Day # 180 - Dinero

Funny thing about money. We all know what we should do with it and most of us (and by most I mean the great majority) choose not to do it anyway. It's been a year since I was a banker, and it was something I truly enjoyed doing. What's interesting is that now is when I understand how bad I was at it.

I was good from my employer's standpoint: I was a good salesman, I brought in business, asked for referrals, and closed deals. But, the truth is, I didn't always do what was right for my customers. For what it's worth, I NEVER steered anyone in the wrong direction, I just sold my little heart out because that's where the money was.

I often had people come in to talk about overdraft fees. My first question was always, "Where's your check register?" 99 out of 100 customers didn't have one. Why? Because most people don't have a basic understanding of personal finance. They don't know how to balance a checkbook. They don't understand the concept of saving for a rainy day or of not getting in trouble with credit cards.

Schools are busy teaching the mythology of global warming, they're teaching about homosexuality, the nonsense of evolution, but they never teach kids how to create a budget or how a mortgage works. The banks don't mind. They make lots of money off of overdraft fees. I'm not the conspiracy theory type, but I wonder if the banks have anything to do with the fact that schools don't teach finance.

Regardless, it is the responsibility of the parents to teach their children everything they need to know, and this includes basic finance: balancing a checkbook, saving for retirement (because Social Insecurity, the worlds biggest Ponzi scheme, can't be trusted), how mortgages and insurance work. I'm not saying you need to be Warren Buffett, but you do need to know, and share, the basics, if you want your family to prosper.

Some of us learned the wrong things from our parents (I am not one of those people, thank God) and we're teaching those bad habits to our kids. It's like the battered woman who never teaches her son the importance of respecting women; it's up to us to break generational curses, and poor money-management skills are a curse. Make no mistake about it.

I wish I'd written this when I was a banker, I could have saved a lot of pain, and stuck it to the bank in the process.

God bless you. Make it your best day yet. And go balance your checkbook.

- Adolfo