I used to love my savings account. I remember going to the bank with my mom to open it up, literally holding a bag of all the cash ($300) I had saved up. From then on, the money I made from the jobs I worked in high school, birthday cards, or anything else really, went straight into that account. I always looked at it as my emergency fund for after college. It gave me a sense of pride to work hard and deposit that money knowing if anything happened to me, I was taken care of. But I’ve realized that you’re not great with money because you can save it, you’re great with money because you can grow it.
I look back now and think about how diligently I saved, and I can’t help but think that even though I was trying to set myself up for success in the future, if I understood what I knew now, I could’ve done an even better job. I think we’re all taught from the beginning that saving is good, and it is, but why do we need to save money at an early age? I didn’t have any bills to pay. Just whatever I chose to do with my friends, but they didn’t have any money either! We weren’t going anywhere or doing anything that required a lot of money, if any. Even if I did have an emergency, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the amount I had saved.
If I could go back and do things differently, I would’ve invested that money into a dividend paying stock. Since I wasn’t worried about market volatility because my investing timeframe was long, I could’ve collected or reinvested the dividends along the way and the money was liquid if I ever needed to take it out in case of an emergency. I say a dividend paying stock over a growth stock because if I ever did need the money, it would kill the growth I was looking to achieve. At the very least I should’ve opened up a high yield savings account to earn more interest than what I received from the big banks.
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