Growing Up and Keeping Up

Koo pointed out in her introductory post that how we're raised affects many of our attitudes about money. I thought I'd chime in with some notes about my own childhood. 

Both of my parents worked outside the home. My father was in finance, and he was the CFO of a dot-com for most of my adolescence. (I sort of knew that he "worked with computers", but I didn't find it very interesting.) My mother was a realtor when I was very small, and then became an elementary school teacher. From the time I was in school, she was in her own classroom in the same school. Before 3rd grade or so, I'd go to her after classes were done, until it was time to go home. After that, I walked or rode my bike home after school; it was less than a mile to the grade school, the middle school, and the high school (although by 9th grade I preferred to take the local bus instead of biking or walking, because I could sleep in). My grandmother often babysat me when I was an infant, and then I had a sequence of two or three in-home daycare situations and one after-school center (when I had half-days in kindergarten). I don't recall what arrangements were made for my younger sister in the couple of years before she went to nursery school during the day. 

My needs were all provided for, and many of my wants (plus several things that I wouldn't have thought to want, but that my parents provided for me anyway, like swim club membership, scouts camp, and more clothes than I ever was interested in). In fact, our family was quite well off, but while we lived in a very wealthy town, I never really felt like we belonged to that set. We lived in a modest house down the block from a mechanic's garage and the DMV. We didn't spend nearly as conspicuously as some of our neighbors, and I can't recall minding that, or feeling resentful as a child or teenager that I didn't have the same toys and things as other classmates. We had two cars at a time, though, like most of my peers, and they turned over fairly regularly when I was small. The station wagon was the same from when I was 5 until after I graduated high school, however. :)

My parents were older when they married each other and had me and my sister; perhaps they came into the marriage with debt. They were raised in homes with different income levels -- both well-maintained by the time I came along, but I gather they had rough spots now and again when they were young. My mother in particular is thrifty, and though we took family vacations, for example, they were planned with an eye toward saving money. We never went first-class, and fancy hotels weren't the norm. I remember my incredulity when I compared a neighbor family's Disney vacation (first-class air for everyone including 3 kids, accommodations at the Disney Hotel, 2-3 days of theme park, and a live-in nanny to alternately mind the baby at the hotel and take the older kids on rides) to ours (drive down in the station wagon, stay outside the major tourist destination in a motel or boutique hotel, stopping by a grocery store instead of going out to dinner every night, a day at Disney, and a special outing to Medieval Times, but no souvenirs unless we really were dying to spend our own money on them). 

My sister and I each received a small allowance ($10-15/week), and eventually we both babysat and took after-school jobs. We didn't have to contribute to the family finances; we were encouraged to save some of our wages for college, but otherwise we could spend at will. (I was a spender, mostly, and my sister was a saver. I took no-interest loans from her piggy bank on a regular basis.) If we needed money, really all we had to do was ask, and be polite about it... but I can't recall asking very often.  Money was often given by relatives for our birthdays. I was always required to write thank-you notes, but often I gave the money to my mom to put away for me, or spent it on silly things. I just didn't care that much. I was far less materialistic than a lot of kids my age, and as long as I had books, I was pretty well set. 

My parents didn't really talk about money with me, and because my needs were all met, I went through childhood blissfully ignorant of a lot of basic money concepts -- especially hard numbers. I didn't know what an average U.S. household earned, or what it cost to pay monthly bills or what a house or car cost. Occasionally my dad would holler at me to keep the door shut when I went outside, because I was hiking up the air conditioning bill. My mom would remind me that something that cost $3.99 was really going to cost more than $4.00 when the sales tax was added in. Money was never spoken about urgently, though. We never worried about keeping the lights on, we never went hungry, we never streeeetched until payday, and if there was ever concern about the mortgage payment, I didn't hear about it. 

It wasn't until I was filling out a standardized form in high school and I asked my mom about her education, and my dad's, and what their combined annual income was, that I really started to understand. The form had the usual checklist of ranges: something like "under $20,000", "$20,000 - $40,000" "$40,000 - 60,000", "$60,000 - $80,000", "$80,000 - $100,000", and "over $100,000". Those were just numbers to me. I asked my mother, so I could fill out the form, and she said it was "over $100,000" and something about my father alone making about $150,000/year. That caught my attention. We were so far into the outliers? I'd had no idea.

So, yes, I was -- and am -- privileged. I make a good wage for a young person (although considering the area and the industry, I'm being underpaid at my current company). I make more than many adults with my level of education (4-year degree, liberal arts) around the U.S., at least until you adjust for cost of living. I make more than my ex who always talks about money at the dinner table, and she's been in her field for ten years or more. I make more than another ex's ex-wife, with her three jobs combined. I make about twice as much as Koo. That's sometimes really weird for me.  

I think my parents did a really good job not spoiling me, but there's a lot of baggage nonetheless. Some of it is just plain ignorance. I trip over that occasionally when Koo and I talk about money, because she's had different experiences. I have a lot of assumptions about how money SHOULD be spent, and I have some reticence about discussing hard numbers. It just wasn't considered polite. But I need to learn this stuff, and here I'm anonymous. We'll just put our spreadsheets up as a case example, okay?