Let’s Talk About Money

Being a female growing up in California there was a lot of talk about what to wear, relationships, and what was “cool” at the time. There was little talk about money and I wish there was. This trend continued into college and adulthood. I grew up in a small town called La Verne which was a regular middle class suburb in Los Angeles County. My parents, especially my father, instilled the importance of being frugal with money. My mother was mostly a stay at home mother and my father was an engineer for the county so we really had to stretch his one income. We rarely went out to eat and when we did it we typically had a coupon. At the time I never felt like I was missing out on anything and had more than enough of everything that I wanted. Thankfully my family’s frugal habits have been embedded in my mentality and I try to continue that lifestyle now.

Wanting to learn more about money and be able to be “independent” I ended up studying economics and taking Accounting classes to get my CPA that way I would better understand money. I thought maybe people would start talking more about personal finances in college or at work once graduated. Instead everyone was so focused on getting good grades and figuring out comes next in life to spend a lot of time talking about money. For some reason talking about money can sometimes be taboo. Even at work at Accounting firms and while working in Finance we were always so focused on the next deadlines that personal finance and investing was rarely discussed.

So now I believe we should change that.

We all make mistakes with money, sometimes spending too much, sometimes spending too little such as wishing we bought that house or investment at the right time. Let’s start and keep up the dialogue and learn from each other. I hope in addition to focusing on getting our work done, talking about relationships, what’s “cool”, and other pressing matters we make space to learn from each other and continue to build our knowledge in saving AND investing. The dialogue starts here and now and please continue it. The next time you are with your friends and they are talking about relationships, the weather, kids, or anything how about bring up finances. You can get their thoughts on how they invest, how they maximize savings, or some of the best lessons they have learned. This is all in the context of sharing knowledge and hopefully you’ll both learn something new. All the best!