kid smokingFlickr/Wanderungen

Take a moment to think about your childhood and if you grew up with or without money in your life. 

How did you first learn about money and how did your parents manage their money? 

The way that we grew up learning about money as kids definitely has an impact on how we manage our money as adults. 

If we grew up with money maybe we take money for granted as an adult, and if we didn’t lead a privileged life as a child maybe we work harder now to enjoy the finer things in life that we didn’t have when we were younger.

For many of us we never learned about money as kids, I never learned about money until my parents told me to get a job…and I got two. Money was kind of just always around when I was a kid and I never really learned to appreciate money until I had to start earning it myself.  As I got older and started making a lot more money I started to take money for granted.  After the market crash a few years ago I learned the hard way that I should never take money for granted because there is definitely no guarantee that money will always be there.  Now as a 31 year old professional I have come full circle and once again I am appreciating my hard earned dollars.  I made a promise to myself to never take money for granted ever again.

Our parents (or at least my parents) always said that they wanted to give us (my younger sister and I) more than they had while they were growing up.  Both of my parents come from Eastern European immigrant families with 6 kids on each side.

My Father and my Mother are both one of the older kids in their families, therefore they had a lot of responsibilities growing up and unfortunately there was not a lot of money to go around.  Money was spent on necessities such as housing, food, and clothing for a family of eight; it was not spent on life’s luxuries such as toys and family vacations.

Did your childhood money memories make you grow up to appreciate a hard earned dollar, or did you grow up taking money for granted?

Here are 5 Bad Habits that We Develop when we Grow Up Without Money (according to

  1. Acquiring a Taste For Bad Food.  I have to be honest there is nothing like some feeling good but bad for you comfort food to make a bad day better!
  2. Spending Extra Money Instead of Saving It.  I was definitely guilty of this in the past; every single quarterly bonus was accounted for and spent even before it was paid into my bank account.
  3. Going Over Board with Gift Giving.  Christmas and Birthdays are a big deal in my family full of gifts, parties, and lots of food.  In my opinion there is nothing wrong with giving lavish gifts as long as we can afford to do so.  I don’t believe in getting into debt over giving gifts.
  4. You Become an Obsessive Compulsive Money Tracker. I am sooooo guilty of this.  After my income crashed with the market I became obsessed with my money; I started tracking every single penny to make sure that there was always money in my accounts.  I know every cent that comes in and every single cent that goes out and (now) I don’t think that will ever change.
  5. Only Focusing on Money in the Short Term.  When we don’t have a lot of money we don’t really think about the long term, this is only normal because after every pay check there is no money left over.  We can break this bad habit by saving even $10 per pay check for the long term, anything to change our habits.

This post originally appeared at Dinks Finance.

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