Did you ever wonder as a child how Scrooge McDuck could dive in his money vault full of coins, and not get hurt? And why would he do that? Simply for fun and to relish the fact that he was rich?
Even a child could understand though that all those coins didn’t appear there by chance, but through some sort of effort. Perhaps work. Or by being very thrifty. A characteristic that many a parent tries to instill in their offspring. Uncle Scrooge had been trifty, at the expense of himself and perhaps others as well.
Then by the time you get to school, you already know that 1+1 equals 2, and so on. And even if you never needed to share anything with siblings, you would also know that 2-1 equals 1. And that after that comes zero, nothing left.
Yet when you are adult, all that knowledge and any educational experiences won’t mean a thing if you’re not willing to be accountable and make an effort to add things up. The law of addition applies no matter what age you are, and living beyond your means can leave a hole in your wallet.
Okay, we don’t use wallets that much anymore for coins anyway since we more often than not use plastic money or our cell phones for payment - especially in these viral times - and the hole in the wallet (which is by the way not a hole in the coin department but the always visible hole at the backside of the wallet as you open it) remains more of a metaphore for material loss.
And even the use of piggy banks for coins has diminished. How many of us used to open that piggy bank either in order to a) count the coins in there for pure pleasure in anticipation of a future purchase b) take some from the piggy bank for a necessary, unexpected need c) empty the piggy bank for a completely frivolous reason, or d) empty it in order to finally buy that long-awaited thing.
But, isn’t that the ideal though? To save some to a piggy bank - or a savings account - in order to let it accumulate through weeks and months or even years to much bigger amounts? We don’t need any money vaults, but perhaps a tangible container or a spreadsheet to see that thriftiness does pay off. Simply budgeting can afford you to move from living paycheck to paycheck to more financial freedom. Even if it takes a lifetime to learn.
Many of us are more like the impatient Donald Duck though. Living in the moment, carried away by our impulses and desires. It is a more fun way to be, but one that has a potential to lead to troubles. But living in the moment seldom allows to bother about the future, and only a miser wants to be a miser. Though deep down even a child knows that looking ahead would be wiser…