This Article Could've Probably Been A Note

But here we are.

I had an epiphany this week - and my kids were the brave beneficiaries of my “ah ha” moment. Welcome to another stream-of-consciousness ramble by yours truly. Let’s rewind a bit to get some context. Growing up, I was #2 of 4 kids - the middlest of the middle (more on that here) - and my ultra young parents were learning in real time how to raise kids while barely 30 years old and outnumbered two-to-one. It was beautiful chaos and it was all I knew. My parents barely had time to headcount us to make sure everyone made it to the car let alone teach us the life lessons they were probably still learning at that age. Don’t get me wrong, we were fortunate enough to get a great education from a schooling-perspective but there wasn’t a ton of “this is how you change the oil in your car” going on. Plus a lot was outsourced. And again, this was all my normal - I didn’t know there was any different way of growing up.

But what I now know is there were people being shown how to drill a pilot hole and put an anchor in when you want to hang something in drywall without a stud in sight. There were parents teaching their newly adult children to never let credit card debt carry over…because it starts compounding, quick. There were dads explaining the financial kind of stocks and moms explaining the cooking kind. We just didn’t get a lot of the real life “how to adult 101” from our parents - and that’s ok. They gave us a lot of other things. So I learned a lot of things through trial and error, lots of error. I didn’t fill up my parents luxury vehicles with premium gas because I didn’t know I was supposed to. I didn’t fully pay off a credit card balance and accrued interest penalties on the leftover amount. You’ll learn real quick that balances are not your best friend in finances.

I was never taught how to adult and unfortunately the GE courses at Notre Dame only covered things like common human diseases, creative writing, and chemistry - both the human and the scientific kind. Balancing a checkbook? Never heard of it. Paying a mortgage? Huh? Getting off my parents phone plan? Never gonna happen.

So what does this all have to do with my epiphany?