My dad was an entrepreneur involved in a number of businesses. Some of those were cash businesses and I recall him and some employees always counting cash on our kitchen table in the evenings. Some of that money was kept in a basket in my parent’s room which we had access to and could use it for our daily needs such as milk, bread etc. No one ever checked how much money we took or if we even brought back any change. That’s when my perception of the abundance of money began.
Years later, when I started earning my own money, I never really kept track of what I spent and often used credit to get what I wanted at the time. In my mind, there would always be enough money for the things that I wanted so I spent as I pleased. I also never saved. Now that I’m a financial planner and understand fully what the effects of my money habits are, I’ve had to do the difficult work to try and improve my thoughts and behaviour with money. I’m now cautious of how I spend, almost never spend on credit and save and invest often. The issue now is that I’m having to play catch-up as I’ve missed out on years of potential savings and investment growth. It’s been a difficult realization and has taken a lot of work to get to this point.
My work as an advisor is to help people get to this realization a lot earlier in their lives so that they don’t have to spend years rectifying their mistakes.
