This guest post from Simon Cunningham is part of the “reader stories” feature at Get Rich Slowly. Some stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. These stories feature folks from all levels of financial maturity and with all sorts of incomes.
A lot of reader stories featured on Get Rich Slowly are from people who got “saved” from bad financial habits, who were burned by their rabid consumerism and were forced to sober up, who cut up their cards and overcame tremendous debt, bought a smaller home and heated it less, took up a more reasonable hobby, and generally realized the value of family and experiences. That’s not my story.
I grew up in a family that already valued those things.
- My parents grew all our own vegetables in our huge Michigan garden, killed four or five deer per year for meat, canned their own spaghetti sauce and salsa, and generally saved a large portion of their income.
- My parents took our family on outings to pick blackberries or cross-country ski.
- They tapped our maple trees to make syrup and heated our house with firewood (that I endlessly hauled indoors).
- They preached fire and brimstone regarding credit cards, were suspicious of advertising, didn’t remortgage their house for fast cash, and made all our Halloween costumes by hand.
- We traveled to Europe as a family, valued education, and were loving and honest with each other.
- My parents never divorced, never shamed or abused me, and taught me frugality, patience, satisfaction, and paid for years of violin lessons.
I’m continuously learning how valuable it was to have a healthy, joyful childhood. It’s my greatest treasure.
Leaving home
When I left my parents’ home, I had the chance to live life on my own terms. But instead of drinking away my savings or buying crazy video-game systems, I committed myself to being as frugal as possible. I ate simple cheap foods, usually whole grain and legume based meals. I remember one semester in college where I made a game out of how little money I could spend on food. To my roommates’ amusement, every day I ate the same thing: rice, beans, and cheese (with a multivitamin). At the end of the semester (3-1/2 months), I’d spent around $40. I was 21 years old.
The thing that convinced me to live so frugally wasn’t watching my friends slavishly working bad jobs at bars to pay off their credit cards, painful as it was to observe. No, the thing that tasted so good was having so much free time. I really loved free time. I loved being active in student government or even just wandering around, buying cheap Miller beer and playing frisbee golf with friends. When your cost of living is low, you don’t need to work much. I found 12 hours a week of employment while in college, and it was enough to pay for rent, food, and a bit of beer. For me, frugality has always been a source of freedom and life.
After college, I decided to go to seminary. (I knew I was going to be a pastor since I was a kid.) I found a seminary in Nairobi, Kenya that cost $4800/year including housing, a steal compared to American seminaries which often cost four times that much. Many of my fellow pastors are $50,000 in debt from seminary. I raised enough money from my faith community to cover each of the three years, traveled extensively throughout Africa while in school, finished my degree without incurring any debt at all, and was ordained last year.
Thanks, Mom and Dad
Thank you Mom and Dad for showing me a how to use money! I want people here at GRS to know what an asset it was to grow up in a home where parents taught us to be frugal but still love life, to enjoy simple pleasures and focus on what was important, to be satisfied. I hope to pass these same lessons on to my children.
Currently I have under $20,000 in debt from my bachelor degree. I have no credit debt, no expensive habits, am saving like my parents did, and still generally live a very frugal life. I hope to eventually own a home and get married. I’ve traveled all over the world, am working in an amazing church, and never worry about money or debt. Life is good.
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Me too. http://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/are-you-doing-better-than-your-parents/
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what a beautiful story this is–we very seldom take time to thank our parents for the life we have, just wish this young man a beautiful life,also thank you for sharing this great blog.
haydee
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Me three. Without my parents I would have never thought to try to pay for a top business school MBA in cash.
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Perhaps I could relate to your story. I was born in India, and being a poor country, almost every Indian parent has to live frugally, there is no choice. In my childhood dining out was rare, clothes were purchased once or twice a year, shoes only once.
with this upbringing, I am generally frugal by nature, not by choice. Your dorm day savings, reminded me of similar ways I adopted and saved more money than my friends, needless to say, I joined workforce without any debt.
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Congratulations on getting to this point in your life. Many times parents are bad role models or children decide to rebel against the frugality their parents taught them. My grandparents were immigrants who survived the Depression due to their work ethic, frugal ways and a lot of luck. I noticed that many of their lessons didn’t pass to their children, my aunts and uncles.
I have a friend who is so determined to live a life different from her childhood, almost everything she does it clouded by the “sacrifices” she endured. For example, she refuses to rinse or wash a ziploc baggie to reuse it again because her parents did this when she was young. She claims it was embarrassing to have friends over because there were signs all around the house about how “poor” they were.
I’m trying to teach my children lessons about how to value relationships over money, but it is difficult when you live in an affluent community. Recently, my oldest child was teased at school because we don’t have a pool or jacuzzi. In different neighborhoods, a frugal or environmentally aware lifestyle goes over much better than in others.
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So true. Just because parents model a behavior does not guarantee children will pick it up.
Also, regarding your comment on living in an affluent area. I remember Amy Dacyzyn, AKA “The Frugal Zealot” saying that she and her husband had taken a giant step towards a lifetime of modeling frugal living by moving to a tiny town in rural Maine. There was much less peer pressure on their children.
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Yep. We are in the top 75% for income in our neighborhood, probably the middle for our son’s school – he doesn’t feel deprived *or* affluent, just “normal” in his hand-me-down clothes.
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This is why DH and I want to stay in our home. We could maybe move to a house in the “rich” side of town and send our kids to a nationally-ranked high school. But we’d be in the bottom of the social heap, and our kids would be the “have nots.” I don’t want to do that to our kids; currently, our district is also top-notch, but just doesn’t have the “wow” factor of the school on the other side.
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I can’t reply to Megan – but I want to tell her that she’s doing the right thing. The diff in education between the schools is probably negligable, and your kids are, for college admissions/scholarship purposes, better off being at the top of the class at ANY school than being in the middle of the class at a great high school.
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And this is why my son, daughter-in-law and 4 grandkids (ages 8-12) recently moved from an affluent Houston suburb to a small town in Colorado (pop. 8000). BTW, they are AFFLUENT. But the pressure on the kids to “fit in” with the Nintendos and I-Phones and wearing the right brand of clothes stuff, not to mention them having been in a HUGE school system where they were basically numbers for the state’s budget headcount and are now in a tiny, also excellent school system where they are human beings with names, has resulted in all 4 of them flourishing. The pressure is off about “the stuff.” Now, it’s not about having to see the newest movie the day it comes out because all their friends did that. Now it’s about hiking and mountain biking and art and nature because THAT’s the focus of the community. The eldest got his tag to elk hunt (he turned 13) and the elk will be in their freezer. And he won’t be tied to a game system with his friends, which was his focus in Houston. He’ll be putting meat in the freezer (hope he gets a kill!) and living off the land instead of living off his I-Pad. How does a kid learn to get rich slowly? He learns to get off the gaming and all the financial/time cost that entails and go kill and elk to put food on the table. He’s put a LOT of time into target practice. For real. Not “target practice” in a game.
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The point I was trying to make is that the parents of my grandkids always had their heads screwed on straight (that’s how they got to be affluent with 4 kids), but the culture of the community and peer pressure had those kids tied to their game systems. The 13 yr. old had his 1st kill @ not quite 10 yrs. old — a 150 lb. ram. But it was hard for the parents to teach the kids how to live frugally/live off the land/be self sufficient in suburban Houston, where it was all about who has the newest video game and clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch in order to be ok. Community creates the peer pressure on the kids. Parents can go a long way in instilling values, but instilling those values is way easier if you live in a community that has those same values.
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The ability of kids to “fit in” socioeconomically strikes me as a very bad reason to move or stay somewhere. I think it’s important for kids to learn to deal from an early age. It’s not that hard–in every environment, there are minority groups (I don’t just mean ethnically) who are constantly coping. Heaven knows we’ll be faced with the same kinds of social pressures our whole lives, and I think it’s sad that some people don’t learn much about different lifestyles until they grow up and move away. It’s important to learn to recognize norms and then decide consciously whether you want to accept them. If everyone is similar to you, it’s easy to accept unthinkingly that certain things are “normal” and “the way the world is.”
In the 1990s, I went to a private, all-girls school in an extremely affluent area. Tuition was $14,000/year then (and it has almost doubled since). I remember going to birthday parties where people were obviously giving $50-70 gifts, whereas my budget hovered around $20-25 and was entirely funded by babysitting money. (I also had to ride my bike to buy the gifts, which limited the kinds of things I could buy for people.) There were some awkward moments, but it really worked out fine. People can learn to be tactful, and most start out that way. That said, having a uniform to wear every day probably helped ease the differences. We were also very academically motivated/distracted. The “stuff” just wasn’t that important, even though there were huge differences in how much people had.
I remember meeting people from different parts of the country and being shocked by teasing in the “other” direction. “Both your parents are lawyers? Did you fly here on a private jet?” and “You have a POOL HOUSE?” sort of talk. (The pool house was uninhabitable and a relic of 1950s ranch architecture in California.) That’s something to avoid too.
In short, I think it’s potentially counterproductive to try to “fit in” too much in this way. I lived in a very isolated developing country for a while after college, and I was very glad to have some experience and perspective when I was criticized for, e.g., not being married or spending my money like the diplomat expats.
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Kudos! It’s nice to hear a story like this one for a change. I think those of us who are from frugal families are hesitant to share our experiences because we don’t think they’re interesting enough.
I grew up in a split family — one side was well-off and the other wasn’t — and learned a lot about money versus happiness as a result. I think it’s helpful to see many different viewpoints.
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It’s not that frugal family experiences are somehow uninteresting – not at all. Just that there’s (unfortunately) a lot of us who come from spendthrift families and are learning frugality as a new skill. There’s room for everybody in this boat.
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Great story and great parents! How wonderful to hear about parents raising mature, thoughtful, well-rounded children and consciously teaching their children important lessons about critical things like saving and avoiding debt. I was also lucky to grow up with a very frugal immigrant grandma who avoided debt. She never paid more than $1-3 for shoes on sale at Payless, and she was proud of this fact, not embarrassed. She realized she just needed shoes to cover her feet, she never bothered to buy into marketing that tied her self worth to certain brands and styles. She canned, sewed and grew lots of food. She never wasted food, bought groceries on sale, and ate mostly simple, healthy, whole foods (which are very cheap, contrary to what many say). In every way of life, she lived below her means. And even on a very low tailor’s salary, she was able to buy a home, help her children with school and down payments on homes, and meet all of her needs. It’s amazing how far modest incomes can go when one is frugal and not motivated by peer pressure, trends and marketing.
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Great story! The seminary in Africa sounds like a terrific choice – I expect you gained a lot more from that experience than you would have in an American one, in addition to being able to pay for it without going into debt. Congratulations!
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we do not realise how important the parents habits are on their children.
had my parents not be frugal with their money i would not have understand the importance of money.
but what i like about you is that you manage to marry a healthy life style and great personal finance advice.
Cheers!
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I guess a tale about living frugally and finding happiness without any of the strife of life.
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Ha, I always resented my parents as a kid because we only had 1 TV (with 5 channels, no cable/dish), 1 car and hardly ever ate out despite being a dual earning family and my dad making pretty good money.
Well now we’re a family of 4, all earning, children paying rent, still with one TV, one car and a million home cooked meals, and I don’t resent them at all. A lot of my childhood friends got into debt as soon as they were 18 buying themselves a car, living on their own and barely making rent.
My parents aren’t the most frugal people in the world, but they have taught me some damn good lessons about money.
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Rent paid by children is reportable on 1040. Talk to your CPA.
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Unless there’s more than one Ru, she lives in the UK, so this isn’t applicable!
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For the general sake of the world, I hope there’s not more than one me! And yes, I live in the UK. Here you are allowed to earn a certain amount tax free from having a lodger, I believe.
(http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/TaxOnPropertyAndRentalIncome/DG_4017804)
The amount you are allowed tax free is £4250, and my parents get slightly less than that as I only pay rent to them over the summer months when I’m not at university.
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Not everyone lives in the US, Amanda! Some readers and writers on this site would do well to remember that if they don’t want to drive away a lot of non-American traffic.
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Geeze, how was she supposed to know that? Maybe ‘Ru” should have stated that in the beginning.
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This was fun to read at my current stage of life: We’re expecting our first child in October, and we’re planning to be a single (modest) income family, living in a fairly expensive city. We’ve talked a LOT about how we’ll be living frugally with kiddos. It’s good to think about the long term, (not just stuf like “will our landlord let us dry our laundry in the back yard?” but “will our kids resent having less fancy tchotchkes than their peers?”) . Thanks for the positive story. I hope that a couple of decades from now, my own kids will be able to say something similar about the values they got from their folks.
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Wait, what? A landlord can stop you drying laundry in your back yard?
That’s insane.
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@ Ru … some neighborhood associations and/or cities have ordinances against drying your laundry outside your home. I think it’s an aesthetic thing, one I don’t really understand when it’s being done in the backyard.
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Wow. I didn’t know that! We don’t really have housing associations here in the UK, and I’m glad of it from what I’ve seen. Fining people in California for not having a green lawn, forbidding you to dry your laundry properly… it sounds to me like it’s living in a little fascist bubble!
I want to refuse to believe that a city would pass an ordinance against drying your clothes, but then a woman in Michigan faces jail time for having a vegetable garden, so I’m prepared to believe anything now:
http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/08/woman-faces-jail-time-for-planting-organic-vegetable-garden/
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Ru – it’s not so unusual to see this in the UK (not for whole neighbourhoods, but for developments etc.)
For example, when I lived in Bromley (outside of London), we regularly received menacing letters from the factor when we had the audacity to hang a small quantity of washing to dry on a wire airer on our balcony.
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For my part, I was amazed at all the line drying I saw when I spent some time in the UK. If someone had asked me before I went, I would have thought such a damp climate would use dryers more. I was told that a lot of it comes down to the price of electricity – cheaper in the US apparently. Same thing when I was in Italy, lots of clothes lines and I was told the same reason.
lol, I was also amazed to see GREEN grass under the snow. In Kansas, by the end of the summer the grass is very dry and brown (unless you water).
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I know there have been some tuffles in Marin County, CA, over outdoor laundry drying.
Where I grew up in California, you weren’t even supposed to leave your car out in the driveway overnight. (Street parking was illegal.) It was considered an eyesore, so cars were supposed to go in garages. It wasn’t really enforced, though.
These policies are not really fascist; they almost all come from homeowner associations. It’s people “protecting their neighborhoods” and property values.
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I was born and raised in California (Bay Area), lived there for 31 years and never heard of such a law/rule. We parked out cars on the street and hung out clothing to dry in our back yards. Maybe its mostly suburban housing development and HOA rules, not actual city living.
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@Carla: Atherton. Maybe just Lindenwood.
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Well, Atherton, that explains it! When you’re talking about *wealthy* communities, I’m not surprised.
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I live in a neighborhood that doesn’t allow clothes lines (ridiculous). I get around it via a portable line that folds up sort of like an umbrella (got it at Wal-Mart for Christmas). You can put it in the ground, but I run it through the umbrella hole of my patio table. Works perfectly and is basically out of site of neighbors.
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I call that a rotary drier. We have one too, as well as a line that zigzags over the lawn. The rotary is good for small things, while the free line works better for sheets.
I recently stayed with a rather wealthy girl in the New Forest (her hospitality was crap but that’s another story), wealthy enough that they had a summer house, a pool, a jacuzzi, koi pond, elegant green house, and a huge garage with accommodation above it. They still had a rotary line, but they’d classed it up a bit by building it a little rockery to stand in and turning it into a garden feature. It looked hilarious.
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Amazing.
I spent about $50 a month outside of rent/utility and I was proud of it!
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Will Simon’s parents please adopt me? They sound like absolutely wonderful people!
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I love this story! Read it holding my 6 week old baby in my arms. Her dad and I weren’t raised this way but hope to change our family tree with her – thanks for the inspiration!
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Your story shows how living with a purpose puts other things like money into place. Maybe I am attributing too much to a grand plan to what you wrote, but it sounds that way to me. Some find your choices too confining, but it is all about choices.
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I enjoyed this story too. I grew up with parents who taught me good money skills with some frugality thrown into the mix.
I embraced frugality whole-heartedly because I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I scrimped in areas that I considered unimportant and splurged a bit in areas that we valued.
My children are now 23 and 20 years old. I’ve asked them how they feel about having grown up with thrifty, do-it-yourself parents. My daughter loved it and is just as frugal as I ever was. My son has more mixed feelings about it. He cared a lot more about name brand items and the opinion of his peers than his sister did. He’s also quick to add that he appreciates the family vacations we were able to take around our country, and he’s happy that he’ll be able to graduate from college debt-free…all because we made thoughtful money decisions throughout the years. Time will tell whether or not he embraces frugality the way that his sister has.
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cerb – I expect your son will appreciate his freedom from student loans more and more as time goes on. He will be able to pursue opportunities unavailable to his peers who will be making student loan payments for the next 10-15+ years.
My DH and I both received the tremendous gift of student-loan-free education from our parents. This year we will pay off the mortgage on the rental property DH bought after college, and our primary residence will be paid off before we’re both 45. As DH’s job allows him to live just about anywhere, we will likely “end up in our starter home” (to quote Jeff Yeager) and look forward to many years of mortgage-free living.
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This comment shows that parental influence is only one part of the story. The personality of each child is also important. I have two siblings and the three of us have as many differences as similarities when it comes to money skills.
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It would be nice if this were the American Dream. But just watch an episode of “Househunters” and you will see how much we expect so early in life.
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Great story and one that I hope a lot of people can relate to. Thanks for sharing. I also think Nicoles post (comment 1) was a really good read too.
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My mother handled the household finances, and she was pretty frugal when I was growing up. I remember her always scolding us for leaving lights on, never buying name-brand food, and cooking all our meals at home (except for occasionally ordering a pizza as a treat), and discouraging me from getting a credit card ever.
It had some effect on me, I guess. Cooking all my meals feels normal to me, and I didn’t get a credit card until my senior year in college. I’ve don’t have significant debt.
Still, I feel like it was never made clear WHY we did the things we did, so some messages never got passed out quite right. I never saw the point of turning out lights because I didn’t realize how much money it might be costing. I didn’t understand having an emergency fund until I started reading personal finance blogs. I wish my parents had been able to communicate some of these things better to me, though at least I figured it out on my own before anything terrible happened.
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Great comment, Sarah, I completely agree. My mom was the most frugal of them all and a great role model, but I always thought she was a little off her rocker because she never sat me down and explained finances to me in detail. I wish she had, because I spent my college years trying to keep up with my peers and it took me 3 years post-college to get all my credit card debt paid and start building savings…and this is with substantial scholarships that paid tuition AND working practically full-time in college. Ahhh if only, if only — but at least now I know and can look back on what she did as an example!
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My parents were very similar. They were/are very frugal but they never really explained things in a big picture way. My dad would say things like “Close your closet door, I’m not paying to air condition your closet” so I knew the utilities cost money (in a vague way) but not how much. My parents never wanted us to know exactly how much they earned, but they also didn’t do anything like “electricity costs this percentage of our income, gas to heat the house costs this much, etc”. We knew they were frugal and occassionally they told us explicit things (like continuing to make a car “payment” into a savings account after the loan is paid off) but most of it was by example. As such, there are a lot of details we had to learn on our own. It’s not bad, I know you learn best when you can do it yourself, but if I ever have kids I’m going to be more explicit about things.
I love the way the mother talked about in the link of comment #34 involved her kids in the family financial decisions. I think that is great, showing the kids the value of money and choices and empowering them to help further the family goals too.
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Be happy you want to cook at home. My mom rarely cooked so now I constantly battle wanting to eat out 3-4 nights a week. Pizza was her frugality.
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My mom was the same way. As a young adult I struggle to keep my eating out to once a month and to cook the rest of the time. It is a struggle when it should not be.
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My parents were quite frugal, though prehaps unnecessarily so since they BOTH took home six-figure incomes.We had nice vacations, but as a kid I resented living in the “poor” neighborhood.
Their frugality was the main reason I am only now considering going to school for an MBA with future corporate aspirations. They thought it didn’t seem practical and business in general was a world they didn’t understand.
Though I value the priorities like fiscal responsibility, my parents’ frugality taught me to be risk-adverse, often to my own detriment. The “safe” route they planned for me turned out to be over saturated without the promised job security and had a horrible work-life balance. (teaching)
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Great post. My parents raised me with similar values toward money and I’ve grown to appreciate it. As a kid, I was somewhat embarrassed by my dad’s rundown used car and envious of my friends whose parents took them on expensive vacations. Now I realize it was because paying for a private religious school for my siblings and me was more important to them.
Furthermore, my parents have retired at least 10 years earlier than their peers and it’s allowed my dad to take good care of his health and both of them to enjoy many things they put off during my siblings and my childhood in order to provide a good education for us.
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I forgot to mention that I like that Simon never felt shamed by his parents. I do think I got some guilt trips and didn’t understand completely why my parents made their decisions. Instead I remember them saying, “We can’t afford it.” That wasn’t true. They were making a choice pay for something else that was more valuable to them. I think that type of communication about making choices is important for children.
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I get the point that you appreciate the sacrifices and lessons that your parents made. However, I have a problem with including “divorcing” in the same group as “shaming” and “abusing.”
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Also included in that group was “paid for years of violin lessons”.
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The inclusion of divorce on that list really rubbed me the wrong way, too. Parents getting divorced doesn’t necessarily mean you had an unhealthy childhood, just as parents staying together doesn’t necessarily mean you had a healthy one.
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I enjoyed reading this. Although my parents did not do as much as yours, I did learn many tricks and money lessons from them. Many of them my peers never did. I definitely feel my parents taught me the value of a dollar and was told how bad debt could be. I receive many compliments from my peers, and people old enough to be my parents, on how thrifty I am and have trained my husband to be. Thanks for sharing your story.
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what a beautiful story, thank you for sharing it – so inspiring!!!
But this shocked me: “Many of my fellow pastors are $50,000 in debt from seminary”
Are you *serious*??? Even divinity schools put kids into debt? I thought it was only business school and medical schools? How very sad. Education is moving away from being a right, to becoming a privilege.
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I don’t think that higher education has ever been a “right” in the USA, has it?
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this blog is also read by people outside of the US.
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Education (in the US) isn’t moving away from being a right to a privilege – it’s always been that way. The difference now is that more students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are attending college, not just the wealthy kids, since a Bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma.
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Both of my parents went to seminary and paid through the nose for it. Just because a course of study is explicitly God-related doesn’t mean it is (or should be) free of charge.
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I have no debt from undergrad, but I am going ~$14,000 in debt for the program to get my teaching license. And I TA at the university, so I am only paying a portion of the tuition and not taking out loans for living expenses. School in general is expensive, unfortunately.
My parents raised me the same way as Simon’s, and I thank my mom regularly. Despite my income hovering around the poverty level for a few years, I have no debt and pay for my own health insurance. (I chose to take on fun, low-paying jobs where I accrued good experience and was able to do so thanks to lack of loan debt.) I do without a lot of things, I suppose, but I don’t really miss them thanks to how I was raised.
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But are you not still 20k in the hole due to your bachelors degree? What is the point of making “fun games” with food and college buddies if you cannot apply the money saved to what gets people in debt in the first place? Where is the balance? I too have an issue with ‘divorcing’ being in the same group as ‘shaming and abusing’. In fact, none of that has anything to do with being frugal and saving money.
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Your comment is erroneous. Being raised by folks who cared and shared and worked hard together as a family has a lot to do with frugality/staying married. All of these are life choices.
Moreover, divorces are extremely expensive. On top of that, setting up a new, separate household is extremely expensive.
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Beth & Tom:
I agree with both of you on different parts.
Coming from a broken family, I agree with Beth on how expensive divorces can be and it is not easy to start everything from scratch with one person’s income. Not to mention the consequences of my father’s bad financial decisions on my mother and us. As result, I have became frugal and wealth conscious person only because I have seen the bad side of it. Therefore, I agree with Tom regarding divorce has anything to do with frugality. In fact, it has the opposite effect on me. If my parents are still married today, I will most likely be the spoil brat who does not appreciate anything in life.
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This is all said and good. Glad you found your own niche and happiness along with it. Awesome that you had parents who taught you well.
But for me in particular, and not sure for who else may be in the same boat, I can only resent you to a certain level because of the things you don’t have. Not to put you down in anyway, but just so you understand where I come from.
I do not come from a family who instilled in me frugal values, rather I learned through my own painstaking experiences and explorations. I live in a upper middle class area, where 10 year olds have ipods, teenage girls have multiple designer bags, and expensive dinners are the norm.
In my eyes, you are extremely frugal and I envy how much money you can save. But as for me, to save on that level I would be shunned by peers, crippling my growth in my career as well as with a possible chance at meeting a future spouse. Yes, the community I am is disgustingly materialistic, but as for me, I kind of have to play by the law of the land so that I am not a pariah but also I do enjoy some material possessions myself. I do not wish to be like everyone else, but at the same time, I believe there’s another answer (Spend what I must, but advance to earning a bigger salary) that would make more sense.
Same basic rules apply, spend less than I earn and other rules, but as for being aggressive in saving in the beginning does not seem that much worth the work. Rather, spend with saving in mind, but as I climb the corporate ladder, start making more money while still maintaining what I used to spend.
This is my own personal goal, even with my lax plan I still believe I can pay the 20k school debt I have in 3 years, along with the $200 monthly phone bill(I help pay for my family), my 300 monthly car payment, on a 33k salary. I may not have total freedom such as yourself, but being enslaved by a few things isn’t all that bad.
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If you are living on 33k, you should not have a 200 phone bill nor a $300 car payment. Maybe you should move to a cheaper area, instead of just hoping to get a better job. People don’t become pariahs just from a little frugality.
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I agree that the communities we choose to live and work in do set certain expectations for how we spend. Much of that is in appearances. $20k in 3 years is a feat. Good luck.
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Coincidentally, this was published today, also. (About raising kids with an understanding of choices/tradeoffs.)
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/
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As that link heads to the most recent Dear Abby, this one should head to the exact one:
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20110710
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Thanks, Ru.
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Thanks for the article. I agree 100%. Instead of the person who hoped that many could relate to this person, I CAN relate.
I have a hard time relating to the people who go so much into debt for things I think are kind of stupid, or peer-driven, or think they have to eat out every day (when they can’t afford it).
Thanks for posting this. Good job, on learning lessons that will help you throughout life.
My DH went back to school to get his PHD –in Old Testament–seminary–after we were married, but we worked as houseparents at a children’s home, and managed to keep out of debt. I’m so grateful. We lived “very close” though–nothing like I read many college students do.
But we have noticed though time, that it seems like many college students just seem to have more money to spend than our era did. I think expectations are different nowadays.
But those of us who had frugal parents can be so grateful. We can blame our parents for “not teaching us” because they didn’t sit down and explain everything, but surely some things are “caught and not taught”, aren’t they?
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I don’t blame my parents for not being as detailed about personal finance as I hope to be someday with any kids I may have. What I “caught” was more of a generally frugal feeling … what I could have wished were a few conversations about credit, credit cards, mortgages, retirement, investments, etc. Now that I’m in my thirties and have already pursued educating myself about these issues, my parents and I will talk about them all. But as a teenager, not really. I knew we weren’t rich but we never went without anything we needed. I always knew we would have plenty to eat and new clothes for school, and I also knew there would be a limit on how much my parents would spend or how much would be name brand. We were/are firmly middle class and never first adopters of any trend.
My parents raised us well and I love them very much. I take full responsibility for my own mistakes. It is not blame that motivated me to say that I wish my parents had been more explicit in some of their PF lessons as we were growing up, it is more like an alternate history fantasy.
It is also a lesson I’ve come away with for myself when dealing with children (I have nieces and nephews) and personal finance.
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Very inspiring Simon, congratulations to you and your parents!
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Great story, as I commented above. I did think of one question that’s lingered with me, though. Why did you ever get into $20K of undergrad debt, and why do you still have it??? It seems that with just a little extra work during the school year or summers, you could have earned an extra $5000 per year to totally avoid debt (the best approach, in my opinion). Or, given your frugal ways and savings, it seems you could have paid it off already.
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Great story. There were 5 of us growing up and my Dad was the only one who worked. Mom was frugal but at the time I didn’t know that our family lived any different than anyone elses. Mom made our yearly shopping trip for school clothes an exciting and fun outing that we couldn’t wait for each year. We lived in a small town in New England that provided plenty of low or no cost activities for the youth of the community and we took full advantage of it. It doesn’t take money to have a wonderful childhood. It’s takes the love and the security of a supportive family.
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Great post…seems like great parents. My folks gave me two money lessons:
1. Never spend more than you make.
2. Always save at least 10% of your pay.
Basic, but effective.
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Was anyone else struck by the fact that the reason the writer does not have graduate school debt is because he talked others into donating money to him to pay for his divinity degree? I too was raised by very frugal parents, and I’m thankful for all they showed and taught me, and I would have been extremely uncomfortable with that. But perhaps he is giving back to that faith community through direct service as their pastor now.
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Amen
It’s nice to hear from others who came from happily boring (and frugal) households. My brother did the same as you – he lived (almost) entirely on rice and beans for four semesters, just to prove he could. On the other hand, I somewhat doubt he CAN cook anything else, so who knows?
May God continue to bless your efforts.
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It’s great that your parents taught you economic sense, although I would be more impressed if you didn’t have under 20k in debt. I suppose I’m more impressed with people that graduate college with no debt.
My bf learned how to program when he was a teen, he got his first job after high school in programming, now he works at a different company however they’re paying for his degree.
He’s getting a computer science degree. I’m also impressed when people work two or three jobs to graduate debt free. It seems contradicting to talk about how frugal one is and then admit that they have college debt.
I’m sure you could have sacrificed some of your free time in college to have graduated with less debt.
Anyway aside from that I think it’s wonderful that your parents were loving folks who taught you things about money. I grew up with parents who were never in debt, and who always saved.
I thought everyone knew about frugality, I thought frugality was common knowledge until I was in my late teens and learned there were many people in massive debt. So yes, I’m also grateful my parents were wise with their money.
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I enjoyed this story — nice to hear of someone who didn’t have to sink far into debt before he figured it out! I grew up in a household that, while not as frugal as the writer describes, was certainly dedicated to living within our means. Good life lessons.
I was appalled by his description of his student diet, though: rice, beans, cheese and a multivitamin? Health is worth something too, and I wonder if he’ll pay for this sad nutrition later. When I knew I wanted to get through professional school with minimal debt, I collected vegetarian recipes from my Indian and Asian friends. A few spices and a lot of frozen vegetables didn’t add much to my food budget. No need to pay for the supplement, either. I learned to cook for real and I bet it was a lot more interesting.
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I also am headed to professional school and want to graduate with minimal debt. I might describe our diet as mostly rice and beans but really it’s mexican, indian or another theme of the night with vegetables that were on sale or cheap at the market like cilantro, broccoli, sweet potatoes, etc. Beans are really nutritionally solid so if you were only going to eat two things, beans and brown rice might not be bad choices, but eating them with produce is, of course, better.
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Thanks for the upbeat story. Pleasure to read; and as a father of a 17 and 19 year old it’s a good reminder to me about leaving a legacy.
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This a bit of fresh air in a blog community that often focuses around getting out of debt instead of avoiding it altogether.
I also had frugal parents and while I didn’t always enjoy it growing up, I always knew that my parents had set financial priorities that were best for the family. (There was an epic battle around thrift store clothes when I was in middle school, but I quickly went back before high school as I realized how expensive clothes could be) I think that’s made me a much more responsible and long-sighted person than I otherwise would have been and I am very appreciative for the sacrifices my parents made and mimic those choices in my own life now to save for graduate school and retirement.
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When it was time to buy clothes for older school kids at the end of summer I would give each child $100 for clothing. They could blow it on a couple of “really cool stuff” or lots of cheap on sale stuff. It was up to them.
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Loved this piece. The parents showed priorities which is what I always hoped to instill in my children. You can grow your own food yet pay for violin lessons. It is important not to waste money on limited value added goods and services. What is critical is to carefully select what is needed or wanted and spend money accordingly. Money is power after all.
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Sweet story. I always feel like these stories are completely alien to me, but in a good way.
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What I would like to know is how other frugal people talk about money issues with their more spendy friends… We are all a few years out of college, and the conversation often turns to car payments, school loans, turning vegetarian only because meat is too expensive, etc.
I am fortunate to be debt-free through family, summer jobs and scholarships paying for college, now a full assistantship in grad school, own my well-used car and save 30% of my income.
And yet, I feel awkward trying to contribute to the conversation when some friends are living paycheck to paycheck, or close to it. I ventured that saving 10% might be a good starting point, but apparently that’s not even doable for some.
Can this be compared to when friends all start getting married and having kids and you’re still single? They’re already tired of my science lectures, not sure I want to turn into the accountant too…
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It could be your friends attitudes too. My friends have a very spend freely and enjoy being young attitude. So they are in credit debt driving fancy cars and drinking expensive alcohol like it’s going out of style. Yet they always ask my how I can afford to travel all over the world and it’s simply because I don’t do what they do.
The real problem comes when they call me cheap for not buying soda at restaurants. They also like to buy meals that are double the price of mine and yet think I should split every bill with them 50/50.
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One way to avoid coming off as a lecturer is to wait for your friends to bring up PF topics. When they do, try to reflect the tone of the conversation and relate things you know or have experienced for yourself and then stop. If they ask more, then give more detail and if they don’t, then stay quiet. They have the same ability to ask questions, google, follow blogs and check out library books as we all do so if you say something that sparks their interest they can pursue it further privately if they like.
Also, feel free to bring up topics or articles you read that excite you. Just like your other interests, you shouldn’t feel like you have to hide your enjoyment of particular topics or a blog post that made you look at something in a whole new way.
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Thanks Jaime, these are all great suggestions!
I think a lot of walls have come down when it comes to talking about money. My parents never talked about money with people outside the family, and don’t seem to understand why I do… but it’s definitely more rewarding to talk to my peers, who are often in similar situations – especially us poor grad students
for the record, the friends I am referencing do not live flashy lifestyles, but are adjusting to living completely on their own for the first time…
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As someone who has chosen to live frugally, I can say the best part is a marriage free from money arguments! What an amazing gift you will give your future wife!
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Excellent, excellent story. It’s so refreshing to hear a success story like this, where it starts off good and ends even better. It’s a great example of doing it the right way from the start, instead of learning the hard way, like so many of us have had to do.
My parents tried to teach me a few things, but they were too busy trying to dig themselves out of debt their entire lives to really set any sort of example, so I followed suit for many years.
I just find it INSANE that most of made it through our American education system with high school, college, post-graduate degrees – yet hardly learned a darn thing about practical, day-to-day money management (e.g. “spend less than you earn”). I didn’t really learn how to do a proper budgeting/savings/get-out-of-debt techniques until my mid-30′s (THANKS to people like JD, Dave Ramsey, and other authors). By then I had already wasted years and lots of money doing everything wrong. Isn’t that just crazy!?
I’m not saying we should leave it up to our education system to fix, but at least try.
It’s no wonder our country’s financial situation is so messed up – all of us are learning this stuff the hard way!!
Great story. Thanks for sharing!
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I have a very similar childhood, we didn’t can our own sauce or anything like that but my dad is extremely frugal and taught me to be the same. I use credit cards like crazy, for everything I buy, but I have never been once late on a payment and always know exactly how much i’m spending. I just treat it as a month loan to gain a little interest in my savings account (doesn’t really count for much these days though
).
I have zero debt now and although my savings account is not nearly as big as I’d like at 26 I max my IRA every year and i’m putting 10% of my paycheck in my 401K. Watching every other friend of mine basically killing themselves to get out of debt yet they still drive BMWs and spend 100 dollars a weekend on drinking. This is the attitude that got us in our current financial crisis. I just am very happy my parents taught me not to do this without myself really ever realizing.
Thanks for the article, it was great!
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WOW! Lots of great stories!! Although I’m not into “frugality” I can appreciate a good success story of a way of life some people may think is crazy (not me of course). I remember my parents telling me stories about how they were raised with almost any money, life was really hard those days but they come up just fine. Reading the story and some of the comments makes me think about my parents and how a lot of things that we teach our kids are not wright. Thanks to JD and all the people who gave their opinion! I think I just started with my first step to live a better life.
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loved this!
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Overall,
I found this to be a very-refreshing “Reader Story.” It was enlightening to hear one’s tale from the “other-side-of-the-fence” so to speak.
That being said, I found the beginning was very much “holier-than-thou” (no pun intended) describing having: “large backyards, deer to hunt, maple trees to tap etc.” which truly is moreso the lifestyle of those living in more rural surroundings, while we must realize that the most highly-populated areas in North America reside tight urban areas. To put it plainly: most of us don’t have access to the types of lifestyle means you described in the beginning of the article, therefore, this tale is not as relate-able as the author would imagine or perhaps had intended.
Now, that being said, I found that the essential principles described in the latter part of the article: simple living, frugality, less debt = less need to work etc. were great. They are the financial truths that are so rarely exhibited in our contemporary society.
I wish the author all of the best in his future endeavors & and am quite pleased that he is so thankful for his humbilizing roots
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thanks everyone. i enjoyed writing this. its been fun reading your comments!
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