Where We Learned About Finances

I have tried to open up conversations with few friends and office mates in regards to financial wellness and ended up most of the time on a topic eventually change to other things. I thought most of the time, that maybe, they just wanted to keep it a secret where their money is being invested. And we haven't gone that far to be a proof of nearing financial freedom either. We just started the journey, right?

It helps though when sometime we can exchange our knowledge to some others just like cooking recipes and be able to identify any pit or a better way to do it. Sadly, this is not the case when it comes to money matters. 

It inspires me that some anonymous people share their knowledge on how they started savings and eventually investing their hard earned money to an institution they prefer and believe in. This was the scary part when I know nothing with investments, or inflation rates for that matter. I know savings, but wasn't religiously doing it too.

Financial management wasn't taught in schools. We learned our basic savings at home through our coin banks and after that nothing more. Being from a poor family and 'isang kahig, isang tuka' lifestyle when we were young, savings is at the bottom of the list when we do not have anything to eat. And when I started working, I was charmed by the buying power of a plastic and eventually suffered the consequences. That is history, actually. Now that I have little knowledge and taking baby steps towards financial freedom, I have this renewed fire of determination to proceed further.

And yes, we fall, we get up and what matters is that we admit we made mistakes and we learned from the journey it brought us. We learned from our own experience. From our friends and relatives.

We learned from the others via financial forums. We learned from the financial blogs of known and anonymous individuals. We continuously educate ourselves from books and get acquainted with the new terms that comes our way. And we inquire when we do not fully understand how. We attend seminars and financial wellness training to gather insights. We guard our earnings from any scams by checking the backgrounds and doubt if the promised returns are too good to be true. We carefully lay out our plans, and dip when we feel we are ready to accept the challenge and the risk involves. Because all this learning will only go to waste if no actions are taken. It is now presented to us, so why let it slip when we have the chance? They say chance only comes once.

It wasn't an overnight change. We have to set our mind setting gradually to accommodate these new knowledge like learning how to use the touch screen to get away from the usual keypads. It is our dream to live comfortably in the future that motivates and keep us going. That no matter how difficult is the start up, because of that belt tightening and all, we always look forward to the experience this journey brings us.

To each his own. We are all unique in our ways.

Just sharing. :) God Bless.