As a kid, before my first job, I’d babysit. That was then money I could spend. Or Save. Mostly I chose to save. My parents really didn’t give allowances, so if I wanted something, I’d better save for it. Surprisingly, despite hiving frugal parents and being raised the same way, of 5 siblings, 2 (me and one sister) got the frugality bug. The other 3 spent money as fast as they got it. Or before they got it, or whether or not it was anticipated. And to this day haven’t seemed to understand the correlation between not buying crap and having money when you need it.
I guess I was lucky. My parents weren’t rich, but they knew how to handle money very well, and they taught it to me. So I’ve never been in debt, and I’ve always had savings.
I learned how NOT to handle money by watching, and being a victim of, my parents’ non-management of our finances.
It was the golden 1950’s, but both Mom and Dad were profoundly irresponsible people who never believed in living within their means. Bills were always paid late, loans were always being taken out to cover payments on the previous ones, spendthrift mother (who was also an emotional child) never stopped squandering money they didn’t actually have; Dad was unable to rein her in, and probably wouldn’t have even had he been able.
As a child I was stressed by the constant uncertainty and underlying insecurity of their lifestyle, and I reacted by being responsible and sensible with money before I was 20. It was only after I married Mrs. Cretin that I learned she had same mindset regarding money (although her parents were the opposite of mine), so managing our finances was never been a problem for us.
I’ve worked since I was 12, back in the days when paper routes were a child’s job.
From dealing with deadbeats in the first month to deciding I had to move out of my parents’ house as soon as fiscally possible (at age 19 in 1st year university) managing cash has been a crucial part of my existence.
It’s come in handy for several periods of unemployment in my 20s, and shocked the hell out of my wife when we went house shopping and I told her we would be making a six-figure down payment.
I got an allowance, so the concept of “save up to buy what you want” was impressed on me early. Then my mom showed me how you budget - here is your paycheck, here is the figure showing how much you paid in tax, here is the figure on how much you actually get, here are your fixed expenses (rent, bus card since I didn’t own a car, donation to church, whatever). Here also are anticipated expenses (clothing, food, etc.), so you take an educated guess based on what it cost over the last few months on how much it will cost the next month. Half of what is left goes into the bank, and the rest I can spend on whatever I want. If you spend more on unexpected expenses, then reduce the amount spent elsewhere.
I didn’t get my first credit card until later, but I never even considered carrying a balance - that would throw the whole system off. “If I put it on the card, will I have enough to pay for it next month?”.
It wasn’t presented to me as advice - more like explaining a law of nature. “This is how much you got, therefore this is how much you spend”. Along with my father’s rule, which is never borrow money to buy a deprecating asset.
One of the gifts you give your children is the assumptions about what is “normal”. My parents gave me the assumption that spending less than you earn is “normal”. They didn’t exactly lecture me, it was just “the sun rises in the east, drive on the right side, budget.”
Much of it is genetic, I inherited the sense of money management from my mother. As a small child, we were given a tiny allowance, and were required to save a portion in a Christmas Club account at the bank - I recall the total for the year was $25.00. And, we were expected to spend the money on Christmas presents. (My little sister was very proud of the fact that she bought all of the Christmas presents and still had $17 left for herself.) Also, being a kid and closer to the ground, I was always finding loose change laying around - that became a source of money for me.
I was also lucky in that I started earning an income from working at a very young age. So for much of my youth I had the opportunity to save, and manage spending, with the backstop of living with my parents (with them paying for food, shelter, clothing, etc.) It was good practice.
As I moved through life it came natural to me to always spend less than I made, and I was also fortunate to have jobs that paid better than average starting out. There were a couple of points as a child and in college when I was earning more than my parents - just lucky.
So, I never struggled or got behind. I always kept the notion of paying off credit cards every month, so they never became an issue.
All that said - Later in life I married someone who is not on the same page with all this, and that is a constant blood pressure elevator in my life now. (And no, the trope that women are better with money than men is not universally supported.)
Dad was a miser, and would pinch a penny until it screamed bloody murder. Growing up he taught us that there was nothing worse than being poor, and that saddling yourself with debt was just about the stupidest thing you could do. By sixth grade he was having me read Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Richest Man in Babylon, etc.
It sort of back-fired; I learned to fear spending any money at all. Mandatory spending was stretched as thin as I could reasonably make it, and there was no such thing a discretionary spending.
I was saving all my money in cash in a safe, I ended up not having a bank account until I was 22, and not getting a credit-card until a year after that. At the time I was making pretty decent money as a computer programmer, and could have been investing my savings, and building credit.
In addition, it’s somewhat complicated my relationship. I try to maintain my old college spending habits no matter how I’m doing financially. Zero lifestyle inflation. My goal is at least an 80% savings rate. That means driving a beater, never eating out, renting in a poor area of town, having roomates, clipping coupons, shopping at walmart, etc. All of which are a source of contention with my longtime girlfriend, who is just about out of medschool and is thoroughly tired of living like she’s broke.
I mostly learned via the school of hard knocks, but was very fortunate to have a boss at my first job who sat me down and explained the magic of compound interest and how these newfangled 401k accounts could lead to a comfortable retirement. His exact words were “I’m going to retire as a millionaire. Here is how you can, too.” I signed up and have contributed at every job since. There have been times, especially during layoffs or when huge unexpected bills hit (or both!) when I have looked at my wife and said “when we retire, we’ll be fine. The 30 years until then, however, may kill us!”
My mom. She took me to the bank to start a savings account when I was… 5, maybe (I know it was before I was 6, because I made a big withdrawal to buy Zelda when I was 6), and we’d go over the statements so I could see how much I earned.
She was very open about her finances. We went over the family budget together when I was a teenager (here’s how much the paycheck is, here’s the mortgage payment, here’s what we spend on the car, and clothes, and food…), and also gave me increasing freedom and responsibility with money, including setting me a budget for things like school clothes and letting me keep what I didn’t spend.
She had learned it all the hard way and said it took her years to stop being mad at her mother for not teaching her this stuff.
I’m hillbilly who grew up in a family that had to be frugal and my wife grew up upper middle class. Both of us are careful with money, though. We both worked at relatively low paying jobs in NYC relatively early, which forced us to manage our money well.