November is Family Stories Month

Family stories are tales about people, places and events related to members of our immediate family or their ancestors. These memorable stories take on special importance because they are true, even if everyone tells different versions of the same event.

Family stories are family heirlooms held in the heart not the hand. They are a gift to each generation that preserves them by remembering them and passing them on. Family stories casually chatted about at the dinner table, or regaled again and again at family gatherings can parallel great epics or notable short stories.

Since November starts out with crisper weather and ends with the gathering of family and friends around the table (in the U.S., Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November), it is the perfect month to start telling and saving family stories.

Celebrate Family Stories Month with financial stories. Parents and grandparents can tell how they first learned about money, how they first earned their own money, and how they learned the value of money. These stories can be wonderfully vibrant or hysterically funny and embarrassing. It doesn’t matter! What matters is that these financial stories are your stories and your family’s stories.

Here are some tips to get your storyteller on the right track: Ask where the financial story took place. Ask who was in the financial story. Ask what happened and especially how did it all end? Now these family financial stories will have a clear setting, believable characters and a plot. “OMG, Grandpa, you really didn’t do that – you really didn’t let that happen – did you?!”

How much fun you will have! ;o)

Listen carefully and pay close attention to your fun financial family stories. Share your own family financial stories. Treasure your family financial stories. Celebrate the financial family stories which make your family SOOOO unique. Not everyone has an Aunt Mary who tried to sell her first batch of cookies which were unfortunately burned to a crisp for only a penny each! ;o)

These financial stories, anecdotes and legacies you not only want to hear once, but you want to preserve. What better way to make sure that these financial stories are handed down for generations than to create a journal, website, video or audio or a book. No matter how you decide to preserve your family financial stories, preserve them! You won’t regret it! ;o)

Buy one of those fabulous blank hard-covered books. Have a family member whose handwriting is good jot down your family’s financial stories in a journal or you can make it into your own “My Family’s Financial Hits & Misses” book.

You can create a family financial story website. Those fun stories, like when your grandma invested in a candy making company only the candy turned out to be too bitter to eat, will be joyously received by others. Who hasn’t made an investment mistake? ;o)

Don’t forget you can create a family financial story video or audio. Make sure you get grandma and grandpa to tell the story. Older people have a unique way of retelling what has happened to them or to one of their friends or family. They just do! ;o)

You’ll never forget that November is Family Stories Month. Why? This, especially in the U.S., is the perfect month to recognize the traditional pastime of family stories as we spend time with loved ones to give thanks and enjoy home-based festivities. Financial stories will always be in vogue. After all, we all want money to earn, invest, donate, save and spend wisely.

Cheers … Amanda van der Gulik … Excited Life Enthusiast! ;o)