I am one of those parents who paid for provate school for our son. He is now a freshman in college, and while we paid his first semester in full, he wasn’t serious about school (failed 2 classes and barely passed the others).

If money comes too easily, they don’t appreciate it. We jsut cut off all payments to the school, and he needs to come up with the money for this sememster (about 8K; yes, expensive! He is an a private college). Talk about learning responsability!

I hope this helps another parent out there: if your kids don’t appreciate your efforts, make them pay: they’ll learn the value of money sooner and easier.

My friend Mike didn’t like how things were going in college, his college job as a bank teller wasn’t paying him what he was worth (or so he told me). He decided to quit college and strike out on his own with a company called Equinox.

What is Equinox you ask? Its probably one of the most horrific MLM’s I’ve ever laid witness to. They operate in the old fashioned way of sell the product to your friends and sign them up as sellers and you’ll make XXXX dollars a month guaranteed, blah blah blah.

When Mike signed up he was 20, I was only 19 at the time, fresh in town / college and totally oblivious to these types of “jobs”.

Before Mike got with this bunch, I considered him a wonderful and reliable friend. We respected each other and had many intellectual conversations about money, the world, religion, etc…

Mike invited me to a seminar at this new “job” he had. “You are perfect for this Kelly! You need to go in for an interview!” I am an environmentalist and a good salesperson so he thought I would make a killing. I agreed to go to an interview.

Mike came with me to the “interview” which I thought was odd, but dismissed because of the enthusiasm he was projecting.

My interview turned out to be Mike, his “superior” and I watching a video about the founders of this sham and seeing this “superior” draw dollars signs in a white board with a green marker like he was on Win Lose or Draw. “The green marker represents all the dough you are going to rake in Kelly!”, “Want to retire at 30? I will!”, “The people who don’t buy this product from you are losers and will die early because of terrible health. You are guaranteed at least $5000/mo.” and so on….

When I asked him about “pyramid schemes” and unfounded estimates for sales he got beligerant and told me that as a woman this was my only chance to make more than $25,000/year. That they were being generous to me for offering me this opportunity. Needless to say the conversation degraded quickly, one thing led to another and I walked out of the meeting. I told Mike this was a scam and he needed to get out fast.

Mike wouldn’t talk to me for two weeks because he was so “embarrassed” at my actions. I didn’t hear from Mike until 2 years later. He called me to apologize. He was $80,000 in debt, had lost personal savings of over $30,000 and all of his friends because of this cult.

The icing on the cake was the extravegance the superiors would exude to temp new recruits. Mike told me of Limos, gambling debts, jewelry, flashy cars, electronics and other toys to make it look as though they were ultra successful. He played the same game and paid dearly.

My only money story (aside from lots of debt, slowly working that off) is that I almost collided with Bill Gates when he pulled out right in front of me when I was working at MS. This would have been about 1994 or so.

I went off to college, got the requisite 3 or so credit cards they give out the first week, plus a bunch of student loans and a loan for a computer. I graduated in 3 years with more than $50,000 in debt. I was 21 years old.

In my first post-college apartment, I regularly had one or more utility shut off for non- or late-payments. Eventually I managed to get a decent job, cut down my living expenses, got my credit bills into a credit management program and started savings — for myself, for a rainy day, for retirement. Around age 24 I met my spouse who was raised in a family that did teach good money skills. He helped me learn how set a goals for myself, to save, to invest and to live debt-free. I set a very lofty goal a goal to completely pay off my debts and save $50,000 toward my retirement before I turned 30.

Well, I reached the big 3-0 I am happy to say I wrote my last check for the remainging balance of my student loan six months before and the total sum of my retirement accounts reached the $50K goal three days before my birthday (time to spare!) No small feat. I have learned a lot about saving, now tucking away a good 1/2 of my paycheck, even though that means I live more like a poor college student now than 10 years ago when I was in college.

I am really proud of myself for setting a goal and actually making it. Even if the balance hadn’t crossed the $50K mark, I can still be proud of how far I have come.

My parents were rather indulgent, and since they took care of all money matters for me while I was growing up, I never developed a real sense of money until my 20s. In my mid-20s, while I was in graduate school, I took a summer job as a collections agent for Discover Card (Novus Services). Wow! That really opened my eyes! I still cannot fathom how people get into thousands of dollars of debt, with little means to pay it off, or with little care about it. That job really transformed me, and I paid off my own debt (car loan, etc.) within a couple of years.

While at the mall, I did what typical 11-year old would do at the mall, I went with my friend to the arcade to play some video games, and watch the bigger kids play. While at the arcade, my wallet was pickpocketed, along with the $50.

At this point, I had lost every penny to my name. Really. I was given a fortune, and it was gone in an instant.

It may not seem “extreme” because the amount of money wasn’t that large, but the incident taught me some valuable lessons:

1) It hurts to lose money.
2) Other people will do bad things to get money.
3) It’s a good idea to keep your money in a safe place.

These three simple lessons have since shaped my relationship with money. I don’t buy lottery tickets (because I know that I’m basically throwing my money away), and I invest in a balanced portfolio, keeping my investments well-diversified so that they stay reasonably safe.

That $50 felt devastating to lose at the time, but in hindsight it was probably the best $50 I ever “spent”.

http://www.grown-up.org/2006/10/20/my-extreme-money-story/

I find all of these quite fascinating! Mine is unfortunately rather sad, but the real world rarely indulges us with storybook endings.

I took an ad out in the paper saying that I would be close to the front of the line and would validate tickets for $20 – letting them stay home in their beds instead of out in the 20 degree cold. Totally worth it.

What I didn’t tell them was that I wasn’t going to sleep out in the cold either. With all $380 profit (19 tickets x $20 “validation” fee), I showed up in line an hour before tickets were set to be validated and paid someone at the front $100 to cut.

19 satisfied customers and 1 awesome seat for myself, I went to class $280 richer.

Needless to say about 4 months after this was all taken care of I decided it was time for me to witness vegas and the deserts of the south. I booked a 10 day vacation thinking it might cost me around $2k including the gambling. I had been doing alright at the local casinos and I figured that I’d be ok.

So off I went. By around the 4th day I took a road trip to Death Valley and the Grand Canyon which is a good thing since I was already about 4K in the hole. I left because I knew I needed to stop. But I worked my way back to the strip really fast and then proceeded to loose an additional 4-5K. It was so bad that on the last day I didn’t have any money for food until I called my bank up to increase my overdraft!

Overall I think this is the stupidest thing I have ever done money wise. But I know what it’s like to wander around hungry watching the glitz and glamour of Vegas… seeing the money flow. It was a very valuable life lesson even if it was incredibly stupid from a money point of view.

It had been on the market for a year, and we bought it for $28,000, which was an awesome price even back then.

While we lived there, we redid the basement with new carpet and paint, added a bathroom down there, and did a very minimal kitchen redo. Altogether while there we spent $5000 on fixups.

We sold that house in 1993 after 2 days on the market for $59,900, nearly doubling our investment in 3 short years.

With that money we built a new home, contracting it out ourselves. Thanks to the equity from out old home and the sweat equity from self-contracting, we built a 2900 sq ft house on a $123,000 loan.

That house in 1994 had an initial value of $150,000, and currently is worth $300,000. So, double our investment again. Though this time it took 13 years instead of 4.

I used to live in Wilmington, NC, where the film industry is big business because they can exploit non-union labor there. Once my head shot submission as an extra got me a strange phone call: would I be willing to do a nude scene? I was promised it would be a shower scene in a navy barraks with some other fellas and I would only be shot from — uh — behind. I thought about it, polled my wife, and agreed to do the scene. We were to talk money later.

When I went for my Navy uniform fitting and haircut and asked again how much I was to be paid. The “casting director” didn’t know.

On the day of the shoot, I started to realize that my ass was gonna be out there for the world to see, and I didn’t even know how much I’d get for it.

So I didn’t show for work. And I’m really glad I didn’t: http://imdb.com/title/tt0109403/