I would lend you some money, but I would also like to keep it

I've started writing this article by remembering a moment from my childhood. As a kid I was gathering money in different ways (like from my birthday) in order to buy more expensive things (like a bike or a computer). And in that time my mother was teasing me with different questions in order to see my reactions: Could you borrow me some money? And my sincere answer was a kid was: I would lend you the money, but in the same time I would also like to keep it. 😀 And we still remember this and laugh together... And that silly answer followed me longer than I expected, and looking back now, I realize it was probably my first self thought finance lesson, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

My first lesson was that money is emotional

As a child with an entrepreneur mindset (even before I knew what that meant), money felt personal. Each earned money had a story. Some money came from a birthday, other from helping around the house, other from not buying candy for a week. Lending money felt strange because it meant losing control over something I worked hard to gather even if I was a child. That’s when I learned, without books or charts, that money is emotional before it is logical. And now as a grownup that feeling is truly revealed more than ever whenever I want to invest in something.

And generically speaking, I think this is where money education should really start for all of us. Not with complicated formulas, but with understanding how it feels to earn, save and risk money. Even back then, I was thinking in terms of savings and opportunity. If I lend money, I can’t use it for my bike. If I keep it, I delay helping someone else. That tiny dilemma is still alive today, just with bigger numbers and more complex contexts.

Lending, risk and that funny feelings

As I grew up, that childhood sentence slowly evolved. Lending money stopped being about money and started being about trust and risk. Lending is never just lending. It’s always a bet. Sometimes the return is financial, sometimes emotional and sometimes it’s just a lesson wrapped in disappointment and lost. The funny thing is that risk doesn’t disappear just because someone is nice or confident. Risk is always there, quietly sitting in the corner, waiting to be ignored or noticed. That’s why investing thinking matters. Every decision has a trade-off. Every choice locks money in one place and removes it from another.

Even as a kid, I wanted my money to be safe and useful at the same time. That’s basically the dream of every investor ever. Safe, growing and available. Sadly, reality usually allows only two out of three.

The magic word I learned along the way - compound

Back then, I didn’t know the word “compound,” but I understood the idea. Saving money felt like stacking bricks. Each new brick made the pile bigger, stronger and more exciting. Over time, that pile started to work on its own. Suddenly, reaching goals became easier.

Compound growth is just patience wearing a fancy hat. It rewards consistency more than brilliance or luck. That’s why money education should focus less on shortcuts and more on habits. Small decisions, repeated often, beat big plans that never happen. And I see more friends of mine inspiring their children and support them in investing since an early age while looking ahead for a financial future revenue streams. That is what I call smart.

Today I still remember that childhood answer and smile. I would lend the money, but I would also like to keep it. It sounds funny, but it’s honest. It may seen related to risk, effort and how I valued the time to gather it. And maybe that’s the core of investing thinking: wanting money to be ready to invest, grow and still come home safe in the end. In the end, that child entrepreneur mindset never left. It just learned new words and I hope that at some point it will push me to take a bigger leap and do something greater and better.

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