just wondering

[moneybags]

Did your parents do something to help?

I am different than most responders. My parents' financial example was the catalyst for my frugal/savings way, but it was more of a "I don't want to live like that". Basically, they lived check to check and on credit. A lot had to do with their circumstances. I've always been a saver, no matter what my income level, and I still subscribe to that theory. No matter how low your income, you can still save something. In terms of figuring out retirement planning, investing, etc. I did it on my own, but hope to pass my knowledge on to my children so they can get an earlier start.

[LuxLiving]

I was put in charge of paying the family's bills starting at age 12 and balancing the parental-units' checkbook.

Like creditcardfree, we were given an allowance at a young age and told what it covered. All $$'s gone and no holeless shoes? Too bad. Wear the ones with holes till next month! You soon figure it out.

[gamecock43]

I am somewhat young (28). Financially, I am doing better than my friends. I attribute this because my mother was a bipolar money whacko. One day she was remodeling the house and having hardwood floors put in, the next day she was telling me she does not have the money to send me on the ski trip I had been planning to go on for the past few months.
As soon I was legally old enough to work, I got a job. I did not want to depend on my mother for anything financially, because either she would tell me she does not have the money for it, or I would get a huge guilt trip from her when she would pay for things.
Dealing with her financial mess has been one of the biggest lessons in my life. Her priorities were so out of whack financially I could never get a clear picture of what kind of money we had coming in. I was constantly told we were broke, she was too broke to visit me at college, she couldnt pay my college tuition, then coming home to visit I would see the house had been completely refurnished.
Now I am a bit of a money hord. I keep track of every dollar, and if my credit card balance creeps up beyond 1k I start having anxiety attacks. I have money in the bank, I have excellent credit, and I know I will be ok, but I dont think that was the proper way to teach a kid about money.

[jIM_Ohio]

I am somewhat young (28). Financially, I am doing better than my friends. I attribute this because my mother was a bipolar money whacko. One day she was remodeling the house and having hardwood floors put in, the next day she was telling me she does not have the money to send me on the ski trip I had been planning to go on for the past few months.
As soon I was legally old enough to work, I got a job. I did not want to depend on my mother for anything financially, because either she would tell me she does not have the money for it, or I would get a huge guilt trip from her when she would pay for things.
Dealing with her financial mess has been one of the biggest lessons in my life. Her priorities were so out of whack financially I could never get a clear picture of what kind of money we had coming in. I was constantly told we were broke, she was too broke to visit me at college, she couldnt pay my college tuition, then coming home to visit I would see the house had been completely refurnished.
Now I am a bit of a money hord. I keep track of every dollar, and if my credit card balance creeps up beyond 1k I start having anxiety attacks. I have money in the bank, I have excellent credit, and I know I will be ok, but I dont think that was the proper way to teach a kid about money.

are we brothers and just don't know it?

[gamecock43]

true true. my mother did teach me well...to bad she had to live thru hell to teach it. I cant imagine being so irresponcible that I live on a swinginging scale ranging from flat broke; no money in the account to spending every dime the minute it came in on unnecessary items....she was so constantly stressed out.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

My parents were frugal, so I learned many competencies from them. I knew what our bills were, but I don't think I knew what their income was until after they were divorced. I remember my mother intentionally delaying paying a few bills in order to have money in the bank at the time she was applying for a credit card in order to smooth cash flow problems with the little income she had. Those were the days before anybody and their dog could easily get a CC. My Mom told me about cashing in on her life insurance policy at one point. I remember that idea being a surprise to me. The fact that she had life insurance had caught me by surprise, too, and I was in early high school at the time.

No one talked to me about investing (probably because they had no investments), though I understood the concept fairly early. I must say, too, that interest calculations were simply part of grade school math. I remember having those groan inspiring word problems involving both earning and paying interest-- though mostly paying it. I had a one semester class in high school on consumer economics. There was decent content to that class, but most of it I already knew. I learned about pensions when my Dad was forced into an early retirement from his first career and qualified for the pension only by the skin of his teeth and at the lowest level possible. He'd had to go through a petition process to collect the pension and it ended up in court. I was in grade school at the time.

I was pretty keenly aware of tax, licensing expenses, and repair related to cars because transportation was always such a difficult issue in our household. We lived in an area where we were pretty much stuck if we had no car and would have difficulty even getting food and to jobs. In the transition between high school and college, I had a job in a posh area of the nearby town, but no way to get there, except bike. So I rode my bike. It was do that or have no job. Yeah, I learned from my mother that you have to just do things the hard way sometimes, even when no one else around you is. And that you should be glad that at least there is a hard way to do it.

I saw my mother discriminated against as a woman in her jobs. Absolutely that taught me a to be cautious and open-eyed regarding employment, which is, of course, one of the foundations of a personal financial life. That point was driven home when in my first part time job, I found out I was being paid less than the young men doing the same job and hired on the same day.

For some reason, someone in the family had a life subscription to Kiplinger's magazine. I remember one of my brothers always read it cover to cover, while I skipped articles! But I was reading that magazine because it was there. It gave me my first introduction to many financial matters, things I would not have thought of for years to come, otherwise.

I also read the "women's magazines" that were sometimes in the house. Woman's Day, Family Circle, and Better Homes & Gardens are the two I remember. Oh, we also read Mother Earth News which is full of frugal DIY stuff. It seems to me that at that time those magazines article were not just about how to have a pretty home, raise healthy kids, and cook delicious food, but about how to do it frugally. The frugal emphasis used to be much more important in those magazines, For instance one article included the information of how to choose which size eggs were the better buy per ounce. This is a calculation one cannot make at the grocery store, since egg sizing (small, medium, jumbo) does not tell the consumer what the weight of the egg is. You can compare price per egg, but not price per ounce of protein, which is what the article helped with.

My mother was always checking out books on frugality from the library. Once again, if it was in the house I (and my siblings) read it. How early did the Amy Dacyzn books come out? It seems like I remember reading one of those that my mother had from the library, but I could be mistaken. Truth is, my Mmother could have written the book. I remember reading a book around 1970 that was written by an urban Black man giving all kinds of ideas for getting by. I was a rural Southern white kid, but I'll always remember how to make sandals from old tires! I even got ideas from Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, though that one probably did not come from the library. Hey, my parents lsimply left books and magazines sitting around and I could not help but read them. If they were books on frugality or money of course I learned more about frugality and money.

Not much actual cash came into my hands as a child. We did not have allowances, though I know we would have if there had been some money for it. The only money gifts I got were from two grandparents and a great aunt at birthday and Christmas. I actually saved that money all year long so that I could then buy Christmas presents for my brothers and sisters. The amount of money was small, and --believe me--- so were the presents. My brothers and sisters called me a miser for saving my money like that.... My other source of money was my "milk money" for school lunches. That started off at 4 cents when I was in first grade and I think was up to 30 cents by eighth grade. Sometimes I would skip buying milk and save up that money to buy candy at the little pharmacy in the nearby town! Or, sometimes I was a more noble child and skipped buying milk to give the money to the Red Cross, or one of the other charities which had collections at my school. I remember other classmates doing the same thing --we were a very earnest bunch of kids. I think my parents must have known I was skipping my milk purchase that way, but they never said anything to me about it. So, in a way, I did have control over some little bit of money. I know it did make me feel good to have that little bit of power. Czarina of the Milk Money, I was.

When I got my first job as a teen, things were really tough for the family, financially. My mother added my name to the checking account so that I could help with the bill paying and banking. This was at the time when ATMs were coming into use, and I remember often our deposits and cash withdrawals were done at night, the only time one of us could clear the time and transportation to get to the ATM. I put my pay check into that account and spent less than I earned, the rest of it helping to pay the household expenses. Really, even what I spent on myself mostly only relieved the household expenses a bit anyway, as I used it to buy my own toiletries and very occasionally an article of clothing. I mean very occasionally. I had an acute awareness of money due to the lack of it and seeing how very hard my parents (divorced, but both responsible), especially my mother struggled to get by.

I am glad for the amount of money awareness my parents gave me. I think it might have been better if I had known even more. My own kid has been included in even more of our family financial life than I was included in. But I think that because I had so many siblings, that was an area that just had to go unaddressed, in part. My parents were too busy keeping up to teach so much to so many kids, even informally. I have only one kid, and I think that makes it much easier to informally and intentionally share and teach.

I was an easy to deal with teenager when it came to "wants." That was probably not an entirely healthy aspect of my personality, though. As willing as I was to contribute my paycheck to the family and buy very little for myself personally, the truth is that I was feeling pretty desperate and defeated in life. So much seemed impossible. Impossible due to having not enough money. I had internalized the lesson that good things do not much happen to me, that there is never going to be enough, that there is rarely anyone to help you even when you are desperate, that things are probably not going to work out...These kinds of thoughts have been very difficult for me to overcome. As a result, I do not have an entrepreneurial bone in my body and I do not take investment risks. I do wish that my parents had been able to somehow help me to be a little more optimistic. I think more optimism would have had a good effect on my financial life.