My Financial Upbringing…

I am extremely lucky.  I know it.  But sometimes I forget, or take it for granted… The Frugalwoods did a post about how they are privileged to have the opportunity to pursue financial independence.  And while I am nowhere near their advanced level of frugality and proximity to financial independence, I did relate to a lot of what they were saying.  I have often wondered how different my life would be now, if only one or two things had been different while I was growing up…

I have mentioned in other posts that before I started this blog, and before I started reading personal finance  blogs, I had been going through life on auto pilot.  That’s not to say that I wasn’t enjoying my life, but I would often just take the default path, with little intention or thought put in to it.  Luckily for me, my upbringing was such that this didn’t lead me down the path of financial disaster.  I somehow managed to end up in a pretty good state, with no student debt, no consumer debt, and a mortgage on my “forever” home as my only debt… so I thought I’d go through my past and examine how that happened…

So, I should probably start with my parents… I was fortunate enough to be brought up by parents that had both attended university.  I’m not sure of their financial background completely, but I think it was pretty good.  I grew up comfortably in a very upper middle class neighbourhood.  In my childhood, my mum was the saver, and my dad was the spender.  This may have come from the fact that once I was around, my mum didn’t work full time, she was a stay-at-home mom for the first few years of my life.  Then, once I was in school, she started working part time.  So, for pretty much my entire childhood, my dad was the primary bread-winner of the household.  But her affinity for saving may also stem from the fact that my mom was a banker’s daughter, and although I have heard stories of her penchant for stylish clothing as a teenager, I’m sure the savings mentality was ingrained in her.  My dad, on the other hand, came from a more blue collar background, so while he did go to school and become a banker himself, he may have had a bit more of a thirst for the finer things in life once he was able to afford them.  In any case, I was extremely fortunate to be brought up happily middle class with a very frugal mom.

My parents never gave my sister or I weekly allowances.  Some of my friends would have Saturday morning chores in order to get their weekly spending money, but my parents didn’t do that.  If there was something that we wanted to buy, we would have to explain what it was we wanted, and why, and then if it was deemed a necessity, or something valid, it may have been purchased… or we’d have to wait for a special occasion for a gift.  If it was something that was a special toy or if I wanted money to go to the corner store for candy, we would have to save up for it… and where would that money come from?  From jobs of course…

Somewhere probably around 6 or 7, when I started walking to school, and thus walking past the corner store (with all the penny candy), was probably when I started wanting my own spending money.  I’m not sure when my sister started her newspaper route, I’ll have to ask her… but I remember at about the age of 6 or 7, I started helping her with it.   It was a once a week, local newspaper.  My portion started with just the neighbours that I knew (the closest 4 or 5 houses to ours), and I’d get a couple cents of the pay cheque (probably actually from my parents, not my sister, but I’m not 100% sure about that).  But starting that early, learning that we had to work for our money, was probably a good lesson to learn.  I have never shied away from hard work because I know the reward.

Once I got a bit older, I took over one whole street (the full route was 3 streets).  This was probably when my sister started to get babysitting jobs, so she wasn’t as interested in the all-weather manual labour of the paper route… Then we would split each pay cheque, 1/3 for me, 2/3 for her.  We’d take the cheque to the bank, and put the money in our savings account.  We didn’t keep the money around, but could go to the bank and get it if we wanted to buy something.  I remember I saved up to buy myself the Playmobile barn.  It was too expensive to ask for as a birthday gift (but I asked… many times…), so I had to save up my money to buy it myself.  But doing this taught me the reward of saving up for something I really wanted.

Once I was about 10, I took over the whole newspaper route myself.  It sucked some days, having to come home in the rain after school and walk the three streets alone with my paper cart, not getting home until it was getting dark… but I did it, every week, for quite a few years… and every pay cheque would end up in my bank account, gaining whatever small amount of interest it could.

By the time I quit my newspaper route, right before heading to junior high school, I had accumulated enough in my savings account to purchase some Canadian Savings Bonds.  At the time, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I think my dad (he was a banker at the time) told it to me like this… “You have $x now, and if you lock it away in this special savings account for a certain amount of time, it’ll increase to $Y!”  In my little brain, that meant twice as many Playmobile sets, so “yes please!”  And that was my introduction to investing.

I have a lot to thank my family for!

So before I even made it to my teens, I had already been given a pretty good background in working hard to earn money, then saving it up for my goals, and also taught about the benefits of investing.

Next week, I’ll go in to my spendy teen years… and onward…

What were your first financial lessons that you learned?  Did you get instilled with good financial habits as a kid?

Advertisement