Teaching our children Basic Financial Planning, Budgeting, and The importance of being frugal.

Financial Planning and Budgeting are basics everyone should learn in their school years. Unfortunately, these basics are seldom taught and many people have no clue how to budget their paychecks.

It is all about teaching our children how to manage their money, sticking to a budget, being frugal, and still live a happy life.

This hub is not just about teaching your children how to budget their money, it is also about being frugal and how important it is to stop excessive wasting of natural resources and food.

This is a country of "throw away" goods. Our society thrives on wasting products.

All manufacturers make their products with a short life span to force us into buying more of their goods.

It is all about greed and higher profits for them. It is the basic premise of capitalism. As regulations are discarded the incidence of greed grows and so does the garbage pile up all around the world.

Where does it all end? Can we, as a species, survive this greed, waste and pollution indefinitely?

It is like a sickness in our society. People are taught that greed is good and capitalism is a better way of life than putting limits on how much "stuff" a person can hoard at the expense of the health and safety of others around them.

Logic and common sense have left us to drown in all this madness.

I grew up in a small town in a very northern New England isolated area. My father did "seasonal" work and we never had a steady "fixed" income. The only budgeting was deciding which bills had the highest priority when money was at hand. Not that we ever lacked for anything. We just had to be frugal.

There were no T.V.s, cell phones, video games, Internet or any of that type of 'luxury' we enjoy today. We certainly could not miss what we never had.

We had no electricity in the house.

Heating in winter was done by wood stoves, or kerosene burning heaters.

Cooking was done on a wood stove that had a water tank on one end of it that we kept full at all times. It was used to supply warm/hot water for cleaning, washing dishes and bathing.

Lighting was supplied by kerosene or natural gas powered lamps and candles.

Water was supplied by a hand pump built into the counter right next to the sink. Instead of turning a faucet, we just pumped the handle for fresh cold water. (All the modern conveniences right at hand).

"Toilet facilities" was an outhouse attached to the back of the house. It provided privacy, but you had to take a portable heater and lamp with you in winter and after dark. For really cold winter days, and night time, we had a portable "commode" in the house that would have to be emptied into the outhouse and cleaned after each use with soap and water to be ready for the next person's use.

I don't think any of today's spoiled rotten kids could ever survive those kinds of everyday 'hardships' that we had to endure on a daily basis. (Of course, they were not really 'hardships' if you never knew any other way of life)

But, i digress. When i was old enough to work, i managed to find a job working for one of the local lumber/saw mills in the area. Along with the job, came a steady income that helped my family make ends meet a little more easily.

When electricity was finally brought to this small town, it was a luxury beyond compare:

• Electric lights,
• a refrigerator (to replace the ice box),
• an automatic washing machine,
• and best of all, a radio to listen to music and news from around the state and locally.

Wow, we finally discovered that there really WAS a whole world outside of this little sheltered town we grew up in.

Along with all these modern conveniences came the expense of maintaining them. I was very conscious of living expenses and did not want to go backwards because of no, or poor, financial 'planning'.

So, i made a simple list of things that needed paying on a monthly basis, in order of their priority, to stay within my total monthly income.

When i got married and started having children, it was more imperative to keep track of expenses versus income.

I made my monthly budget out diligently and hauled it out to display to my wife and kids when they wanted something that one of the neighbors bought, that they thought we also needed, and simply could not live without, never mind be able to afford to buy it.

That old "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality didn't take long to gain its foothold in our household.

We managed to survive and grow and progress with the times. My family hated it when i hauled out my monthly budget with every request for purchase of something we really did not need as an essential for survival.

As my kids grew up and married, in spite of their childhood dislike for my monthly budgeting, they found it was an essential element to their own family's survival as well.

That budget of mine was the source of many tales of woe by my wife and kids, but we all managed to survive and thrive in the ever growing and expanding world that was rapidly encroaching upon our private everyday lives.

They still laugh at me today, as i maintain my old habit of handwriting my monthly budget. It is done on any annual basis-month to month planning.

I am attaching a sample of that original budget (which of course was actually handwritten), and the new and revised current version of it to reflect "fixed" monthly payments, those that can be paid by "electronic transfer of funds" (EFT), and those that i have to physically (remember) to pay to avoid late payment penalties.

Things today are much more complicated and yet simpler with the computer, and income being electronically transferred into your personal checking account by your employer (or your retirement checks - when you reach my age).

All in all, my kids are as diligent as i was (still am) in regards to obligations to creditors and family member to ensure that they will be taken care of in the best and easiest way possible.

I never leaned about investment brokers, or investment portfolios, or those other terms that you call someone else that manages your money for you. I can't say i ever trusted that to happen - allowing someone else to control my finances.

Over the past few years, seeing companies go under with the CEOs walking away with millions (heck- billions) of dollars in their personal bank accounts and leaving their employees losing everything (job, incomes, plus their retirement funds), i am darned glad that i never put my trust in those crooks and neither have any of my children.

They learned never to place all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, so that if their employer goes down the tubes, it will not be totally devastating to their families.

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. I would not have changed any of it, even if i could have.

Life was simpler then, and we were closer and happier as a family than folks are today.

Even though i still remain frugal in a lot of ways, i am far from conservative in my beliefs and family values.

Our society is ever growing and changing and we must learn to adapt to the times. We accept all other folks for what, and who, they are without prejudices, hatred or intolerance, and my grandchildren are being taught those same basic and decent values.

We respect ourselves and others and belong to no specific religion and harbor no guilt, fear or anything else that main stream religious cults teach their flocks.

We all still believe that there is one creator; and that respect, love, compassion, and helping each other, are the only values that our creators actually care about.

by: d.william 01/21/11