Our Money (Mine & Yours)

Yes, that's a "Hamil" hair cut on me. Do you know who that is?

When I was seven years old I started working. I was a “Mother’s Helper” to a family across the street. I have no idea what the mom’s name was but Vanessa (oh, how I adored her) was my charge–a job I remember taking seriously. I know they paid me something; enough for candy at the store a few blocks away that I was allowed to walk to alone.

I loved earning money at that age. From there I started babysitting (with a big list clients I inherited from my three older sisters), and in my teens I worked as a lifeguard, swim instructor, camp counselor and day care worker before falling into advertising by way of being a gopher who opened the mail, got coffee and mailed letters. I loved working and earning money–and of course, spending the money. Throughout all of those jobs I did not save any money.

Luckily, in my late 20s, I married a man who is a saver and thinks about the future in a way I don’t. Hopefully we’ll be able to retire with something someday in order to live comfortably.

I’m trying to instill three money principles in our kids and so far it’s a concept we all like because it involves saving. If you do something similar, you’ll have to determine what amounts of money go into each category, but it’s good to have some basic groups:

1. Running Money: Money for bills, fun and whatever you need to make it to the next time you’ll have money coming in.
2. Savings: Short-term funds–say you want a new iPhone or some designer jeans–and long-term savings, for college, car, new laptop; the big stuff. We like to make the kids keep a list of three things they want. Since the list changes weekly, if something stays on the list for several weeks, we know they must really want it.
3. Charity: We have a 10% rule in our house, but whatever your percentage is, it’s good to give back. We let the kids pick their charity and save up to bring/send in a few dollars at a time, or drop off donations in buckets for dogs, kids, or the environment.

However you go about managing your money, just think of what you could do if you started saving now, as opposed to when I did it… in my 30s.