What We Pass On: Money, Ideas and Legacy

Welcome back to Inside 25/8 Fintech.

This week I shared two posts that looked very different at first. One was about a yellowed folder from 1994, the other about a breakfast in Vienna and the word "legacy". Only later did I notice that both asked the same question: what do we pass on?

And next Saturday, October 31, is World Savings Day. A good reason to take the question one step further.

1. Money Is Learned by Watching 👀

When I was 13, I started tracking my own income and expenses with the software my father used for the bookkeeping on our farm. Nobody told me to. I had simply watched him.

Your replies to that post were the best part of my week. Andrea L Richards told me how her sons got a monthly allowance in secondary school that had to cover bus fare, school dinners and haircuts. Her second son spent his first one in ten days and walked to school for the rest of the month. It never happened again.

Vineet Budki added a view from the investor side: the founders who stand out are the ones who can explain cash in and cash out without opening a deck. And Nazia Haque shared that one of her clients, a business owner running a thriving company, only just learned the value of pension contributions.

Three stories, one pattern. Whoever learns money early, by watching and by making small mistakes, carries it for life. Whoever doesn't has to catch up later, often at a much higher price.

2. The Fintech Question: What Do Children See When Money Is Invisible? 📱

When I was a child, money was something you could see. Coins in the piggy bank, notes in the wallet, a passbook with real interest.

Today a child sees a parent tap a phone at the checkout, and that's it. No change, no counting, no empty wallet at the end of the month. The money is gone, but nobody saw it leave.

I love what fintech has made possible, and I work in it every day. But it also means we have to make money visible again, on purpose and in a playful way. Let children pay at the till themselves and look at the app together afterwards. Give them an allowance with real responsibility, like Andrea did. Set a savings goal they can watch grow. And talk out loud about money at home, the good decisions and the bad ones.

Children learn money the way they learn everything else: by watching what we do with it. Our job is to make sure there is something to see.

3. World Savings Day: Saving Alone Is Not a Strategy 🐷

Saving is a good start. But with the interest you get on a savings account today, it is not a plan on its own. What matters is having your own strategy.

In my book I call mine the DO IT Strategy. It starts with the same thing I did at 13: a household plan. Know what comes in and what goes out, honestly and completely. Then three steps:

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👉 DO IT safety: a cushion of three to six months of expenses, available at any time, built up with ten percent of everything that comes in.

👉 DO IT freedom: building investments over the long term until their income covers your fixed costs.

👉 DO IT independence: when that income also covers a budget for your dreams, projects and goals.

Years ago my wife Nadine and I dreamed of a veranda on our terrace. Before saving a single euro, we asked for a quote. Not to build it the next year, but to know how much we needed and how long it would take. Dreams need a number.

This is my personal approach, not investment advice. But I am convinced: a strategy you understand beats a savings account you never think about.

4. Ideas Are Easy. Execution Is Everything. 🚀

Over breakfast in Vienna, Peter L. Eppinger gave me the word "legacy", and it stayed with me all week. Nobody will put "had a lot of great ideas" on a gravestone. What stays is what you built.

For me execution means three things: making a decision, getting into action, and then looking honestly at what happened. Every day.

The best example right now is AI. Everyone has ideas about it. Far fewer actually change how they work. In the SKYTRADERS Group we have one big advantage: we can build our structure with AI from day one, without having to work around ten years of grown processes. That is not a plan on a slide. It is something we do every day.

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A folder from 1994, an allowance spent in ten days, a breakfast in Vienna. Different stories, the same lesson: what we do is what we pass on.

So here is my invitation for World Savings Day: sit down at the kitchen table this week and talk about money. With your children, your partner, or just with yourself and a sheet of paper. That conversation might be the best investment you make this year.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Stay focused and trust the process.

Your Thomas