Granny loved to play Monopoly. Being the banker was a bit of a chore and the job would fall to Granny, she graciously accepted. I started to notice Granny always won. The banker always won. I tried being the banker, but I didn’t win. Granny got back her job. I watched her like a hawk. She put money from the bank in her pile.
Granny was cheating! My Granny! I accused. My family were shocked - how could I say such a thing? I felt ashamed, I was wrong, I couldn’t prove it. I waited until I caught her in the act and I slammed my little hand down on the money.
Granny was delighted. She said I was a brave girl to challenge her. Never trust the banker, she said. Never give anyone absolute trust where your money is concerned. Red-handed is the only way to catch them. She admonished the rest of the family for ignoring my accusation.
I’ve caught the bank out a few times over the years, paychecks, discounts, bills - I’ve challenged them all. Don’t mess with me for I have The Power of Granny.
My parents, in particular my father, taught me about money. Starting at eight I got an allowance, but it was small even for those days. And I had to make church and Sunday School donations out of it!
Dad never, never gave me an advance on my allowance, but I don’t remember asking either. I think it was understood I wouldn’t. Being short funded taught me how to live on a tight budget and to make choices on stuff I wanted.
No one. When I was 18 I already had credit card debt and I’d moved off base to an apartment increasing my living expenses from the $400/month range (food, accomodation and utilities) to almost double that. It took me years of gradually digging myself deeper and deeper to decide to fix things. I’m 45 now and I’ve been debt free for just over a year. In that year we’ve paid cash for a new car and are saving so the upgrades we want in our new house will be paid for when we move in.
On the plus side even while I was still making my own situation worse I managed to teach my kids to do better. They are both miles better at budgeting and priority setting than I am and they both think I’m responsible for teaching them that. (either that or they’re sucking up by telling me so)
They had their weekly allowance from which they were expected to purchase any special things they wanted. They also had a monthly book allowance that was for books only and starting at around 10 they had a lot of input into their school clothes shopping. We had a budget and they could choose how to allocate it as long as they satisfied the basic requirements.
They really reacted differently though, my son quickly decided there were things he just didn’t care about and trying to keep him in non torn and patched clothes became a challenge because he wanted to save the money for other things. My daughter became a super sale shopper with an extensive but cheap wardrobe. They’ve both worked since they started high school and with some minor errors have done a great job of manging their money. No matter what you do there are some mistakes they need to learn for themselves but it’s good to have a base of information to fall back on after you do.
Self-taught, I think…or I was just one of those people born with a knack for it.
Like my brothers and sisters, I got a small allowance every week. Unlike them,I managed to save most of mine. One day when we were shopping for school clothes, I found a dress I liked and when my Mom started to balk I told her I could pay for it with my own money. I was, I think, 8 years old at the time.
I always managed to keep a good “cash stash” and save something out of my earnings…even when I was 23 and living in NEW YORK CITY and making $150 a week BEFORE taxes. When I started at that job I was given the option to be paid via check or cash ( the cash payments were NOT off the books, they were delivered minus payroll taxes and with a pay stub). I was a little puzzled by the question and said “check, of course”. Then on the first payday I discovered I was the ONLY employee out of about 35 that had picked the check option, even my bosses were taking home cash and living hand to mouth. I was just like “how do you guys SAVE anything when you take home all cash each week”?.
I’m serious, if you take every phrase that mentions money, and follow it, the results are amazing. And when I was younger and stupider I was always broke, borrowing, bouncing checks, in debt and paying bills late.
Now I am debt-free, bought a house, paid cash for my car, donate regularly and have money in savings.
From a young age I tried to make and spend my own money. My parents didn’t have much and I tried not to rely on them. By the time I finished high school I had my money to pay for college.
I was lucky to get the work I did at times, and for some periods of my life I have made more money than my peers. While I was in college during the summer I worked a very high paying job. At those times I was making more than my parents.
As for spending, I always understood saving and delaying gratification.
So, it’s a combination of luck, and natural tendency.
That’s how it was for me as well. Money just makes sense for me.
You put money in your checking account and you write it down and add it to the total. Tell someone to take money out (electronically or write a check or make a withdrawal) and you write that down and subtract it from the total. Periodically you make sure everything jives.
Credit cards get out of hand. Can’t figure out how to get them paid down, that never made sense to me. My ex-wife was always caught in that trap. She had about 2500 in CC debt and (literally) 6000 in her checking account and still couldn’t get her CCs paid down. Pay more then you spend each month. Every month when you get your statement, look at where it says “Additions/Charges” add that to “interest” and pay more then that amount. If you do that, the total will go down. If you don’t do that, it’ll go up and you have no one to blame but yourself. By that I mean, don’t run around saying “I don’t get it, I make a payment every month and it’s like I’m not getting anywhere.” My favorite was when my ex said that to me. She had just made a $200 payment on a store credit card, but then spent spent $275 in the store. Proud of herself for paying way more then the minimum, but honestly didn’t understand why the debt wasn’t going down and me still not understanding why she didn’t just take her six grand and knock all the CC debt down and keep it down.
Anyways, when it comes to finance, they’re all numbers and I’m a numbers guy. The nice thing about numbers and math is that you can’t make anything up, it’s all right there for you. If you can’t understand why your bank account is so low or your credit card debt is so high or you’re overdrawn every month you can just look at the statements. There’s no opinions involved, it’s literally right there in black and white.
Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate that getting yourself out of the hole or paying off a large CC bill is easier said then done. Telling someone to pay more then they spent last month is one thing. Having the money isn’t always possible. It’s just that I’m a math/numbers guy and these things just ‘click’ for me and it’s hard for me to see someone struggling with why their (for example) CC bill keeps going up and trying to understand why it doesn’t make sense to them. (OTOH, I’m not a word guy and that last sentence seems awkward in my head, does it make sense?)
My parents always did the bills together, so twice a month when my father got paid, my mother would pull the bill box out of the closet and they would sit down and go over the bills, what had to be paid, what could wait, saving for a new roof, school was coming and we’d need clothes and supplies, etc.
Kids pick up a lot when parents think they aren’t listening.
We got an allowance, our basic needs were covered but anything extra had to come out of that. We could get an advance but we had to pay interest. My parents would also borrow money from us and we got paid interest.
My father asked me that question of would you rather have x number of dollars a week or would you rather I gave you a penny on the first and then double the amount each day for a month?
I’m amazed at how many people I know who have no idea what they really make, how much they put out in bills, have no concept of how to budget, think paying a $20 late charge is no big deal even when they are doing it week after week. I had one friend who was putting out almost $100 a week between late charges and overdraft fees. His attitude was I’ll just catch up next week, well next week it was more of the same. When I finally put it down on paper and said LOOK! this is what you are giving away to them for no reason other than you are too lazy to pull your head out of your ass. Seeing it on paper, and realizing just how much it was costing him was enough to make him change his ways.
