Consumer Tips, Tricks & Articles

Are You Genetically Able to Save Money?

Like with many traditions and habits, we all take away life's important lessons from our families, mainly our own parents. While we are trying to keep our finances on point and get into better habit of budgeting and managing our money, it may be worthy to note that what you learned growing up will have a huge impact on your ability to deal with your finances now.

If you come from a family of spenders, it is likely that you too are a spender with very different perspectives than that of a saver. You may hold to the thinking that you are living for today and since you can't take it with you, you might as well spend it. Savers, on the other hand, believe that everyone should be saving for the future, for unexpected events, or just to keep the stress of finances from taking over your life.

Your perspective of money can certainly be affected by what you learned as a child and beyond. It now is up to you to change your mindset and move forward in a more money-savvy fashion. Like with anything, you need to want to change and not do it for any other reason. Start reading up on tips for better money management and begin to incorporate small habits or change of habits into your every day life, one step at a time. Trying to do an entire overhaul in one day will be just too overwhelming.
Start changing your mindset about buying. Recognize the vast difference between your wants and needs. Think about how saving the money you want to spend will add up and allow you to do other things, such as taking a vacation or just having the reassurance that your financial concerns will be alleviated.
Start small and tuck away a few dollars in the beginning to get into the habit of saving. Once you begin to see the money add up into a nice chunk of change, your motivation levels will likely rise naturally and inspire you to do more savings.
Analyze your current expenses and cut out what is wants versus needs. Tuck that money into an interest-earning account. You will soon understand that you can make small sacrifices but achieve great rewards.
Get out of your comfort zone. While you might have grown up with parents who seemed to easily ignore those calls from collection agencies, understand that it probably wasn't the case. Your parents probably stressed over money way more than they let on to their children. Don't avoid the phone calls and get a handle on where your credit stands. Avoidance only makes the situation worse.
Stop placing blame on your teachers. Just because mom and dad were not great at managing their money or saving for a rainy day, doesn't mean you can not change tradition and make your finances more manageable.
Teach your own children how to budget money and help them to understand the real value of money and money management. You of all people should know who hard it was to change your ways, so start your kids off on the right financial foot. Don't hid financial information from your children that pertains to the family. Get the kids involved in creating and abiding by a family budget. Your children will learn the most financial lessons from their own household.
On the reverse side of this advice, never manage your money using methods you do not understand, Your money management methods need to work for you and your family. Do not do things just because other people think you should. No one method will work for every person.