Is this how a mama duck would feel?
January 22, 2007
Gosh, I was alternately amused, taken aback, and immensely proud of a friend who mentioned to me [knowing nothing about this blog, or the depth of my deep dark love for all things financial] that she wanted to learn about investing and planning for her future because she’s got a real job and her papa is making her do her own taxes this year. ~ I preface by saying that I love my friends dearly. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how very different we are! I still love them, despite any blood pressure spikes on certain topics. ~
She’s the youngest of our group and has always worked to some extent, in fact she and I worked together at a temp job in high school, but her papa is a doctah and her parents have always been well able to support her through school and afterwards. All in all, her primary relationship with money has been to set it free. You know, REALLY free. When she wasn’t working, she ran up debt, and her parents would pay it off. And that’s always been a point of concern to me because I worried that she’d suffer a major shock when it was time for her to truly be financially independent. I have every confidence that she’s capable of learning how to manage money, I just didn’t know what would motivate her to do so.
It turns out that she’s reading Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad and this has sparked an interest in learning how to invest. I guess as a gateway drug it’s alright, but I hope she understood the concepts more than jumped to the conclusion that she should throw her money at a risky investment and expect huge returns.
Ironically, she failed to remember that I was the one who had initially wanted to start financial discussion gatherings among our friends to help each other learn how to do investment research and generally support one another. Even more ironically, their complete disinterest was what led me to blogging instead and now I find myself in the awkward position of wanting to show her all sorts of blogging resources but not wanting to be “outed” because I obviously comment on a lot of my favorite blogs. As Wanda had contemplated, I wonder who and if this blog would be safe to share with since it can be much more personal and revealing than I am in real life, and this conversation with her nearly prompted me to reveal it. Luckily, I caught myself in time, I’m not ready to be outta the closet just yet!
In any case, this odd mix of worry and pride must be how mama ducks feel when their ducklings start venturing into the world?
