When we go to professionals like a financial adviser or accountant for advice, we aren’t only consulting that person, if you think about it. We’re all vessels of what we’ve learned throughout our lives.
So when we consult with a financial planner or a stockbroker, we’re also getting advice they’ve filtered through a magazine article they read over breakfast, knowledge passed onto them from colleagues or college professors and certainly lessons learned from their parents.
So in honor of Mother’s Day, we’re offering up some money tips – advice from the mothers of personal finance professionals throughout the country.
You’re the hero of your own story.
“There is no Prince Charming that is going to ride up on a white horse and save you financially … at least not forever. Don’t depend on anyone to pay your way in life – get an education and pay your own way. It’s important to stand on your own two feet so no one will ever be able to take away your ability to make money and live the life you imagined.”
This was advice often given to Samantha Fraelich-Rohe, vice president of Bernard R. Wolfe & Associates, a certified financial planning firm in Chevy Chase, Md. Fraselich’s mother, Jeanne, 54, was a single mother who scrubbed people’s floors during the day and then came home to raise three children.
Budget – for everything.
“When I got my first job as a bag boy for a neighborhood grocery store, I would take my weekly paycheck to one of the cashiers and turn it into cash. I would then take the cash home where my mom taught me to set up several envelopes for different categories of spending. Some went in the gas envelope – but not much, since gas for my car was only about 35 cents per gallon. Another envelope for personal expenses like haircuts, because I actually had hair back then. Yet another for car insurance, and that one got rather thick with cash because that bill only came in every six months … You get the idea. She did not call it such at the time, but my mom was teaching me how to budget.”
Mike Davis is the founder and CEO of Resource Consulting Group, a financial planning and wealth management firm in Orlando, Fla. His mother was Elizabeth Bach Davis, who died three years ago at the age of 93.
