Where do we learn our habits?

I was sitting in the kitchen of our house having a chat with my dad and my partners dad. Two old school kind of guys. Little education, worked hard, raised a family and are now sitting in a good place for the remainder of their lives.

A standard enough story for their generation. Back in a time where you could create a good life for yourself with a standard wage. Is that still possible, it's hard to know.

Housing is a huge problem in Ireland at the moment. The prices keep rising year on year while the lending rules are very restricted regarding mortgages. This puts a decent sized house out of the reach of the majority of my age group. Or so they say anyway.

A lot of people complain that all of these things are out of reach but it that the case or do they just have bad habits.

My parents wages would have been on the lower end with only one of them working. Yet that was enough to provide for a family of four and to buy a house and keep the whole show on the road.

Now people like to say that they don't have enough to keep the lights on but they are not maximizing their efforts.

We were talking about growing up where myself and my partner both worked since we were in our teens. We earned our own money and put a lot of value on what we bought with it.

These habits follow us to this day where we are careful how we spend it. That shows in the fact that we were both able to buy a house separately by the age of thirty. A lot of couples say that they will never be able to buy their own home combined and yet we could both do it separately.

To me there is something wrong here straight away. I know a lot of my friends that have bought in the past few years so again we are not alone. People form a similar background with similar values.

That says to me that it is very possible if you have the right priorities.

Pick your target and aim everything at it.

I think that what we learn as children have a big impact on our futures. What we see every day growing up, sinks in to our heads and shapes our attitudes in life.

This is how we learn our life lessons and grow as adults. Growing up we had no money in the house. We had just enough for the bills, the pastimes and maybe a holiday once a year. That would have stretched the family budget to the very end.

I saw this growing up and it sank in. We had a great life but it wasn't an extravagant one. Money was valued and extra money was saved for a rainy day. There was always going to be some rainy days.

That is why i never believe these people that say it's not possible. Almost anything is possible if you want it badly enough. They say this after taking a few holidays earlier in the year. Fancy hotels multiple times in the year. Nice dinners out, expensive clothes, fancy hobbies even as little as coffees and shopping.

It's easy to lower your costs for the month and get some savings started. Even better as we know here if you can create extra revenue for the month. There are lots of possibilities.

I learnt the lessons of hard work and being smart with money from my parents.

They never had much but made it work by being careful and thrifty.

That is a lesson for anybody in life and one that has stood me well to date. It's what brought me here to Hive and what motivates me to keep turning up every day.

Building for what i would like my future to be and having a safety net for any rainy day that might pop up before then.

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