought it was a great idea! I knew it was Kaimey’s dream to be home with our (future!) babies and was thankful to receive some planning advice to make that transition possible and easier.
So we did it. When we got married, we paid for all of our living expenses from only my salary. We used Kaimey’s salary to pay off a student loan, pay off my car, and we invested the rest.
And we accommodated our lifestyle to what we had. Our favorite regular date night was to go to Fire Bowl, where we split a $7.50 stir-fry bowl. You could build your own bowl with veggies from a bar so we LOADED ours up to feed two! Then we walked down to Barnes & Noble and would play dumb games to see who could find the weirdest book, or just sit and talk, or read books we never bought.
We didn’t live extravagantly, for sure, but we kept our main goals in front of us, and we made it work.
That one piece of advice had a big impact on our family and helped me, as a young 22-year-old, to start shaping our family’s financial goals and learn the importance in planning for them.
It set us up to have a great financial start in our marriage since our mortgage was our only debt when kids came along. And we had healthy savings and investment accounts to help with the unexpected expenses of being new parents.
Even if you’re not a young newlywed planning your future family, you may know someone who is. Pass it on! Sharing financial wisdom is a huge blessing that can have an impact for generations. I send a huge thanks to all the people who shared their wisdom with me.
