Monkey See, Monkey Do

I’ve often noticed that children mimic their parents in many, many ways.  I have to really be careful because my three year old daughter repeats almost everything I say.  I’m still not sure how we are going to get her to stop saying “fart”.  Of course, I slipped up and said it months ago, and she has never forgotten it.  Every few days, I have to correct her and tell her that she can call it a “toot”, or “gas” or “windy pop” (apparently they say that in England because I’ve heard my wife’s family say that more than a few times, especially when my father in law is around.)

Anyway, most of us also realize that the mimicking happens in non-verbal ways too.  That’s one of the big reasons that I try to continually reinforce that just because we have a little money, doesn’t mean we need to spend a little money.  My daughter is only 3, but I know that she’s sucking up all that happens around her.  As she gets older, we will both continue to practice good money management, and also reinforce the key points to her so that she learns them.  My daughter keeps asking for the “Dora game”.  It’s an electronic toy that is themed after Dora the Explorer.  She saw it at Costco a few weeks ago and has probably asked if we can buy it at least 15 times.  We previously told her that we didn’t have enough money to buy the game (It costs about $80).  Just as she mimics other things we say, now she says, “We don’t have enough money to buy the Dora game”.  She doesn’t really understand it at her age, but over time, I think she’ll become more and more aware that we have to show restraint when it comes to buying things.

So, if a child mimicking her parents is so common, it must help explain why adults tend to live their lives in similiar ways to their parents.  I found myself living my financial life in a very similiar way to my parents in my early twenties.  I earned it, I spent it.  Luckily I had a few things happen in my life that caused me to reevaluate that approach.  Most importantly, I learned about compound interest and the rule of 72 when I was 19 years old)  Now I earn it and don’t spend all of it.  It’s helped my family stay on solid financial grounds.  Breaking out of the mold, so to speak, isn’t easy.  I’ve found myself tempted to revert to the “early learned” ways of my parents many, many times.  I think it must have something to do with the fact that if you’ve seen something done, you know it can be done and it feels comfortable.  For example,  my parent’s bought a piece of land and built a family cabin on it.  It’s one of their great financial moves in their later lives.  After seeing them do this and helping all along the way, the process of building a place myself seemed like much less of a hurdle.  It’s a big part of why I ended up buying the partially finished cabin recently.  I’ve been through most of the hoops already, while helping my parents.  Had they not done it first, I probably would have never attempted it.

I think you can have the same experience if you have a mentor that you trust and that is in the place that you want to be.  It all comes down to making your comfort zone bigger.  No one likes to work outside their comfort zone, so the only way to accomplish bigger and better things is to increase the size of your comfort zone.  I guess we each do that in little ways.  I enlarged my comfort zone by watching my parents and other people that I respect and trust.  Now, I just need to translate that larger comfort zone in to more opportunities.