Why I Wish I Didn’t Learn To Save Money The Way I Did

As a child, I learned that it is good to save money. And most importantly, you have to work for your money.

It allows you to buy the things you want to have, do the things you want to do, and create some security.

When I was 11 years old, I told my parents that I would like to have my own laptop. Their answer was almost immediately “then you have to work for it”. Every weekend since then I’ve been walking through the neighborhood with a cart to deliver door-to-door flyers.

In the end, my parents paid for half of that laptop. But in this way, they taught me right away that you can’t just get everything. You have to work to earn your own money if you want to get or do the things you want.

Since then I have basically always worked. Of course, always jobs that fit my age. Between delivering flyers and my first full-time marketing job, I’ve had many more side jobs. From working in a supermarket and ice cream shop to customer service.

And don’t get me wrong, I am very happy and grateful that my parents taught me the importance of earning and saving money. But as you might know, I am a perfectionist.

If I do something, it needs to be perfect. Of course, that also applied to how I was handling my money. And sometimes I wish I could be a little less strict with money.

Because there definitely was a downside to it. Since I was so strict with myself in saving money to reach my savings goals, it was very difficult for me to do anything impulsively.

When friends spontaneously decided to hang out with each other, I often said that I had no time. But that wasn’t always true. It just felt like a waste of money to spend it on some cheap energy drinks and bags of chips.

And where was I actually doing it for? So I could or could not buy those UGGs a month earlier as a 15-year-old… Or maybe I had to wait one more month before I could travel for 5 months in Central America.

Because of these decisions, I missed a lot of things. And until this day, I sometimes still regret these choices…

And yes, even today this is sometimes difficult for me. After all, we still live in a rented house with the dream of buying a house within the next year. And that requires money.

Luckily I have a friend who challenges me on this. He is – just like me – also very good at saving money, but less strict, so he ensures that we still regularly go out spontaneously.

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Hi there, I am Resy! Here on Femmelution I hope to inspire women to invest in their personal development to become their most empowered selves. In my bi-weekly column I write about my own experiences within this topic, but also about anything else that is on top of my mind lately.