Learning to save needs constant push

‘Musical’ look at money management a good way to address important issue.

Learning the importance of saving money early is something I’d bet all of us beyond college age wish we’d been exposed to earlier than we were. For many, that would have made the adult years a bit easier when managing finances.
    Students at Chase County Schools can’t say later on they didn’t get the message. Not only does CCS offer a personal finance class that is required of students to graduate, but other special programs are also emphasizing how important saving money is.
    On Monday, the message came with music. The Gooding band, stopping at CCS on their “financial literacy tour,” performed five different numbers kicking off a morning assembly. But then the band’s namesake, Gooding, talked to the grade 7-12 students about money.
    He presented some alarming statistics, that you can find anywhere if you do some research— the vast majority of people live paycheck to paycheck. Financial problems are the biggest reason for divorce. Not many people save money, even though they should know Social Security isn’t going to be enough to meet expenses once they do retire. And parents evidently aren’t teaching their children enough about saving.
    Part of the problem I think is that we live in a society now, unfortunately, of instant gratification. We have to have answers and the fastest links, so we buy the newest phones; we need to know what our friends think and are doing, so we spend wasted hours on Facebook; and credit card offers seem to come daily in the mail with free interest offers (for a few months, anyway). We want it now, so we buy it.
    Gooding hit it right on the head Monday when he said the way you view $1 in your pocket is how you would view a million. If you waste a dollar, you’re probably going to waste a million, too, if you had it.
    When he said 78% of retired NFL players and 60% of those retired from the NBA are now broke, unwise spending and a failure to save hopefully hit home.
    Like those athletes in the national spotlight, we don’t receive very good example from our so-called leaders in Washington, either. They certainly don’t live by Gooding’s advice that you spend only what you make, or in Congress’ case, what WE pay in taxes. The national debt continues to grow, doesn’t it?
    We can all do better with our money management. Programs like Monday’s are great “teachers” to our young people in that effort.

 

The Imperial Republican

308-882-4453 (Phone)

622 Broadway St

PO Box 727

Imperial, NE 69033