Personal Finance
How to earn money and how money works. My parent’s classic way towards money is to go to a good school, study hard, graduate and work hard then save money. That is not the case in the real world, right? After work hard and save money, then what should I do next? Apparently, It did not end there. There are an emergency fund, insurance, and retirement fund. All other funds that I do not know exist. I figure these financial things only after I work for 3 years and realize how much I need for my retirement if I want to live comfortably in my old age later on.
Formal education is important but other than that we all need a good financial education. Formal education does not really teach important things we should know about money such as how to manage money, how to invest money, how to use debt productively or how inflation can affect the money I save in a bank. Plus talking about money is apparently is an uncomfortable topic for most people. I wish I know about this financial education sooner when I am in my 20’s at least and save all of that money as early as I could.
From the “Rich Dad Poor Dads” book, I learn more about cash flow. The book gave me a new perspective on money. Having knowledge about personal finance will also change your mindset about money. But now, there is a lot of learning source that you can read on various website.
Teaching about money to kids is necessary, but confusing at the same time. You know, since they can’t even count numbers correctly yet. Nevertheless, I think we can start teaching about money when kids aged 8 to 9 years old when they can calculate numbers and understand money value. There is a fun way to teach kids about cash flow, which is through Robert Kiyosaki’s Cash Flow Board Game For Kids. It is a fun game where you can start by choosing a career in the game, and gain salary in the game, accumulates it into wealth with building your asset in the game. The cash flow game is also available for the adult player. I personally have tried the cash flow game for adults; it took more than 1 hour to play. The game is so fun, even when I play it for 2 hours; I lost the track of time and still want to go on with the game. It is an entertaining way to learn about cash flow, building asset and strategies to get out of the rat race in the game.
Self-Love and Self-Esteem
It may not seem like a big deal when I was a kid; I do not even know what self-love is until recently. As a kid, I was always a shy one. I am a quiet, introvert person and I will do anything to please my friends. Naturally, my friends used to take advantage of me all the time. And I do not dare to say anything even if it is something that hurtful to me. I will keep saying yes, just to be in their circle. School social life can be difficult you know, all I know is just how to fit in. No matter how much I want to things my way, if it does not approve by my friend then I won’t do it.
I do not want my son to be like that. I wanted him to have self-esteem and self-love. I want him to know that it is okay to say “NO”. It is normal to not following what friends say if it is upsetting to him. Saying “NO” does not mean to be rude. Refuse to do something they are not comfortable with is totally normal. He should be happy and comfortable for being himself.
We need to build our child mentality, encourage them to do learn to accept themselves, to love themselves. No matter what other people said about them, they know who they are and what they’re worth. So that in the future they can survive on their own, defend themselves from a bad circle of friends and achieve anything they want to achieve.
Creating good habits
According to Wikipedia, a habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. I think it is important to start building a good habit since the early age of kids, so it will continue until he grows up and to shape his character.
Like most parents these days, my son is so attached to the youtube videos. He will watch it when eating, when we are going out, in the car, at home. Whenever I told him to stop or if I took the phone away he will cry and having a tantrum. I decided it is time to restrict this behavior. He watches it for too many hours, so I need to cut it down. At first, it is so hard to calm his tantrum, he would cry at a public place and all eyes on me. Watching youtube for hours has been his habit, so to change that habit, I need to implement the new rules and a new habit slowly and consistently. It took a couple of weeks to decrease his screen time down to 1 hour a day. No more watching youtube while eating, in the car or when we are going out. Instead, I replace it with having a conversation, telling stories or bring toys when we are going out. Eventually the tantrum stop, and he understands when is the time he can watch and when he needs to stop. When it is time for screen time, I will let him enjoy it.
I cannot really take away technology from him since we all live in this digital-everything era. There are some benefits too from watching YouTube, such as making his English vocabulary expand.
Children do what children see. That is why to teach a good habit to a child, you must set the example by yourself. Implement what you preach to them so that they can copy you. If you want your child to wake up early, you should wake up early too. If you want your child to love reading, you must show them you love reading too. Do storytelling before bedtime or buy the book that your child interested in. If you just tell them to exercise, but you are lazy, then your child will only imitate what you do, not what you say. Encourage them to be the best version of themselves from an early age. It is hard to teach them to be disciplined now, but you will see the result of your hard work within a few years.
Meditation
Some days I have difficulty sleeping when I close my eyes my mind is still going on. I have been curious about meditation. I keep thinking does it really work? Does it really help to calm your mind? I have tried to watch YouTube videos on how to do meditation. I am sitting quietly in a dark room while listening to meditating music or the sounds of nature. Guess what? It did not work, LOL. I was doing it for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, and I did not feel peaceful or concentrate at all. Maybe I just do it in the wrong way.
Then I was looking for some meditation class to know more about it. In the process, someone suggests to me to try a specific meditation called transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation is not something you can learn on your own. It may look easy to do, but to gain full advantage of transcendental meditation, you must learn it from a reliable guru. Transcendental meditation an official organization in Indonesia, which you can contact, requested a guru who is available closest to your location.
I am glad that I can learn about transcendental meditation. My mind is a lot lighter these days and I sleep easier with the help of transcendental meditation.
I think it is a good thing to teach meditation to a child, maybe when they are 10 years old. As we know child social life as a student could be overwhelming with pressure from friends, school or study. Making meditation as a habit could help to calm minds, and help release stress they might have. Transcendental meditation is also suitable for children, and of course, the way of teaching them meditation will be different from the adult method.
ND PASSION 