From the Editor: Winter 2018
My earliest memory of anything related to personal finance is of my mother taking me into her bedroom, where she produced two white business envelopes. “We’re going to start giving you a $7 weekly allowance, and you’re going to learn about saving,” she told me. She put Dalmation labels on each of the envelopes and wrote “short-term goals” on one, “long-term goals” on the other.
Seven-year-old me was just happy to hear I was going to start receiving an allowance, so I couldn’t fully grasp the lesson my mother was trying to teach me. My joy quickly disappeared, though, when she told me that each week, $3 would go to the long-term and short-term goals, respectively, leaving just a dollar for me to spend freely.
It’s been a long time since I saved money in envelopes, but the principle remains the same: Saving is important, and you should always pay yourself first. I still follow my mother’s original advice, even though the amount of money being stashed away has changed (yet sometimes I am surprised by how little is left over). I’m of the belief that we should spend our lives learning, and that was part of our reasoning for theming this, our inaugural quarterly issue of Enterprise, around personal finance. (Because let’s face it: We could all learn to be a little smarter with our money.)
Whether you’re at the start of your career or nearing the end of it, we hope this issue will give you some of the tools you need to make better financial decisions for you and your family.
In other news, we’ve officially switched Enterprise to quarterly publication. We believe this will let us better tell the stories of the Upper Valley business community and offer more to our readers.
I welcome any feedback you might have on this issue, or story ideas. You can say hello by emailing anewman@vnews.com.
Amanda E. Newman
