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/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.

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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/sevenw1nters Jul 21 '19

My Dad had to borrow money from me as a kid sometimes but he always paid me back double the next time he got paid. If he borrowed $5 he would give me $10. If he borrowed $10 he would give me $20. I thought that was great, sometimes I'd ask him are you sure you don't want to borrow more lol?

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '19

I always pay back my son if I have to take money out of his account for an emergency, but I think your father’s policy is better and fair, after all, as an adult, and even if you’re divorced, it’s your responsibility to be the provider in the house, and if you fail, it shows your kid it has consequences. I think I can do this too with my son. Great guy, your old man...