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.
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.
