5 Most Important Finance Lessons for Entrepreneurs

It’s that time of the year where people flood your social media news-feed with selfies, old pictures, and hashtags dedicated to their dads. Several of these posts which praise a father publicly tend to instill a sense of pride, love and other intense emotions in us.

While I’m one of those social media enthusiasts who post statuses with hashtags “daddy’s girl,” “dad’s my hero,” etc.. sharing how supportive, compassionate, and joyful my dad is. This year, I wanted to do something different to honor all the dads out there on father’s day.

Instead of just stating how awesome he is, I wanted to share the little tidbits of financial lessons he tried to drill into my brain.

Being a financier himself, he had a lotta advice to offer when it comes to money and personal finance. As a teenager, I used to turn a deaf ear whenever the conversation steers towards finance.

But that was just until I became an Adult and realized how useful those little pieces of bits of advice were.

There.. I said it, Dad. Happy?

Now that I’ve accepted it, without further ado let me get on with pondering over 5 universal money lessons he taught me which could come in handy for any aspiring entrepreneur.

1. Keep track of your cash flow

Fathers always emphasize quite a bit on the importance of maintaining a stable budget and sticking to it. I’ve seen him sit around the coffee table at the end of every month with a bundle of bills, calculating the expenses, trying to tally everything.

My dad reckons that making it a habit to check all the statements and expenses carefully offers a complete control over our spending pattern.

You may claim that “I never had a budget for personal funds, but I survived.” Just because you glazed through it doesn’t mean your business would sustain it. It is vital to keep track of the cash flow, what generates revenue for your firm and how it is spent.

If you don’t maintain a record of it, how would you deduce the financial condition of your business? Hiring an accountant and starting to track the cash flow would give you an insight on when to rein in and rethink your strategies if required.

2. Don’t exceed your budget

Dad has tried time and again to make me live within my means. Even as I write this, it is quite funny. From my third standard, dad started giving me an allowance, something like a weekly pocket money that I could spend on things I want.

There were no rules on how I should spend it, except the fact that if I end up spending it all in one go, I’ll have to wait until the end of the week to replenish my stash. Being a sweet-toothed foodie, I used to spend the first few allowances on candies in a single day and would be whining around for the rest of the week.

But, dad never gave in to my whines, he even became immune to my puppy eyes when it was a money matter. I used to hate him for being so rigid, but when I started earning and took care of my own finances, I knew what an invaluable lesson it was.

That’s a cute memory, but how is it relevant to entrepreneurs? An entrepreneur’s vision is superior. However, their vision could sometimes make them over ambitious. The field of entrepreneurship is quite unpredictable so overspending your capital or making financial decisions based on your future incomes.

The strategy of “Go big or Go home” may seem appealing and even work for a while, when you have a large stash of capital. But, contrary to your belief, your pocket isn’t Tartarus, the bottomless pit. So stretching your working capital to a thin line by spending an extravagant amount of money may shake the foundations of your fledgeling business.

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