What I learned about money from my parents

PERSONAL finance experts encourage teaching one’s children how to handle money. It starts with letting them know how valuable it is, and what happens when they spend it or save it.

My parents never sat down with me to teach me about handling money. But from observing them through the years, I have learned valuable insights I practice up to now.

Here are the money lessons I learned from them:

1.  Money does not grow on trees. You have to work to have some. No work, no money. My parents got married a few years after the liberation. Times were hard. Since my dad’s earnings as a government clerk were not enough, he supplemented his income by becoming a security guard at night at the pier. And when this still wasn’t enough, he would borrow an uncle’s jeepney and drive it a couple of trips around Manila ferrying passengers. When he got back from driving the jeep, he earned enough to buy powdered milk for my kuya, who was then a baby. Hard work pays.

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