Financial Literacy Importance Scholarship

It is 2009, and my parents are saving to move and achieve their dream job: owning and managing a mom-and-pop motel. When I say this sentence, many people start to categorize us. It's no secret that mom-and-pop's have a stigma of being owned by run-down, burnt-out couples. However, I am thankful to say that they worked tenaciously to save money as well as to keep it looking better each day. The principles of hard work and intellectual spending have run deep within my family's roots. Even when I was younger, I always looked to my father for financial advice with my 10-dollar monthly allowance. That is to say, for many years, I seldom followed it. However, approaching my first years of college, I have begun to learn the significance of money. Four months ago, from the coercion of my father and budgeting YouTube channels, I bought my own budget binder. I have one lilac binder for spending and one lemon yellow binder for saving. With a budget binder, you make envelopes for different categories like food, presents, college savings, and gas. Then, each month you get your paycheck and put however much money you think you will spend in each category into their respective envelopes. By making budgeting a game of sorts with my budget binder, I have begun to learn the value of my money. These past months I have seen myself save more money than all last year. No longer do I dip out of my savings, attempting to find every small way it can be "used towards my college education" when it, in fact, cannot. This isn't to say that I have figured it out yet. Most months, I end up scrambling for gas money or telling friends that I can't go out because I spent my entire month's food budget on boba and coffee in the first two weeks. That being said, I love to ask my dad questions about one of the things he loves most: finances. I know that if the numbers don't seem plausible, I can ask him to help (after all, getting the numbers correct is his favorite element of budgeting). I hope to learn this love from him and enhance my understanding of budgeting. Now I share how my father and my budgeting binder have helped me to budget with my younger friends who ask for college advice. To me, being wise with your money is one of the best ways to succeed at getting out of college with little debt. My journey with budgeting isn't over and I am glad to have someone like my father to help me through it.