What Are Your First Money Memories?

Published in

Basis

2 min readDec 29, 2018

Can we turn back time? Of course, we can’t. So, what is the best way of remembering it?

Memories.

The ones which take us back to those moments and fill our hearts with fondness and nostalgia. They say childhood memories are somehow the strongest because your mind is creating first impressions of everything. And so, you tend to remember things a lot more and hold on to them.

It is interesting to notice how inconspicuously money becomes an integral part of our early memories. Those small trinkets of change, collecting coins, running to the neighbourhood store to fetch something and secretly keeping the change in those charming little piggy banks. Conceptually, money gets weaved into all these things so effortlessly.

Hyderabad based 45-year-old Captain Bal Reddy, takes us down the memory lane as he recollects what money meant to him then and what it means now.

“My eyes used to light up whenever I saw empty packets of milk and aluminium lids. This meant I could collect and sell them. What appeared as a waste to others, became so valuable to me. Talk about the concept of recycling, which got ingrained so early on. Also, my piggy bank became full much sooner than others. As a kid, this was a big kick. Discovering ways and means to earn money.

This laid a good foundation for my understanding of the ways money works. What solidified this was my years of experience as a flyer. Being a pilot has made me realise that no matter how high you fly, it is so important to be grounded. Especially in terms of money. Good income necessarily doesn’t translate into spending high. Save first (a part of your salary) no matter what, then spend.

Luckily for me, I have a guardian adviser in the form of my best friend, to whom I turn while making all my financial decisions. He always says a Ronald Reagan quote, ‘ Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories.’

Touche.

I have also diversified my investments thanks to him and a major chunk of my savings are in mutual funds. I have explored stocks (a smaller but riskier bet) and EPFs too.

Fifty looks magical to me, as I’m looking forward to making great memories, with the corpus I’m building. Be it volunteering to a cause I believe in or steering the lives of my kids in a radically different direction, money at the end of the day is freedom. To choose the life you want and most importantly, how you want.