I increasingly felt the effects of inflation through hikes in everything from weekly grocery costs  to our local water bill and my son’s college tuition. On the other hand, I was very grateful for that  emergency fund  when I was faced with some unanticipated home repairs this fall.    

As for giving my sons the savings bug, the results are mixed. My 21-year-old already had developed some financial discipline when he moved off-campus at college and began facing real-world utility and grocery bills.  As a result,  he succeeded in saving most of his job earnings this summer, which allowed him to buy his first car as he begins his junior year in college. Whether he can keep it up this summer  to build a savings fund without having such a desirable goal remains to be seen,  but the odds are good,  especially now that he’s facing all of the costs that accompany having wheels of your own.

My 14-year-old is more of a challenge. Whatever cash comes in still seems to go out almost immediately.  But I seem to remember his older brother was like that too at his age,  so  I’m trusting that with time comes wisdom.  And he’s at least become more of a bargain-hunting shopper,  which is a step in the right direction.

Both of my sons are very aware that we’re living in changed economic times,  especially because they have friends whose parents have lost their jobs and/or have had to sell their homes because they couldn’t afford their mortgage payments.

They also are quite conscious of being part of a global economy. My older son is a business major focusing on a specialty in international business, while my younger son chose to meet his foreign language requirement by taking Mandarin Chinese.  “In terms of getting a job in the future,  I think that could be more helpful than anything else,”  he told me. Changing times indeed.—Andrea Rock, senior editor