Finance Lessons Your Parents Should Have Taught You (But Expect You to Know Anyway)

There are many different strategies to make your money grow but if you don’t know how to save and never received these finance lessons, those strategies will be useless. After all, you may invest $100 and grow it to $1000 but if you then just go and spend that $1000, you’ll be back where you started: without $100.

Just ask anyone who made lots of money by investing in Bitcoin and then watched the value of their investment drop lower and lower: there are no shortcuts to getting rich. It takes time, sacrifice and financial savvy. If an opportunity to make money sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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Being in debt means you’ll spend much of your life trying to get out of it. You won’t be able to enjoy a carefree life if you’re going to dread those credit card statements coming in every month. Keep your debt to an absolute minimum and avoid lifelong financial slavery.

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When your parents were kids, being deeply in debt wasn’t as widespread as today. Their parents knew that if you can’t afford something, you shouldn’t buy it. Nowadays, keeping up with the Joneses often means getting into as much debt as they are. Instead, live below your means and know how much fun money you should budget for yourself.

It’s easy to say you should avoid debt at all costs but some debts can pay off in the long run. For instance, taking out a mortgage to buy a home is totally worth it as long as you can pay the mortgage every month: property tends to increase in value over time. The secret is to know how to get the best mortgage rate and to know which debts aren’t worth it.

Your parent have probably told you many times that money doesn’t grow on trees but if they always gave you money instead of making you earn it, you probably never really learned the lesson. The best money to have is the money you’ve worked for: it teaches you to appreciate where money comes from.

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We often equate riches with being surrounded by lots of fancy stuff: whether it’s gold toilets or designer clothes. However, all that stuff may just be signs that you’re living way beyond your means. Some of the richest people are also the world’s thriftiest billionaires.

One of the most important financial terms most Canadians don’t know but should is the concept of compound interest. If you understand that compound interest means the longer you stay in debt, the more your debt will grow, you’ll think twice about charging that purchase to your credit card.

Your credit score isn’t something you should only check when you’re applying for one of the best credit cards in Canada. If you check it regularly, you’ll get a better understanding of which actions help your credit score and which ones hurt it. This way, you can adjust your financial behaviour to keep your credit score healthy.

Everyone makes money mistakes at some point in their lives. Of course you want to avoid financial failure but losing money isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are even plenty of celebrities who went bankrupt. The trick is to learn from your mistakes and use the experience to make better financial decisions in future.

A couple of dollars here and there is fine but lending large amounts of money to friends and family isn’t a good idea. People who have a close relationship with you often think that they can take your time to pay you back, or that they don’t need to pay you back at all. This affects your own financial position and can ruin your relationship too.

As they’re getting older, your parents are probably more aware than ever of how important it is to save for retirement. Have they ever discussed this with you, though? Waiting too long to start saving is one of the signs you’re going to retire broke. The sooner you start saving for retirement, the bigger your nest egg will be one day.

It’s wise to open an RRSP, or registered retirement savings plan, as soon as you can and to contribute to it fully every year. It’s actually one of the retirement tax tips that will save your nest egg. This is because your contributions to your RRSP are tax deductible, so you’re saving on taxes while growing your retirement fund.

Your net worth isn’t just something you should know if you were born into one of the richest families in Canada. Even if you’re slogging away to get by every day, knowing how much you actually have to your name will help you plan your finances better. It may also motivate you to look for opportunities to increase your net worth.

In your parents’ day, people could earn a degree and walk into a good job where they could use that degree. That’s why they tell you how important education is. Nowadays, however, having a good education is rarely enough. If you want one of those highest paying in-demand jobs in Canada, you need to have the right skills too. There are many ways to improve your skill set: whether it’s starting at the bottom and working your way up, taking extra courses or teaching yourself marketable skills, interning or volunteering, for instance.

Financial health isn’t just about being able to crunch the numbers and budgeting. With a bit of creative thinking, you can find all kinds of ways to increase your net worth. It doesn’t have to be about starting a side business or becoming an influencer either. It can be in the little things too, like finding ways to save money on your grocery bill.

Among older generations, there has often been this perception that only rich people can afford investing their money in the stock market. It’s one of the first money myths about investments that Canadians still believe. The truth is that anybody can invest in stocks. Even if you buy only one stock in a company with a good track record, it’s a stock that can grow in value more than if you spent the money on something else.

There’s no reason to be a Scrooge with your money. If you donate to charity or a cause important to you, even if it’s just a few dollars every month, you’re going to feel like a better person while making the world a better place for everyone. It may even have some tax benefits.

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