This. However, Grandma was always generous with the cookies.
I did save up whatever money came my way, and once or twice in all the years I was in grade school, bought chips after lunch. However, in high school, I decided to use my lunch money mostly for cigarettes. I got by with purchasing only Little Debbie snack cakes at the cafeteria…which I think cost a quarter.
Soda was a very rare treat for us growing up, and even now, that’s how I think of it…a treat I allow myself when I’m sick, or as a dessert. It seems strange to me that people drink it all the time.
By contrast, my parents would not consider it food at all… and be horrified at the thought that they were allowing me fill my body with processed crap. To the extent that they could not prevent it, was the extent I ate processed foods of any type as a child.
It’s not about the money, it’s the philosophy that “cookies are a sometimes food.” And if you’re going to have cookies, you should make them yourself (quite possibly sneaking 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour in when the kids aren’t looking).
BTW, they weren’t at all into the whole low fat thing. Quite the opposite. The point was, to eat food made of food. They were rather ahead of their time in that respect.
Hm, I can see that. I mean, I food that’s not processed crap. And I guess I can get away with eating a lot more food than most people that’s not “good” for you, but I guess I never thought that I ate all that much snack food. Though I don’t think I’ve gone longer than a day in a long time without eating some form of chocolate.
That’s so wild, I also know first hand that the price of a high school lunch (supplied to me by my parents) was the exact sum of a pack of cigarettes + a Little Debbie bar. Which my parents did not endorse, natch.
There was usually some snack-type stuff (soda/chips) around the house when I was a kid, but anything else you had to buy for yourself. Mom was freer with the snacks than Dad (divorced since I was five).
Theoretically, my little brother and I had a $1/week allowance for a while from Mom, but I don’t remember when it started or when it stopped, and I don’t think it was consistent, either. No allowance from Dad; chores were just expected as part of the family.
Candy bars were occasional treats, most often gotten when visiting Mom’s dad’s pharmacy. (Or when visiting those grandparents’ house–there was a shelf with nothing but boxes of candybars. Mmmmn.)
… Your parents were still giving you an allowance when you were in college, and you’re complaining about the amount? Oooookay.
I had a college boyfriend whose family believed that when you were in school, school was your job. He was not allowed to have a job during school. He received an allowance of some sort, I don’t know the details.
For the one semester I took 28 credits (that’s slightly more than twice the number for a full time student) my parents allowed me not to work and gave me an allowance and a gas credit card. I think I melted my brain that semester, so I don’t remember how much it was, I think it was $100 week.
I got $3.25 a week when I was a young teen (this was in the late 70s) until I started working at the local library at 14 and made like $30-50/week. I don’t recall having to buy my own snacks–my mom always had M&M’s, See’s candy, soda, and pretzels around the house, plus she got snack cakes to put in my lunch. I wasn’t really a hog, though–a little bit of sweets each day was fine for me (wish I was still like that now–I eat way too many sweets!)
Don’t recall having to buy anything specific with my library earnings (parents bought my school clothes/haircuts/snacks/occasional off-holiday goodies, mostly) except I spent a lot on books and records and when I got my car at 16 I had to make the $75/month payment myself (they bought gas).
Looking back, I had it pretty good as a kid. My parents kind of spoiled me. Only child syndrome, I guess.
It’s certainly a **nice **arrangement, but it’s by no means the norm. That anybody would be getting money from their parents as an adult and then complain about the amount made me :rolleyes:. Just struck me as a very gift-horse-in-the-mouth situation.
Well, while tdn does not say what decade s/he was in college, unless it was the 1940’s $5 a week isn’t much for eating on, let alone having any kind of social life. There’s an old thread, Who paid for your education? that might be interesting on this topic.
My mom lived at home when she went to college, in the early 60s. Her parents would as a matter of course send her out the door with enough money for the bus, lunch, and a pack of cigarettes.
I had to buy my own candy/snacks, etc., with my allowance. The exception to this was weekends at the cottage. We’d gather up the beer empties and take 'em in for the deposit, which my dad allowed my brother and I to split.
We had koolaid and maybe some cookies around, but never candy or soda. If we wanted something that wasn’t in the house, we had to find a way to make some money to get it. Never got an allowance. When I was about 10 or 11, we started making money by finding deposit bottles at construction sites and lugging them a half mile or so up to the store to get a refund. Later started working odd jobs for neighbors, mostly babysitting and working on yards, washing cars, etc.
When I got to High School in eighth grade I made a good living selling contraband (mostly bubble gum) at insane mark ups, about 500%. I also was really good at hustling other kids by pitching quarters for profit.
In ninth grade I began to work occasionally doing sort of clean up on construction sites with a friend whose dad owned a construction company.
In tenth grade I got a job working graveyard shift at an all night kitchen, washing dishes. Later I moved over to bagging groceries and such at Publix. Never worked in a fast food place like McDonalds, though. I worked construction and waited tables during college, then got on as a Co-op student through our school’s Engineering program.
Point is, I’ve pretty much always had to earn whatever I wanted. I resented my dad for it at the time, since he’d often spill more in drinks than what would have kept me happy, but I’ve come to appreciate it. Also, working crappy jobs makes you appreciate the cushy ones. Since I never really got much candy or such from my folks as a kid during the normal course of time, I learned to REALLY stretch out Halloween, Easter and Christmas treats.
I wasn’t an adult when I went to college. That being said, I had had a summer job that then paid for anything other than the necessities. I still remember my Pop being excited when he gave us our last allowance ever, when we started working summers.
I hit my teen years in the mid-70’s. There was some snack/junk food type stuff around the house, but if I wanted extra, I paid for it out of my allowance. Once I got to 15 or 16, I was always scrambling for money, and always had some type of job - cutting lawns, shoveling snow, watching elementary school kids after school as they waited for their after school programs to begin. There was always something, so I managed, cash wise.
Luckily, my Grandmother paid for all the books I read. I was a voracious reader, and I went through bookstores like a candy store. She loved to see me reading, so there were times when she would send me money for 5 or 10 books a week.