Pay attention to one's savings

In Italy, at school, we are not trained in the culture of saving and managing our assets—regardless of their size—and consequently, we are not encouraged to invest and protect the purchasing power of our savings. In my country, there is a lot of distrust; risk is considered a danger, and the mattress is still the best way to keep the fruit of one’s hard work safe.

Indeed, for my personal finances, I have always been very careless and have always had holes in my pockets: if there was something to spend on, I would spend it. When the money ran out, I would no longer spend.

I have never invested. I have always saved, deposited, restricted: never invested. It has been something I have constantly ignored, avoided, almost rejected. Why take the risk? Better to put the money under the brick of my digital account.

For some time now, however, with great curiosity, I have started to inform myself: funds, ETFs, diversification, volatility, indices, ETCs, risk, portfolio, markets, horizon. I have been—and still am—very ignorant about it¹, but I am learning many things about a new topic, and hasn’t happened to me in a long time.

I am having fun, to tell the truth. Often I feel a bit like an acrobat balancing on a tightrope, curiously peeking at the juggling indices every few seconds. Sometimes I huff at the red of the negative closing values, other times I watch the green results of the day with satisfaction. I try not to fall. And, above all, to always keep that soft and safe mattress firmly beneath me, while I look ahead, towards the coming decades.

It’s exciting, I admit, to take care and pay attention to one’s savings. I should have done it earlier.