For this final day of Thrift Week 2009, Get Rich Slowly revisits a short thrift film that I first featured in May 2007.
Over the past few years, I’ve shared a number of old cartoons and educational films about sound money management. I love these old videos. My favorite of the bunch is probably this little honey: “Your Thrift Habits”. Produced in 1948 by Coronet Instructional Films, it’s filled with great advice, and is fun to watch, too.
“Your Thrift Habits” highlights some important aspects of budgeting and thrift:
- “If you can do without extravagances, you can save regularly.”
- Be aware of your budget-breakers and try to avoid them. In the film, Jack’s budget-breakers are movies, candy, and peach super-delights. Yours might be Starbucks or iTunes. In the past, comic books were my budget-breakers.
- “Buying cheap, unsatisfactory products is never thrifty.” When you can afford it, purchase quality.
- Sometimes you’ll have to make choices. In “Your Thrift Habits”, Jack chooses to attend a football game, which delays his savings plan by one week. The key is that he chooses this course of action and accepts the consequences.
- Don’t get discouraged if you fall behind. Jack falls behind once or twice, but he doesn’t give up. He keeps saving.
- “When you save for a specific goal or purpose, it’s easier if you have a visual reminder.” Tracking your progress can spur success.
- Money management gets easier with time. After you’ve kept a budget for a month or two, or after you’ve saved for one big item, it’s easier to repeat the process.
It has been nearly two years since I first watched this film. In that time, I’ve paid off my debt, built my savings, and still managed to enjoy life. How? By putting these lessons into practice. I try to forego extravagances and budget-breakers. I set goals. I buy quality. In essence, I have developed the thrift habits this film espouses.
I love old instructional films like this. If you spot other short films (or cartoons) on similar topics, please drop me a line so that I can share them with everyone.
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wow that is nostalgic! great video! Its amazing how these same points are still being emphasized to this day and some perceive them as “new and innovative” ideas…
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Nowadays people pay lots of money for this advice lol
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Incredible! What a great old film! I think that this should be shown to all high school aged kids, a remake would do however. The information is still relevent to todays “I want it now” society.
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I found it amusing that the family food budget is $18 for a week. I also liked that they had a category for “Benevolences” in addition to savings. What a nice way to budget for charitable giving. Thanks for sharing this film!
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I love this video too but you’ve posted it before! You had my hopes up. I thought it was going to be a video I haven’t seen.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/05/12/your-thrift-habits-budgeting-lessons-from-1948/
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These classics are awesome because we can learn so much from them.
I think a lot of us don’t even realize that money management was done back in the old days too.
One thing I would add is if you overspend, you can go out and earn money first.
Or the concept of making the money first and then spending it.
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This is my favorite advice among the ones you list here. We cannot help but spend money on things, but we should also demand value from our purchases.
For instance, as a young adult, I wasted a lot of money buying clothes that were uncomfortable, badly made, or just did not match my style. So they were never worn, and even if I got them on sale, that’s expensive!
As an older adult, I know what I like and what works for me. I still look for sales, but do not hesitate to pay more for quality. Once you break it down to “cost per wearing,” my clothes are one of my thriftiest investments.
This applies to most other consumables, even movies. We’ve canceled the higher tier movie channels on our cable and use the money to buy DVD’s of movies we like enough to watch again and again.
As we say, “I’d rather watch something good a dozen times than watch a bad movie, once.”
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If he had an emergency fund, then he could have bought a new pen, and still be on track, time-wise, for his camera. But I guess that isn’t realistic since he doesn’t have a job w/dependents. So he could have mowed a lawn or something, among other things. Seriously though, my take from this film was that it takes a LOT of thought and effort and decision-making when establishing a budget, then re-tweaking it, but after all that, it then becomes a habit, which can actually be fun, like a game, plus the good feeling that you aren’t incurring any debt, you’re able to meet your monthly expenses and you have some money saved for a rainy day too. Also you’re forced to focus on what you really value most — a lot of ice cream sodas, or a camera, so you quit frittering away your $ on things you really don’t value all that much. Because it really is true that we can have anything we want, but we can’t have everything we want.
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The whole idea kind of runs in the face of popular advertising of buying cuz ‘you deserve the best’, huh?
I’m not in the states, so when we do come back get hit with some of the stupid advertising lines on tv, it really strikes me wrong. I can’t believe the people fall for the line of “save 25-40%” if you buy 3 pairs of shoes. How much did you just spend while you were saving all that money? Obviously you’d save the most by going for a walk to the park instead of the mall or shoe store!
Or the $5000 rebate off the brand new car. Why not just lower the price by 5K? Really amazing that people fall for it. But I do remember at least a few years back a popular line was “you deserve the best” with no real mention of anything about actually affording it or value, etc.
Such old fashioned advice.
Thanks for reposting this as I hadn’t seen it before.
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@James (#5)
Yeah, this is a re-run. I tried to make that clear, but maybe I didn’t make it clear enough.
I’d actually love to find more of these old videos. If you find any, please let me know about them.
Also, I should point out that there will still be a few more days (up to a week) of guest posts and re-runs. I still have some stuff to do for Sparky’s last memorial service, and then I have some deadlines to meet before I can get back at writing full time. (And writing full time is what I’d really rather be doing!)
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Thanks for sharing this. I just emailed the url to my high schoolers! I want them to understand the value of a budget. Every day we face decisions/demands on how to spend our money. Having a clear focus on our own values helps us achieve what we really want out of life. Delayed gratification is a wonderful thing. Nothing can beat that sense of achievement as you walk into the store and pay cash for the item you’ve saved for.
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What a great little film! Still relevant today.
BTW my husband has that same camera Jack buys in the film!
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We have made many written budgets in our 25 year marriage and not one of them balances. On paper we have always spent more than we have earned. In practice, it averages out to less than one month a year we are actually in the red. I can’t figure out why the numbers don’t work on paper, but they sure don’t!
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Great video! What’s so interesting about it is that the budgeting ideas are timeless. Track your spending, avoid indulgences and save for what you want to buy. Nothing has changed in the last 50 years, it’s just easier to spend now – credit cards, but also easier to save – ING Direct!
-Jorge
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I love Coronet Films from the 40s and 50s! They have them on such topics as popularity, how do you know when you’re mature enough for marriage, getting along with your parents, etc. I guess they used to show them in high schools…thanks. This was great!
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I remember watching some of these films in schools, though not often. They were starting to learn towards the psychedelic, Electric Company movies. I always enjoy watching them, and feel that I learned from them. I especially enjoyed their graphs.
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Great video! Anyone who says that they can’t save money should watch this video and see how it was done by our grandparents. Lots of timeless wisdom here.
Sue
PS. Sorry about your friend Sparky. Sounds like he was a great guy and an inspiration to you.
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Hey J.D.,
How are you holding up with everything for Sparky’s memorial service?
I really enjoyed this post. Admittedly, I haven’t had the time to sit through the whole video, so I appreciate that you summed it up for me! But, the points that you make are nonetheless important and it’s great advice for anyone starting out on their financial journey. My favorite is to “be aware of budget breakers and try to avoid them!” I’ve fallen back into the habit of spending money on DVDs, more than my budgeted amount. I think I need to go back to Netflix!
Thanks for sharing!
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What an excellent video and still totally relevant, after 61 years!
Just goes to show, you rarely need to come up with a new idea – the old ones still work as well as ever.
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Delayed gratification is something that is difficult for many people. Budgeting has to be learned and experienced.
This film shows that wanting to spend right away is nothing new.
Keeping records of expenditures or even adding up the totals on all the receipts that you have will make a real difference.
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Great video. My father and mother gave me advice such as this when i was a child but the pull of advertising and keeping up with the joneses was a greater influence. Now as an adult i have had to relearn what my parents taught me and this video reinforces their war years values.
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