Financial Responsibility

I don't know why, but this morning I was thinking about the most important lessons that I have learnt in life. The first one that came to my mind, was Financial Responsibility.

The year was 1994, and I was about 7 years old. That's when my parents decided that my sisters and I need to learn how to manage money. The earlier we started, the better it would be, they thought.

So they started giving us 'Pocket Money'. Back then, we used to get Rs. 40/- per month. We could use that money to buy chocolates from the school 'tuck shop', or an occasional ice-cream, guava, boiled corn, peanuts and the like on the way home, and whatever else that we desired. Once the money was over, we would have to wait an entire month to get the money again. I remember spending Rs 20/- per month on a 'Tinkle'.

Then as we grew older, we used to get an increment every 6 months. Slowly when the money we got became a respectable amount, there was another clause set. Whenever we went out, and we wanted to buy a new t-shirt, audio cassette, ear-ring and whatever else, we had to buy it from our pocket money.

We would get a new dress on our birthdays and the festivals, but if we wanted anything extra, we needed to pay for it ourselves. No money, no goody. Plain and simple.

That is also when we were taught to save up. whenever there was a month when we did not need to spend too much money (esp. the Diwali season), we were encouraged to deposit the money in a bank account. After a while, our pocket money was credited directly to our accounts to save us the temptation of using the money if we had it in our purses. It helped.

And after all these years, we had saved enough to buy ourselves laptops and smart phones. We are still careful where we spend our salary. Yes the figure is almost 5 times of the pocket money that we used to get, but we still use it with the same caution that we have been taught from so many years.

Kudos to my parents for this important lesson. I sure am going to suggest to young parents to do the same for their kids so that they learn to value money even if they have enough of it.