By: Emma Friel

Every  time  I  think  of  finance,  my  mom  comes  to  mind.  My  mom  taught  me  everything  that  I  know  about  finance,  and  when  it  came  time  to  take  finance  classes  in  school,  she  still  taught  me  more  than  my  teachers  did.  My  mom  and  I  spent  many  summers  talking  about  saving  and  finance.  She  taught  me  how  to  save,  where  to  save,  when  to  save,  who  to  entrust  your  money  to,  where  to  invest,  how  to  read  credit  reports,  how  to  balance  checkbooks,  how  to  look  at  investment  statements,  how  to  decipher  her  system  for  monitoring  our  investments  and  where  all  the  passwords  for  the  thousands  of  online  accounts  are.  To  this  day,  she  hounds  me  on  the  importance  of  saving  money,  never  buying  anything  without  a  coupon  unless  it  is  absolutely  needed.  My  mom  deserves  all  the  credit  for  teaching  me  what  I  know  about  finance.  Just  like  with  teaching  me  how  to  type,  a  skill  that  I  hated  having  to  learn,  I  am  grateful  to  her  for  teaching  me  about  finance.  I  still  have  a  lot  to  learn,  but  my  foundation  is  solid  thanks  to  her.

There  was  one  question  that  I  often  asked  my  mom  about  finance  that  she  was  not  able  to answer.  It  is  a  question  that  I  ask  of  all  my  teachers,  whether  verbally  or  not,  and  very  few  can  answer  it,  the  successful  teachers  quickly  becoming  my  favorites.  My  question  involves  the  only  question  word  that  I  did  not  use  in  the  paragraph  above:  Why?  ‘Why’  questions  are  almost  always  the  easiest  to  ask,  but  the  hardest  to  answer.  They  are  broad  in  meaning  and  often  lead  to  different  responses,  answers  varying  from  the  same  person  in  different  situations.  For  me,  I  know  that  I  will  have  zero  interest  in  a  topic  unless  I  understand  why  I  am  doing  it.  I  can  learn  statistics  or  I  can  learn  advanced  calculus,  but  unless  I  know  why  I  am  spending  my  time  there,  I  will  never  understand  what  I  am  learning.  Knowing  my  need  for  a  reason,  I  asked  my  mom  why  it  is  important  to  save  and  invest.  She  gave  me  answers  such  as  ‘To  ensure  you  are  prepared  for  the  future’  or  ‘To  be  able  to  provide  for  someone  you  love’.  Those  answers  didn’t  satisfy  me;  it  was  like  saying  ‘you  need  to  learn  calculus  BC  so  you  can  set  off  a  rocketship  seventy  years  in  the  future’…  problem  is  I  am  a  musician.  I  do  not  blame  my  mom  for  not  answering  this  question,  I  think  she  misunderstood  what  I  was  asking,  and  I  know  my  school  finance  teachers  failed  to  answer it too.

I  did  eventually  find  my  answer,  in  the  form  of  a  house  in  Corona,  Queens.  The  house belonged  to  Louis  Armstrong,  famous  jazz  trumpeter  and  singer,  master  of  his  craft  and  father  of  modern  music.  He  invented  using  words  in  songs  such  as  “baby”  and  “honey”:  modern  music  would  be  lost  without  him.  The  one  benefit  would  be  no  cringy  Justin  Bieber  songs.  For  a  brief  history  about  Louis,  he  started  as  a  poor  boy  in  New  Orleans  with  a  dream  and  an  ear.  His  first  notes  on  a  trumpet  were  in  a  correction  school,  a  move  made  after  he  was  arrested  for  firing  a  gun  on  a  holiday.  After  that,  he  started  working  on  a  Mississippi  steam  boat,  before  leaving  to  start  his  own  band.  He  was  used  to  sacrificing  and  working  for  a  living,  traveling  some  300  days  a  year  and  practicing  even  when  the  doctor  forbade  him  to  do  so  because  of  a  heart  attack.  Many  would  say  his  tireless  devotion  to  his  work  paid  off  after  seeing  his  house  in  Corona.  Not  a  cheap  area  by  any  means,  his  house  also  had  a  bathroom  made  of  mirrors,  a  blue  kitchen,  and  a  custom  King  oven  that  says  for  “Mr.  and  Mrs.  Louis  Armstrong”.  In  his  later  years,  he  had  coffers  of  money,  a  community  that  cared  for  him,  and  a  world  of  adoring  fans.  That  story  alone  would  make  a  good  testament  to  the  power  of  savings.  If  only  the  story  ended  there.

What  few  people  know  about  Satchmo  was  that  his  fourth  wife,  Lucille,  actually  bought that  house  in  Corona.  She  was  a  dancer  in  a  club  that  Louis  often  played  at,  and  they  fell  in  love. In an  era  when  women  were  not  seen  as  primary  breadwinners,  or  even  expected  to  understand  how  money  and  savings  worked,  a  lowly  dancer  managed  to  save  enough  money  to  pay  the  down  payment  and  several  months  of  a  mortgage  on  the  house,  all  by  herself.  Louis  was  not  paying  for  this  house,  he  didn’t  even  know  of  its  purchase.  When  I  really  stopped  to  think  about  it,  I  was  quite  amazed  by  what  Lucille  had  done.  Dancers  don’t  make  a  lot  of  money,  yet  she  saved  enough,  obviously  making  sacrifices  along  the  way,  to  have  a  place  of  comfort  for  her  and  Louis  to  come  home  to.  She  was  financially  independent  from  Louis,  defying  the  norm  to  see  her  dream  come  true.  How  she  was  able  to  do  it,  I  will  never  understand.

That  day,  Lucille  Armstrong  not  only  became  one  of  my  heroes,  but  she  also  answered  my question  of  why  saving  is  important.  There  are  not  many  words  I  can  put  to  the  experience,  but  it  gave  saving  and  investing  a  new  meaning  for  me.  Looking  back  on  all  of  my  mom’s  lessons,  Lucilles’s  sacrifice  and  determination  gives  all  of  them  a  new  meaning,  inspiring  me  to  make  changes  in  my  daily  life  to  follow  in  her  footsteps.  I  now  stop  to  question  ‘Do  i  really  need  this,  or  can  I  wait  until  the  next  sale  comes’  before  buying  something.  I  also  started  going  out  of  my  way  to  monitor  my  savings  and  checking  accounts.  Even  my  mom’s  motivations  make  more  sense  through  this  new  lens.  I  hope  that  one  day,  I  can  be  financially  independent,  just  like  my  mom  and  Lucille  Armstrong.

The Value Of Money

Amelia Diminico

The Collins dictionary states “Finance is the commercial or government activity of managing money, debt, credit, and investment,” and describes independence as “the state or quality of being independent.” The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes finance as “the activity of managing money, especially by a government or commercial organization” and declares Independence, “the freedom to organize your own life, make your own decisions.” I had failed to come across a straightforward definition for Financial independence. I got “commonly used together” and “how to use this phrase in a sentence” from the Cambridge Dictionary. I thought maybe I hadn’t looked hard enough but that was not the case and once I realized that I was able to come to terms with what financial independence means to me. These prestigious institutions were able to decipher what the meaning of finance and independence are from an intellectual standpoint but little do they take into consideration the combination of financial independence as a singular commodity and more importantly the value of human emotion they fail to realize that financial independence is much more personable. It is not strictly being able to manage your money without the help of others. It is both a complex and changeable umbrella term that matures into the individual’s aspirations for the present and future. What society seems to do is disconnect both logic and desire when it comes to money. I find myself constantly explaining to people that nobody dies with their money so to be financially independent is important but to enjoy its benefits is what should be propelling you to bet on yourself. It is being able to support your desired lifestyle of one’s own volition.

“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.” – Kin Hubbard.

Let’s just say that this heavily applies to my family. Both my mother’s family and my father’s family were the kind that never took charity and they definitely could have used some. I guess the stubborn Italian gene really came through in my family. My aunts, my uncles, and my parents slept on cots never having their own rooms. My grandparents had their hands full mentally, physically, and financially. My mom having seven siblings made for a lot of love and a lot of struggle. My mom would tell me stories about how she would sit on the sidewalk and pretend to act poor for change so she could have what she called an extraordinary experience because it was so unusual and remarkable. This was getting enough change to buy herself a few pieces of candy, a delicacy in her house. My Nonna and Nonno had eight kids. Every time it comes up in conversation you get the wide eyes and wow forming on the lips of the person whose ears just brought to them this astonishing piece of information. It’s always the same “ how did they do it” but the bottom line is that they did. Even though my grandparents had expense after expense to pay for, their home was always filled with love. With the money my grandpa made on his investments he was able to leave behind money for his wife to pay the rest of the mortgage on their home and a sum of money for each of his children. My grandfather specifically taught me the value of an investment as a means to secure the growth of your money and keep it under your control. He taught me that real estate is one of the most secure investments. When you find a home or land worthy of your money the value you put into it will hold and allows for outlets to earn more off the single investment. As I have learned in today’s world “The trick is to stop thinking of it as ‘your’ money.” – IRS auditor. I want this quote to concern me as little as possible. My family has taught me that I am already rich…in love, but I want to be able to build a financial foundation for myself so that one day I can invest that money to watch it grow and rather than work in order to stay alive I want to work so I can live. My goal in life isn’t to own a 3,000-dollar ring but to walk around knowing I can. I want to be living a life I can be proud of and being able to provide for myself now and my future family so that they will have both pride and respect for me too.

My parents have carried on my grandparent’s legacy for me along with their values. They have taught me to be respectful to my elders and everyone I come across in life while only accepting respect as well. I rarely ask for things. I know that it’s hard to believe me being a teenager in 2022 America, but I understand the value of money and I, therefore, have to find the value in the things I want, which often coughs up to very little. I use my skills to make myself money. Even when I was little I was very interested in art and what started off as me making jewelry to sell in my mother’s storefront has become selling my own artwork. The money I make from my art and my job goes directly into the bank. However, with the help of my parents, I currently invest in the stock market and have been researching different credit cards in order to build my credit at a young age learning not only the value of holding good credit but what becomes an abusive use of your credit. Learning the ins and outs of investments and finance is a big step but I am working to decipher it. I not only need but want to invest in my future. I am investing in myself and in being able to do what I love.