What’s Your Financial Literacy?

April is Financial Literacy Month! Most people aren’t as excited as I am to talk about money. In fact, discussing finances is something many people avoid. 


Patrice Washington, a well-renowned speaker and author who focuses on helping women recognize their worth and grow their wealth, has partnered with Robinhood to produce a video series on how women earn, spend, save and invest. My favorite question she asks is “What is your relationship with money?” The reply is very telling on whether someone spends or saves their money. 


Ready for some feel-good finance? Check out My Money Moves on YouTube.


One of the easiest ways to teach your kids (or anyone) about basic finances is to use the PIGS method. My kids were weaned on this method and would roll their eyes if they read this post, but it works. It’s an easy formula to follow that will help you budget every dollar. It even works for businesses, too! You can play with the percentages to see what fits your lifestyle or goals.

P – Pay Yourself First

This portion pays your rent and living expenses. It can be anywhere between 40% to 70%. The choice is yours—either don’t buy Starbucks every day, or put that into your ‘pay-yourself-first’ budget. Since you and your family are top priority, this category is first.

I – Invest

Invest every time you get paid. There are many studies that show consistent investing will benefit you by growing your wealth without your sweat equity. Warren Buffett once said it well: “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” 


Plant your tree and keep feeding it. This percentage should be 10-20%.

G – Give

This is an area people leave out most often, and it’s the only one in which the percentage is set at 10%. Give 10% to charities, religious organizations, civic organizations, or causes that help others. When you give for the good of others, the payback is immeasurable.

S – Save. SAVE. SAVE. SAVE. 

I can’t stress this enough. Money guru Dave Ramsey is famous for telling people to save 20% of their paychecks. He also suggests allocating three to six months of expenses to a fully funded emergency fund. This can feel like a lofty goal, but you’ll be thankful you saved when something unexpected happens—like when your two-year-old refrigerator dies or your car needs to be repaired immediately. 


Try saving between 10%-20% of all money that comes in.


Ready to talk more about finance? Money is the second most discussed topic between parents and teens (after COVID). Last year, half of all states proposed bills requiring personal finance courses in high school. Early money management skills lead to better credit scores, lower debts and higher savings—and this benefits everyone. Empower yourself and those around you by investing in financial literacy. 


Want to learn more about how we help small businesses simplify, organize and gain insight into their financials? Reach out to me at alisa@firststepsfinancial.com and let’s have a fun conversation about finances!

Our Latest Insight

Fixing It: How to Build the COO-Accounting Relationship Your Business Is Missing

By Alisa McCabe • October 12, 2026
If Article 3 felt a little too familiar, your first instinct may be to call a meeting. You tell Operations and Accounting they need to communicate better. That will not fix it. The five warning signs were never personality problems. They were signs that your accounting systems and routines were never intentionally built around how these two functions work together. People cannot follow a structure that does not exist. Accounting cannot inform decisions they do not know are being considered. Your COO cannot use financial information they cannot access in time. The fix is not complicated. That does not mean it happens naturally. Most of what you need to build will feel almost obvious. Recurring conversations. Clear handoffs. Shared definitions. Access to the right information. This is not glamorous work. That is probably one reason it gets overlooked. For the first few months, you may have to follow up constantly. People will forget. Meetings will get moved. Someone will make a decision and skip the handoff. Then something starts to change. The follow-up becomes unnecessary. Information moves without you. Problems get caught earlier. Eventually the results look effortless from the outside. They were not. You built the relationship that made them possible.  ​ Part 4 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

Five Warning Signs Your COO and Accounting Aren’t Talking

By Alisa McCabe • September 28, 2026
Article 2 ended with a question. What would you actually see first if this relationship started breaking down inside your business? Here is the answer. You would see five things. If you are like most owners reading this, you are already looking at two or three of them. None of the five announces itself as a communication problem. Each one shows up as friction inside your accounting systems, wearing a perfectly reasonable disguise. That is the difficulty. On the surface, none of these looks like a broken relationship. Each looks like something else entirely. A busy month. A tough quarter. A personality difference between two people who were never going to be friends anyway. Every one of them gets explained away the first time you see it. That is exactly what makes them expensive. This article does not fix any of it. Article 4 does that. The job here is naming what is already sitting in front of you. Most owners walk past these signs for years without recognizing what they are looking at.  ​ Part 3 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

What a Growth-Focused COO-Accounting Relationship Looks Like

By Alisa McCabe • September 21, 2026
Article 1 ended with a question. When does your COO actually talk to Accounting before a decision gets made? How long did it take you to answer? Immediately? Minutes? Maybe you could not think of a single example. Bills get paid, projects keep moving, and financial reports show up. Nothing feels obviously broken, so you conclude everything is fine. If that question made you uncomfortable, you are not alone. Here is the part that keeps this problem alive. You only know what good looks like based on what you have already lived through. Most owners have never worked inside a business where Operations and Accounting were intentionally built to function together. So they measure their company against their own status quo. This article gives you a different reference point. You will see what the relationship looks like day to day, what rhythm it runs on, and five things you can check this week. None of it requires scrapping what you have built. The people are already in the building. The data already exists. What changes is how the pieces are arranged, and how much leverage you get out of the company you have right now.  ​ Part 2 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship