Personal Finance Apprentice

Peanut Butter And Personal Finance

What does peanut butter and personal finance have in common? A lot it turns out: Pay yourself first and invest before you spend. Don't keep spending your money on luxuries. You should enjoy, but it should be in moderation.



Peanut Butter And Personal Finance

What does peanut butter and personal finance have in common? A lot it turns out:  Pay yourself first and invest before you spend. Don't keep spending your money on luxuries. You should enjoy, but it should be in moderation.

I love peanut butter. Especially Lily’s peanut butter (Unfortunately, no this is not an advertorial. Though I wish it was:).

But did you know that there’s a personal finance lesson you can learn from peanut butter?

In the peanut butter that I like, the oil separates and rises to the top (a natural occurrence in pure peanut butter). This makes for a smooth, creamy, tasty, and very spreadable top layer.

The flip side is that the bottom becomes dry, hard and not as tasty. The trick is that every time we get some peanut butter, we have to stir it and make sure the oil mixes with the peanut butter at the bottom. That way, it’s smooth and tasty until the end.

Plus, if we buy in bulk, it’s relatively cheaper and there’s more peanut butter to enjoy. Of course, it’s not a good idea (health-wise) to eat peanut butter everyday.

And that’s a pretty decent analogy for life. It’s not always the case, but usually the start is much easier: our parents provide for us.

After that, it increasingly becomes harder: we provide for ourselves, and then provide for our own children – and then our children and our parents. And in the end, it’s not unusual to end up with not much money in our old age.

But just like with peanut butter, there’s a not-so-secret way out of a rather unpromising life. We just need to make the extra effort. With peanut butter we need to stir before taking any. In life, we need to pay ourselves first and invest before we spend.

And just like eating peanut butter every day is a bad idea, it’s also not such a good idea to keep spending our money on luxuries. Don’t get me wrong, you should enjoy, but it should be in moderation. Don’t spend everything you make, and certainly don’t borrow money to spend on luxuries.

But unlike peanut butter, if we keep those things in mind, the rest of our life should be smoother and more delicious than it started out.

What about you? Is there something you like that you’ve learned something from? Share it here by leaving a comment below. 🙂

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photo credit: http://www.mylilys.com

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