We’ve heard it all before.  Pay attention in school, so you can get good grades.  Those good grades will turn into scholarship money for college.  You graduate and you’ll get you a good job with benefits.  You work for 40 years and retire with a good pension.  Sounds ideal, right?  Problem with this scenario is that everyone does not have a one size fits all as far as careers.  What about the people who go straight to the workforce after high school and work their way up?  What about the person who interns in college and is hired by the company after graduation?  Or the person whose father knows the CEO of the company and they are hired there?  Or the person who goes into business for themselves?  There’s also the person (this was me) who was underemployed because there was no job available after college.  There are many different scenarios that someone can find themselves in.  However, the common denominator in all of this is being able to adjust from being a child to being in the real world.  This is called adulting.

Adulting includes and is not limited to paying bills (not just a phone or credit card), prioritizing your needs, living within your means, budgeting, and just overall being responsible.  It’s a shell shock to some who go from mommy and daddy doing everything to being on your own.  But when this transition happened, how well prepared were you for adulthood?  You learn from what you are taught so your teachers and parents have a hand in that.  I’m not certain how the school curriculum is now, but when I was in school, we had no courses about everyday life.  There was nothing teaching about credit scores, balancing a checkbook, or balancing a budget.  But there was plenty of advanced math and science courses.  However, in my pre-calculus class my junior year of high school, we had a project where we paid 30 years on a mortgage.  We were given “jobs” and had real life scenarios (being laid off, getting a raise, water heater needing to be replaced, etc.) happen.  At the time, I didn’t realize how good of a project that was for my adult life.  But everything isn’t squarely placed on the teachers’ shoulders.  Parents should be reinforcing this at home.

Some things my parents did teach me about was having good benefits with your job, how to check and put all the fluids in your car, balancing a checkbook, and not spending your last dollar on anything.  I do wish I’d learned more about investing (how to grow my money and make it work for me).  I learned about mutual funds when I was good and grown.  This is knowledge I definitely wished I had growing up.  But it is better late than never.  This way you can pass the knowledge to the next generation.  I’m teaching my daughter now about saving money.  She puts her money in her bottle bank and once it accumulates, we put it in her savings account.  When she sees money, coins or bills she automatically says “bank”.  As technology advances things, it is still important to know the basics of how to navigate through life.  So if you know a young person or child, it’s never too soon to help give them the start that you may not have had.