When I Grow Up
We have all heard a young person say, “When I grow up, I want to be a…” And then they enthusiastically share their career aspirations to be a professional singer, a veterinarian, an astronaut, or even a TikTok star.
For many of us, the career we have today can be traced back to something we were passionate about around age seven. Take my sister Nicki for example. When she was age 7, she used to spend hours in the basement with her “classroom.” She’d line up her stuffed animals and dolls in rows and they were her students. She had a chalkboard where she’d teach weekly lessons. When she wasn’t playing school, Nicki could be found playing store. She’d set up her Fisher Price cash register on the kitchen counter, and would pull canned goods and other food items from our cabinets, pretend to slide them down the conveyor belt, and manage her grocery check-out line. For a kid who loved teaching as well as counting money, it was no surprise that Nicki ended up with a double masters in mathematics and education. She became a high school math teacher and loved that job for the first decade of her career.
What many of us were passionate about when we were age seven often shapes who we become later in life.
Take me as another example. (Disclaimer: I was a weird kid.)
When I was seven, I discovered my love of money. I was an entrepreneur from the start. And I also loved selling things. My grandmother showed me how to crochet, and I’d spend hours following simple patterns she taught me. I quickly learned how to make little crocheted hearts, shamrocks and Easter bunnies that you’d pin on your coat for the holidays. I crocheted everywhere and anywhere. And people were so intrigued that a young person could make such items, they often asked if they could buy them from me.
This is when I started my first business.
I ramped up my crocheting in the winter months to get my inventory prepared. My mom would loan me money at the beginning of every season for my supplies. I bought yarn, ribbon, googly eyes, crafter glue and safety pins from the local craft store. Then I ‘d get my assembly line set up. Easter was a particularly busy season for me. I’d crochet all the Easter bunnies early in March. Then I’d make little bows for their necks with pastel ribbons, carefully pin the safety pins on the back of each, and lastly I’d glue on the eyes. Once I had dozens and dozens of my finished product ready, I’d fill up my basket and go door-to-door in my neighborhood selling my stuff….alone! Any leftovers I had, I brought them to church on Sundays and sold them to all the ladies in the pews around me before mass got started. I made enough money every season to pay my mom back my micro-loan, and then profit from the rest. From as far back as I can remember, I understood money, knew how to mange it, and loved having cash in my wallet. I also thought that this was what other kids were learning from their parents.
Around that same time, my Dad taught us about saving and investing. We had checkbooks in middle school, and were encouraged to deposit birthday and holiday gifts into our bank accounts. We were shown how to save for things we wanted. We were also taught how to balance our checkbook registers to the penny. Back then, this was a normal activity in our house, and I again assumed it’s what other kids were doing. I had no idea how unusual this was, and no perspective how these lessons would shape my career.
Dad also set up small stock portfolios for me and Nicki. Each Sunday, he’d show us how to look up our shares in the newspaper to see if the value had gone up or down (pre-internet). It was a highlight of my weekend as a young child to look up my stocks, think about money, understand the value of it, and save and plan for things I wanted. (As I mentioned, I was a weird kid).
No surprise that I found myself drawn to a career in financial services and eventually started my own company. By the time I was 25, I already had almost 20 years of training, coaching, risk-taking, and knew how to profitably run a start-up! I’m grateful every day that my parents took the time to share these fundamental lessons with us at such a young age.
This year, I will celebrate 25 years in my career. What started as a fun hobby as a kid turned into my passion. I love helping clients with their money and teaching them how to save and plan for their futures. My sister (the math major and former high school teacher) is now the bookkeeper of The Jamrog Group. Together we are both doing a more sophisticated version of the things we were passionate about 40+ years ago.
I share this with all the parents, grand-parents and middle school teachers as a reminder:
The lessons you teach children at a young age can influence them far bigger than you might realize. Take time to share important concepts. Expose children to hobbies and adventures, and help them connect with the things that spark joy and passion in their young minds. You never know when the time you spend playing LEGOs could eventually create a future architect, or the time playing Mine Craft isn’t creating a future computer programmer. Teach what you know, try things unfamiliar, and demonstrate as much as you can when they are young. Never underestimate the impact of those early lessons.
(And if you happen to have a child or grandchild who’s great with money, we’d eventually like to interview them for our internship program and career opportunities!)
New Website & Wisdom
We having been working for months on our new website and are so pleased to finally launch it this week! You can now find us at www.jamrog.group. We hope you find the site easier to navigate, and will share with your family and friends.
In addition to the website being a resource for potential clients to learn about our work, it’s also the new home to Wednesday Wisdom! You can check out all the old stories and archives right here:
