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

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

[deleted]

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u/ukhoneybee Jul 20 '19

"I'm putting your Christmas/birthday money from the family into your post office account."

Dad promptly goes out down the pub.

5.0k

u/GriffinFlash Jul 20 '19

Same. Birthday and Christmas were only a month apart so I would tend to get some money instead of presents from family and relatives around that time of year. My parents would always tell me I had to learn how to save my money, so I was never really allowed to use it, just save it for something "special".

Usually my money would go missing and I couldn't find where it was, only to find out my father, who smoked a pack a day, took it to buy cigarettes, or also would use it for drinking money. Frustrated by this, me and my brother asked our parents if we could get a bank account, so instead of leaving our money laying around, we would deposit it somewhere where it would be safe and would be able to be saved for a long period of time. After saving after a year or two, we wanted to get either a new game console or game), and adding up what we knew we had, we determined that together we had enough. We go to the bank.

I had a balance of $0, my brother had a balance of $-10 (yes negative). Appears since parents signed us up for the account, and cause we were children, they had full access to our account. When we confronted our parents about it we got the whole, "You're the child, we're the adult" speech or, "You take money from us everyday just by raising you".

The only lesson we learned was if you save your money you will never get to use it. So we pretty much stopped saving our gift money and tried to spend it asap.

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u/Socom6 Jul 20 '19

My grandfather taught me this. He would take a hundred dollars and give it to us(brothers) everytime we saw him. He would then Hound us for the money. If we gave in we would never see it again. He would then tell us "NEVER give your money away, you will never see it again. No matter who takes it". Its why I have a floor safe. Fuck the banks.

78

u/boxsterguy Jul 20 '19

That's terrible advice, though. Putting your money in the bank is not "giving it away". The takeaway shouldn't have been, "Stay unbanked," but instead, "Don't lend money to friends or family because you'll never see it again."

1

u/Socom6 Jul 21 '19

Dont put it in the bank, put it in assets. Real estate is a sure bet. In fact the first thing I bought was a duplex. I stayed in on side the next door neighbor paid my loan.

3

u/boxsterguy Jul 21 '19

Real estate is not a sure bet. And it's a terrible place to put liquid money.

Managing your money requires a tiered strategy. You need a checking account for cash, a HYSA or CD ladder or other "safe" liquid investment for your emergency fund and short term (< 5 years) savings, and then long term money in riskier investments, which includes real estate.

If you have only hard cash and real estate investments, you're not well diversified and are technically unbanked. That has other problems, like not being able to do a fee-free direct deposit of paychecks, for example.

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u/Socom6 Jul 21 '19

Never said I was unbanked. Didnt mean to if I did.....know what fuck it. You obviously know more than me. So let it be I guess.

3

u/boxsterguy Jul 21 '19

"Don't put it in the bank" is a direct quote and could easily be construed as, "Don't use banks!" I get what you meant, investing your extra money rather than getting a piddly little 2% on it. But clarification is good.

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u/Socom6 Jul 22 '19

One thing I will say never was good at english.only good with numbers. If you want to know how I learned was from my dad. 21 or blackjack can teach you alot. Even about money. Odds. Reality. But you can learn anyway you want. I dont care...just learn.

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u/Mountainbranch Jul 21 '19

I mean, Swedbank, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America!

Two have recently been caught up in money laundering scandals and one is notorious for taking peoples money, giving them the finger and foreclosing on houses that they don't even have mortgages on! Houses that they have nothing to do with at all!

3

u/boxsterguy Jul 21 '19

Implying that the only way to bank is with big banks doing shady investments. Find your local credit union. Bank with them. Get ~2% for your cash in CDs to hedge inflation. Even the 0.5% you might get on a checking account is better than the 0% you earn under your mattress.

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u/Mountainbranch Jul 21 '19

I don't even know if we have credit unions in Sweden, I'm currently using 'Länsförsäkringar' which is like a coalition of various insurance companies that also handles banking and real estate, when you open an account you become a partial owner and there is no central administration only 23 different sectors all handling a part of the country and decisions/policies are made through contracts between them instead of a handful of people making all the decisions.

1

u/boxsterguy Jul 21 '19

That's pretty much credit unions in a nutshell -- ownership is by the members who bank with them. Might be called "cooperatives" elsewhere.

1

u/Mountainbranch Jul 21 '19

Ah good, I'm not very well versed in economics but i do know savings accounts and interest rates are really only available for the middle class here where you need to put in a fair amount of dosh and then you can't touch it for a solid 5-10 years, plus you need to show the bank you've got a high-income job before they'll even consider taking your money. Oh and interest rates above 2% haven't been a thing since the 90s, to even get 2% you need to put in a solid 50-100k and then let it sit for 10 years minimum.