Parents: Childhood’s Flight Attendants

by Hannah Walton aka The Cheapskate Mom

Today … I am thinking about saving money and why it's important despite how hard it feels sometimes.

I woke up with a funny idea : parents are kind of like childhood's flight attendants …. we are responsible for the safety, comfort and enjoyment of this crazy, spectacular flight from childhood into adulthood. We handle the turbulance with poise, disgruntled customers with a smile and sometimes we hold their hands.

At the end, we just hope our children had a great flight and we thank our lucky stars we had a safe landing.

One thing we want to do in ensuring our kids have an excellent flight through childhood is to provide for our children in every way possible.

We want to have money for the occasional vacation, braces, college. We want to teach our children about the rewards and importance of saving money. Before we can do these things for our children, we need to teach ourselves about saving money : why it's important and how saving will reward us.

To save for our childrens' futures, and teach them about finances, we need to make the hard decisions. We need to eat rice and beans when we want steak. We need to wear our old baggy sweatshirt when we want DKNY. We need to drink wanter when we want Starbucks. It's hard to say no to that urge to buy something new to feel better… but it's just so important.

The small decisions today create our futures.

Flight attendants need to make decisions that don't just benefit themselves but the safety and comfort of everyone on the plane. Parents, too, need to make decisions that keep our financial security and the future in mind.

We owe it to our families.