This was my first full day of SmartDesk use (I did at least 6 hours standing) and it was a fasting day so I'm hoping the pounds are falling off!
A few years ago my daughter recommended I read a book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber a left-wing anthropologist. It's a most interesting book on a subject which I have often had to grapple with. Recently I have come to realise that the other side of debt is saving (its never too late) and that these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. You can borrow money to buy a car, a house, a piano or an education and at the same time you can still be saving a part of your income every month. It doesn't matter if your are saving 10€, 100€ or a 1000€ a month what's important is that systematically setting a portion of your income aside helps you realise what your income represents and how to live within your means. I know that there are many techniques and strategies which are put in place for people who have over extended themselves financially but I don't think any of them include starting a savings regimen. And yet from a psychological point of view I believe it would make a huge difference if in parallel to filling their debt hole people were asked to start building a hill. Your debt hole can often be daunting and seemingly impossible to fill but your saving mountain will visibly grow every month even if its by a single grain of sand. Filling a hole is depressing because ultimately you are just trying to get back to the nice flat piece of land you had before. Building a mountain (or a hill) is much more satisfying since when you've finished you can climb to the top and see the view. (I hope you are still following my analogy).
So my advice to my children (and any other young adults who are reading this) is to save a part (however small) of any income you make and my advice to all parents is develop techniques to teach your children to save (maybe I should develop an app to do that). In the interest of full disclosure I will readily admit that I did not save my pocket money as a child and I did a poor job of teaching my children anything about delayed gratification (their frugality and capacity to live within their means is entirely self taught).
A few years ago my daughter recommended I read a book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber a left-wing anthropologist. It's a most interesting book on a subject which I have often had to grapple with. Recently I have come to realise that the other side of debt is saving (its never too late) and that these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. You can borrow money to buy a car, a house, a piano or an education and at the same time you can still be saving a part of your income every month. It doesn't matter if your are saving 10€, 100€ or a 1000€ a month what's important is that systematically setting a portion of your income aside helps you realise what your income represents and how to live within your means. I know that there are many techniques and strategies which are put in place for people who have over extended themselves financially but I don't think any of them include starting a savings regimen. And yet from a psychological point of view I believe it would make a huge difference if in parallel to filling their debt hole people were asked to start building a hill. Your debt hole can often be daunting and seemingly impossible to fill but your saving mountain will visibly grow every month even if its by a single grain of sand. Filling a hole is depressing because ultimately you are just trying to get back to the nice flat piece of land you had before. Building a mountain (or a hill) is much more satisfying since when you've finished you can climb to the top and see the view. (I hope you are still following my analogy).
So my advice to my children (and any other young adults who are reading this) is to save a part (however small) of any income you make and my advice to all parents is develop techniques to teach your children to save (maybe I should develop an app to do that). In the interest of full disclosure I will readily admit that I did not save my pocket money as a child and I did a poor job of teaching my children anything about delayed gratification (their frugality and capacity to live within their means is entirely self taught).
No comments:
Post a Comment