My parents were from lower middle class and thus we had enough for the family of 5. We were living in paychecks to paychecks and sometimes when my father used to get some bonus he used to save or invest in some shares. It's not that we were not getting any toys or new clothes but it was occasional. Eating out was almost nil and that would have saved a lot of money if I compare that with today. We dis not had much money either so that was out of the question.
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Now what I have learned from my childhood is the value of money. And how the importance of saving. I remeber one instance where I was around 10 years old when my father was jobless as the factory he was working on closed down. He was jobless for around 1 whole year and because of his emergency fund at that time as well as some investments in stocks helped us to get through that phase. I am talking about 24 years back where most probably we had the expenses of over 1 Lakh without any income.
So not only investment, he had some money in the fd, some pf which he has withdrawn and other debt instruments which has helped me to get through that period. And that's why I am an advocate of having emergency fund of 6 months to 1 year because you never know if that situation occurs to you. Now how we know that the expenses where 1 Lakh for the while year because of the budget planning.
My father used to keep a diary where he used to write down every single transactions and he does that today as well. That actually helped him to cut down some expenses when he was not working and thus he managed the budget well so that we never faced any problem whatsoever in that period.
And these things which I have seen first hand in my childhood, I do keep that in my mind today and try to incorporate those in my life too. Like I too keep tab of all the transactions I do but now I keep that information in app instead of a diary. I too have an emergency fund of atleat 3 months and trying to increase every month so that it should be atleast of 6 months. I try to invest as much as possible so that I can come out of the middle class.
These all things have been learned in childhood is helping me. A lot of friends earns big but they live paycheck to paycheck and thus the problem arises in their life. They are going for big home loan, car loan and other things. I am not saying it's bad but again not investing enough and giving EMIs is actually not a good thing to be honest.