Money...

[susandennis]

I was raised that you did not discuss money but that you made it your business to know - somehow - the financial details of everyone you know and base your judgments on those suppositions.  My brother and sister and I got allowances from the time time we could rap our tiny fists around coins.  They started at 10 cents a week.  (At that time 10 cents bought a coke and a candy bar.)  When we got school age, our allowance was raised to $1.00 but we were required to donate 10% to the church.

About age 13, we were given the option of a monthly allowance.  A vast sum (the number $35 sticks in my head but I don't know if that is right) that was to include, school lunches, clothes, records, anything we wanted.  Again 10% to church but after that we could buy whatever we wanted with no questions asked.  And there were no advances and no loopholes.  You ran out of money, you did without until the 1st of the month.  No exceptions at all ever. 

Daddy was very good about teaching (at least me) how to plan and how to budget. 

I started making my lunch and taking it to school.  After a week of this, Mom posted a price list on the fridge.  The school cafeteria was cheaper. 

It was a family joke that the last monthly allowance would be dolled out on May 1 of the year we graduated from college.  (On graduation day, Daddy gave me a small gift wrapped box.  In it was a check for an extra month's allowance with a note indicating that it was a bonus cause I'd been such a good employee. Cute of him, I thought.)

None of my friends had this kind of money situation.  Most just got money from their parents when they wanted it.  Some got pretty much unlimited amounts.  Some very little.  Their family's money rules were very odd to me and I didn't understand them.  Mom and Dad made the rules very clear and iron clad.

Interestingly, none of us turned out - at least initially - to be good with money.   I did better than the other two but it's only been in the last 20 years that I got really smart with my money.  My sister never has and never will - at least for as much as I know.  Since the only interaction I've had with her in the last two years has been emails asking for more money, my opinion my be skewed.  My brother finally got his act together about 5 years ago. 

In the past two years, I have really felt on top of my money game.  I'm now 58 years old.  I have enough money to do what I want and enough to make me feel safe and comfortable about my future.   It's a wonderful feeling.  Money may not buy happiness but I can tell you that it buys a wonderful feeling of security.

This whole topic has been on my mind since dotgirl had an entry (friends only, I'm sorry to say) about discussing what makes you feel like you've 'made it'.  And then, hot on the heels of that, judith's daughter, Elaine, had an entry about what she spends each month.  Her entry was inspired by Bitch Ph.D. who is trying to figure out how in the heck she gets buy!

It made me look at what it takes to keep the SD HQ machine humming every month.  So here's what I spend:

Telephone/DSL $60
Electricity $50
*Insurance (car, house, health) $100
Mortgage $900
*Home Owners Association $420
*Taxes $1,100
IRA contribution matched by my boss $200
Netflix and TiVo $20
*Website hosting $20
CableTV $50

*paid annually or semi annually

Since my income is variable - I kind of consider the list above as my nut.   The list below is what I usually spend but if I were to have an 'off' month income wise, it's where I would do a little carving.

Charities $300
Food $300
Gas $23
Savings $500
Misc hardware TV/computer/stuff $300

Comments

[pisceandreamer.livejournal.com]

We got allowances in grade school & high school - can't remember the amounts, but occasionally we could get an advance if the circumstances warranted it.

I know when I went to college, my spending money was what I'd earned over the summer - my Dad actually "owned" the account - I would cash my paychecks and hand the bulk of it over to him and he'd put it in a mutual fund of some sort. I remember having to damn near beg him to get the money - having to remind him it was mine in the first place!! My Mom was good about telling him to shut up and write me a check for my money. :) I knew girls in college who just called home for money, and got it no matter what. Seemed SO strange to me.

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

I didn't get a set allowance, I was simply given money as I needed it for what ever. But I was expected to do a lot of things around the house (and I don't mean the usual "kid chores"...for instance, from the time I was 12 I did all the laundry and about 90 percent of the cooking) in return. The only conditions, beyond the chores, were that I had to be in school and making decent grades, and anything "really big ticket" that was not a necessity (like a car) was up to me. For stuff like that, I cut grass around the neighborhood...15 yards a week at my peak.

[vasilatos]

My parents had a system where chores were assigned points and we had to do enough chores to add up to 25 points, to get a dime allowance, from when I was four. It improved our arithmetic skills. The amount grew over time, maxing out at something like five bucks a week.

When we turned 15, all money was cut off and we were expected to work and buy our own clothes and cars and stuff. Room and board were provided if we behaved. Pretty much all of us got thrown out mid-teens. I went back home to take care of everyone when I was 19, and forgot how mad the whole thing made me until now. Huh.

[howeird]

Well, we got a tiny allowance, a nickel then 10 cents and then a quarter and finally a dollar. But never any monthly thing, and there was never any concept of it being for *everything*. Parents were responsible for food, clothing, special fees (like for school field trips) and such. There was no concept of formal tithing, though we always had a couple of for-charity coin boxes on the fridge, if you had or found spare change, it went into there. And we collected for UNICEF at halloween.

My parents are both brilliant with money - Mom was assistant City Treasurer in charge of City Light's accounts receivables section when she retired, and Dad earned a Master's in Economics and most of an MBA just for fun when he worked for a research program based at the UW. But they never taught us anything about budgeting. That was something we were supposed to learn in school. And we did. But none of us were ever any good at it. Still aren't.