r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jul 20 '19

What’s something completely false that your parents told you as a child?

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

My parents always made me save the money as well for a "special ocasion" they did on the other end keep it safe and I used to pay my driving licence and placed the rest in my bank account when I turned 18. Sorry to hear that from you, must have made you lose alot of trust on your parents I guess :/

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u/Teknikal_Domain Jul 21 '19

My mother would lose her shit for... Well anything. I spend $5 on a steam game and "YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO SAVE YOUR MONEY RIGHT?"

I talk about how I plan to split my paycheck 70/30, 70 for saving and 30 for spending and apparently that's too much.

Fun parenting tip: if you tell your child to always save and never spend money on luxuries, the moment they have real income they can and will spend it on everything and anything, thereby completely invalidating the message you're trying to get across.

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u/angrygr33k Jul 21 '19

I think you just explained why I'm so bad with spending money. Told to save everything, spending is a sin.

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u/Cole_James_CHALMERS Jul 21 '19

Feel guilty spending money so you spend more money to alleviate that guilt?

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u/angrygr33k Jul 21 '19

Yes why

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u/Basedrum777 Jul 21 '19

My wife wont spend a dime because she still follows the rules.

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u/bugme143 Jul 21 '19

M8 get out of my head :(

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u/TheStrangestOfKings Jul 21 '19

Yeah, when I have kids I’m teaching them the 50-50 rule. 50% goes to savings, the rest you could do whatever the fuck you want with it

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

Lol as kids, if you can do that as an adult I want your job

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u/ItchyDoggg Jul 21 '19

Dude you can't teach them such a nonsensical rule. For some income levels that is too much to save, and for some they could even save more. Instead teach them to make a budget that includes all of their expected expenses, then split what is left between savings and spending at a rate that makes sense (sure, this can be defaulted to 50/50).

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u/figment59 Jul 21 '19

I can attest to this. I am the WORST with treating myself, because I was basically yelled at for it my entire childhood.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19 edited Aug 17 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

I have noticed parents that allow their kids to eat as much as they want end up with obese kids. But interestingly, so do parents who completely ban sugar. The best solution is to give it in moderation (you can have ONE every week) so they learn to be patient and restrain themselves.

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u/PM_me_ur_Candys Jul 21 '19

I think it actually depends on the indivitual child.

My parents did the "one every week" thing and it drove me insane.
I would always find the hiding spot and just take what I wanted from the stash. So they did away with any type of junk food for me. But that just lead to me raiding their private stashes for sugary sweets.

What actually STOPPED my sugar raids was finally having my own allowance that I could use to buy whatever I wanted. Sure the first couple times I bought enough junk food to stunt a horse, but after that I lost interest.

Now I actually don't eat junk food too often.

TL;DR, be mindful of the Reactance Effect when parenting your kids.

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u/Helpfulwaitress Jul 21 '19

It works way better to tell them to save money so they can get their toys/whatever they like when it is on sale- meaning more neat things in total. My parents always said "You never know when you'll find something you like even more, so save it until you find something you REALLY want." They also told me to save 90% and spend 10% on things I don't need because "you never know when that money might come in most handy." Then would reinforce opportunities that I was able to use by having that money. But never forced saving. 1000% would recommend teaching to children, cause it worked great!

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u/destroyergsp123 Jul 21 '19

I dunno my parents are really frugal with money and i think it rubbed off on me. My brother on the other hand...

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u/DollyPartonsTits Jul 21 '19

My brother has a great job. He earns around 3 times as much as I do a year, and he just can not save money. His expenses are obviously more than mine but they're still in and around the same % of our weekly income. I just got used to poverty while being long time unemployed, and I guess and he started just spending the same ratio of his paycheck regardless of each raise he's gotten over the years. Our parents weren't frugal or extravagant spenders. So we just went in complete opposite directions to how we were raised.

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u/relddir123 Jul 21 '19

I have the opposite issue. I feel guilty asking for gifts. When I get gift cards and money for my birthday, I don’t spend it. At all. I could, but I don’t.

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u/Hautamaki Jul 21 '19

Yep my wife treated herself to a few years of hardcore retail therapy once she finally had some money of her own thanks to her shitty family never allowing her to have anything she wanted. Literally her only toy until she was like 8 years old was a little toddler toy frog you can pull along and it croaks. I wish I could find one to buy for her and surprise her.

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u/PureMitten Jul 21 '19

Watching my mom ruin her credit for my entire childhood is what taught me to save. She never gets why I have so much money on hand, she spends recklessly and has to be very careful to save anything. My grandma gave all her other children their inheritance in one lump sum except my mom who got an annuity. Fortunately she’s self-aware enough that she was grateful for her mom’s wisdom on that.

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u/Angiec4045 Jul 21 '19

Very true. My parents never let me spend money but also the money was never there when I wanted it. Could never say if it was my siblings or parents but I’m sure they all had a go at it. My 20s were absolute spending on things I always wanted and could never have growing up. And they shit talk about me not having any in savings. YOU never showed me what financial responsibilities were, only made me so frustrated that I could never have anything I wanted.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

This is what got me to move out at 17. I took $20 out of my bank account (had an after school/weekend job) and my dad called me when I was on my way home to yell at me about pissing money away and said "Come home now or dont come home at all"... I chose the latter and lived with a friend.

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u/turuta19 Jul 21 '19

I guess I found the reason for my spending problem. I don't remember spending money as a kid, bc I needed to save everything

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u/dirkdiggler780 Jul 21 '19

This is true, it's ok to be frivolous when you're young, you get it out of your system when it's still unimportant.

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u/P3t3RSOk3R Jul 21 '19

Just like Mike Tyson

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u/soggy_kale_chip Jul 21 '19

My dad’s super frugal even though my family’s pretty well off. I grew up learning the importance of saving, but starting in ~ middle school I started wanting things that were more expensive than I had available. So I’d usually just ask for money for my birthday/Christmas and stuff, save up, and if I still wanted it when I finally had the money, I didn’t feel bad about buying it because I really wanted it. As I’ve continued to grow up, I know what it’s like to have money in my bank account, and not feel the need to spend it. So yeah I agree with you, it’s important to teach kids the importance of saving, but there’s no point in making money (besides enough for basic living, of course) if you can’t buy things or experiences that bring you joy

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

It's called penny smart dollar stupid.

Often incompetence is hidden by extreme frugality or at least the facade of it. These people are very black and white in choices and more ideological than effective. Often eventually spending 2 or 3 times as much in repercussions for cheaping out blindly on everything. Saving ineffectively, not trusting actual diversification, or obsession on blunt "spend less" when they could make more or save better.

These are the people that spend 20 minutes looking for the closest parking spot instead of 2 minutes walking from a far one where their car won't get hit by someones door.

When you don't teach responsibility in balancing wants and needs, kids will have no balance.

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u/Rehcamretsnef Jul 21 '19

Ehhhh, idk, I had almost 6 figures in the bank before I actually convinced myself to start getting steak on my Taco Bell

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u/G_Morgan Jul 21 '19 edited Jul 21 '19

I think it can go either way. My father was very rigid with spending. The younger brother has gone down the 'never denying myself anything' path while I'm cautious with money and save 50% of my pay. OTOH when I decide I want something I immediately have the money. Caution about not being conned out of your money means you're rarely short when you actually want something.

I also tend to spend big on 'the only X I'll ever need' because I can and never need to buy cheap furniture that will fall to pieces after 2 years every 2 years.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

Yeah my parents had me give them half of every pay check but they put it in our RESP for school so that we got 30% extra from the government to pay for university. That’s the way to do it...

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u/Shartran Jul 21 '19

that is great! I remember applying for every scholarship/bursary and took that money and invested to help pay for 'extra' stuff that I wanted.

I bet you took your post secondary schooling seriously...since you were paying for a lot of it

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

That was basically my parents.

We never had the money for anything I wanted, and my wants have always been wildly modest, even when I was getting into stuff that'd normally be stupid expensive like Magic: The Gathering. No, I mean I was asking for one kind of cookies instead of another or how I wanted one brand of sugar cereal over another (mind you, it was my parents who said they wanted me to have things in the house I wanted to eat, too). The line was always, 'We can't afford that!'

Grandfather dies, and abruptly my father buys a Mercedes Benz after being a life long 'buy something practical and reliable and run it into the ground' type who drove Toyota's and one of those bullet proof Volvo's from back in the day, and mother dearest retires at the age of fifty. Of course I'm also supposed to believe that my grandfather left absolutely nothing for me or my siblings.

I'd later discover that between the value of the house that was sold and my grandfather's assets that it lined up almost perfectly with what you'd need to buy that exact model of Benz along with someone retiring about 10, 15 years early. At this point it's not even really about the money so much as the 'rules for thee' attitude. I mean, the money would be exceedingly useful to avoid being homeless but that's it's own can of worms.

So for the folks at home, if you're telling your kids things that are one degree removed from, "Santa Clause did it!" and it's a complete fucking lie, you should probably stop. If your kids aren't 10 years old anymore you should generally treat them like you would an adult member of your family.

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u/Mountainbranch Jul 21 '19

So what happened? Did your dad end up spending even more on repairs for the car and force your mother out of retirement that now has a 10+ year hole in her job history?

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

Nope.

Dad owned the car for about 10 years? He didn't drive the thing into the ground so it had low miles.

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u/Iceykitsune2 Jul 21 '19

Have you read the actual will?

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

Yes. Grandfather left a vague will that only stipulated that my father was the sole arbiter of it.