My Experiences with Personal Finance

As a kid, I’d spend every coin in my piggy bank as soon as I got it. I was always dazzled by television ads and storefront windows, all which target kids, getting them to spend their money on products. Throughout my 16 years, I’ve definitely had some tough learning experiences with saving money and learning the importance of such a useful skill. This blog will go over the three major times in my life where I learned valuable lessons through personal experience about finances and saving. I urge everyone out there to learn about the importance of it early in life, as it is a beneficial skill that you’ll need over the course of your life.

As a child, I had my own piggy bank. That was my first form of saving. I would always know exactly how much was in it and exactly what I wanted to buy. The problem was I always wanted to buy something. I remember a toy car I wanted that was $30.00 and I had saved up for a month to buy it.

I was amazed by the car, but the more expensive model was $60.00 and was the one I really wanted. I ended up buying the cheaper version and enjoying it, but I regretted not saving for what I had actually wanted. This taught me a very important lesson: it’s better to save for what you really want than buy something close to it. I had a goal but settled for less because it was easier. It was a very important lesson to learn.

When I began the seventh grade, students were allowed to go off school property to buy lunch. I remember being so infatuated with this and I was always so excited to go buy my own lunch as it made me feel like an adult. In the first month of seventh grade, I used almost all the money I’d saved and spent it on my lunches. It provided temporary satisfaction but at the end of the month I realized I had just wasted a ton of money. I tried thinking about what else I could’ve used it to buy and I felt stupid for spending it all. I could’ve invested it or bought something important that I needed. I learned a very important lesson here: using money for temporary satisfaction is unfulfilling and not useful in the long run.

My final moment of the importance of saving realization came after I worked my first job during the summer of tenth grade. Working as a camp counsellor, I made a significant sum of money which I ended up spending all throughout eleventh grade. 

All of it. I didn’t save anything. Using poor judgment, I made a lot of smaller purchases that totaled up over time and I ended up spending every single dollar I made my first summer working. When I realized all my hard-earned money from hours and hours of work was gone, I needed to make a change. This is what taught me the overall lesson of saving: saving money is the most important thing a young person can do. It’s a real-life skill that will come in handy over the course of your life.

With all my experience, I like to think I’m relatively educated on the topic of personal saving and finances, yet I know I have much more to learn. I know it’s vital to attack saving with an open mind and that is my suggestion to everyone reading this. I know it sucks to save, but it’ll be beneficial in the long run.