Who taught you about money?

[johnep]

I am pretty much self taught. I did not get my degree until I was 33 years old. One of last classes I took was a personal finance class that was excellent. It covered a lot of topics that young people need to know including investments. IMO, this type of class should be taught to high school students to introduce them to the world of finance. It would probably be the most practical and useful subject they are ever taught. Through process of life I had already learned a lot of that except for the investment part which was mostly new to me. Later as i began to invest, I became subscriber to Money and Kiplinger and would go to library to read and research funds with Morningstar. I discovered this forum about a year ago. Although i was very familiar with indexing, I then read books by Ferri, Swedroe, Bogle and Bernstein to try and gain a thorough understanding of the passive investment approach they all advocate. I usually check Money, Morningstar and Bogleheads daily and occasionally WSJ for financial and investment information.

However, my parents did teach me the value of money and to not be frivolous with it. I grew up in a blue collar family in Appalachia where both parents worked. Money was always tight although our parents did provide our basic needs very well. I had parttime jobs from age of 12: newspaper route, selling concessions, mowing yards and others to get spending money and to buy extra things I wanted like baseball glove, vacation money, etc. I am sure those experiences helped me in later life to manage my money effecitvely.

[investor]

Grew up getting an allowance: 10¢ on Wednesday and 15¢ on Saturdays, cira 1940's. When older made spending money by mowing lawns. Parents openly discussed money at the dinner table. . with the heavy influence of the great depression on my father. I had a "postal savings account" and later a "bank account". Learning about saving money. When finally landing a carrier job and having money to invest I used direct deductions from my pay check to fund 401(k) and IRA accounts plus mutual finds on the side.

My father was self taught about stock investing in the late 1950's but there was little available for the little guy. I took a formal investment class at community college in 1969. Attended all the seminars I could find and read what i could about investing. Mostly self taught with the bug being planted by my parents. The only way i could save money was via a direct deduction from a pay check. . Was raised to stay out of debt and if you could not pay cash for it you did not buy it....It all worked; retired at age 55 some 16 years ago and now collect commas.

investor.

[EyeYield]

My mother, who grew up putting cardboard in her shoes, because she was so poor.

I was raised to value saving and education.

I could go on and on about good ole mom, but here's a few stories that illustrate how I was raised.

While my dad was overseas during the second world war he sent his pay checks home so mom could live.
When he returned, he asked my mom what she wanted to do. She replied, "buy a house". He laughed, "with what"?
She said she had saved all the money he had sent home and worked two jobs and saved that money and now had enough to pay cash for a house.

When I had my first paper route, at age ten, my mom made me invest part of my pay in DRIP's that she had already set up as custodial accounts. (I still keep parts of them today as a reminder.) That was the beginning of a save and invest habit that has stayed with me my entire life.

My mom went with me to help negotiate a deal, buying my first car when I was sixteen. When the salesman, instead of going down on price, offered us a great interest rate on a loan, my mom laughed and stated with authority that she didn't pay interest, she earned it! She wore that poor guy out and I got a great cash deal. (I've used that line repeatedly during my life and it never fails to get an interesting response.)

My mom never borrowed money for anything, including a car or a house. I was taught if I wanted something, I saved for it.

I learned to live frugally, way below my means, and to this day spend a great deal of time researching what I want to buy before I negotiate a cash deal.

Calculating how much more something would cost when adding interest to it always brings the lessons my mom taught me back to the front of my consciousness.

Thanks mom!

[Go Blue 99]

My very frugal parents taught me about the importance of living below your means. They had the least money of any of their friends or family, but never tried to keep up with the Joneses.

My dad and uncle taught me about the importance of saving for retirement when I got my first post-college job. They only had basic knowledge in this area, so I learned my advanced knowledge via the Vanguard Diehards message board and various books.

[sesq]

I am one of four, and I am my parent's best disciple when it comes to money matters. My mother taught my frugality and open a passbook savings account when I was about 10. I loved going into the bank with a deposit and then seeing the type machine update the interest in the account. Very tangible, very real. Rates were variable between 4.5% and 5.25%. I am not sure why I remember that 30 years in the future.

My father had more investing knowledge and we used to drive around listening to Bob Brinker. My father would talk about critical mass (BB's term for Financial Independence) and how money is a tool. He'd try to get me to watch Louis Ruykeiser (sp?), but I could never get into that. I remember when I was in college my dad sat me down and show'd me a table of the impact of compound interest. It showed a 22 year old investing $2k/year for 8 years would have as much money as some one who invested 2K per year at age 32 till retirement. It used (a now reviled) 12% rate of interest, but made a big impression and motivated me to start early (I think I was 23) and often. He pointed out the best answer is not to stop saving after 8 years, but to keep going to open up options. I still have that piece of paper in my files somewhere.

While my parents were helpful on the concepts (LBYM, compound interest) specifics were never discussed. As they age I have learned from my father that he made some really crazy moves at different times that both paid and hurt at different points involving individual securities and market timing. His big market timing win was he went in heavy after the 1987 crash. That has at times given my the fortitude to ride out downturns.

[Dandy]

1. Mom open a savings account and told me about the benefits of savings
2. 1st jobe -a co worker suggested buying savings bonds and automating savings, and increasing that each time I got a raise.
3. Money Magazine got me to invest in mutual funds when IRA'a became available
4. Wm Bernstein's 4 Pillars of Investing and the Bogleheads Guide to investing got me to focus on allocations, and use of broadbased index funds and a rational approach to investing -- and to ignore the pundits.

I was a busines major in college and finance major in grad school and no schooling really taught me anything about managing money or for that matter anything useful in personal finance.

[citromike]

I was mostly self-taught. My grandfather (who developed Snowy Bleach, Glass Wax and Mr Bubble) taught me that growing your money meant spending less than you bring home. My step-father (who grew up desperately poor in West Virginia) taught me by example that chasing speculative investments, getting into tax scams, etc. was an excellent way to lose money. I think he had his paychecks garnished a three or four times during my school years. My father-in-law gave me a good example when we bought our first house - he went with us to the savings & loan office and told the loan officer that we were a good risk but he sure as heck wasn't going to co-sign for us. He said "Give them a loan and let them learn to be responsible for themselves" and the loan officer did just as he suggested - I think home loans were about 9% then, with 20% down.

I taught myself about losing money by investing in several companies whose products I liked, without knowing anything about the business behind the products. I even encouraged friends to invest, and watched them lose all their money too. It was money we could afford to lose, but it was still lost. Then I saw some older friends lose their shirts on land speculation. After I watched the sheriff's marshals come in and change the locks and throw my employer out of the building when he defaulted on a loan, I learned to think hard about losing.

Many years later, as a consultant, I decided to take only direct (cash) payment from my clients - no stock options, no commissions - nothing but honest dollars paid for honest time spent. Maybe I missed the big one ... but I was able to pay down my mortgage, live well, and owe nothing.

I watched another employer put her paychecks into the desk drawer, week after week, when she didn't have enough in the checking account to make payroll AND pay herself. Later when times were good, she could cash them (aerospace industry). That discipline made a big impact on me - just at the right time - in my senior year of college.

I started an IRA when in my early 20's. Because our expenses were low we were able to contribute regularly into IRA and later 401(k)s. I learned the hard way about front-load funds and back-load funds, thanks to a broker who took advantage of my lack of knowledge and put me into highly-loaded American Funds. While the load period was running down, I read all I could about investing. As I was living in England for a year, I started taking the Financial Times (which I still read daily) and I found Bogle's A Random Walk Down Wall Street. It made sense to me. I took all my money from that broker and moved it to Vanguard 20+ years ago.

One of my early mentors in the working world was a prof at Wharton Business School. He said "invest, don't withdraw". Until this year when I retired, I never withdrew anything from Vanguard. My advisor there laughed when I asked him how to take money out. That's my main secret - put in, don't take out.

[Abe]

I love reading these stories. I don't remember anyone directly teaching me about money, but I think financial values were instilled in me from my parents. I never received an allowance. My parents provided basic needs for me, but if I wanted anything extra, I usually had to figure out a way to get the money. When I was very young, I picked up returnable bottles and scrap iron. The local grocery store would buy the bottles for a penny each, and I sold the scrap iron at a local junk yard. I vaguely remember either my father or mother taking me to our local bank and opening an account in my name. I think I had about $5.00 to deposit. I first became aware of how hard it was to get money when I was sixteen and got a job doing carpenter work for .65c an hour. I never earned a lot of money, but I always saved part of it. I think my first goal was to save $5,000.00. After that, I remember I had a goal to save $100,000. I just kept on setting higher goals and I am still doing it to this day. I learned about investing from experience, what is sometimes referred to as the school of hard knocks. I made a lot of mistakes, but I like to think I learned from them. At first I invested in real estate and bought mortgages at discounts, that sort of thing. I liked investing in things that I understood and had more control over. I didn't get involved in conventional investing (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) until later. In the last few years, I've learned a lot reading books and from the internet, especially the Boglehead site. There is a lot of information now that was difficult to get before the internet.

[AndrewS]

Self-taught natural saver. My parents are not good with money and never gave me much help.

I was pretty floored when I got my first savings account as a kid and found out that the bank gives you money for lending them money. Learned about compound interest and the like. Saved money from my high school jobs aggressively so I could go to a better, more expensive college than the local not-so-good college. In grad school I started saving money and read A Random Walk Down Wall Street, it made a lot of sense to me. I didn't hear about bogleheads until maybe 5 years after I read Malkiel's book.

[racy]

My mother taught us kids the value of work (specifically piece work!): she paid a penny for every sand burr we pulled from the lawn. So, we learned that work results in money. The bigger lesson came in college when I learned about compound interest. That's when I saw that steady investing over time results in even more money.
I'm trying to pass this along. I work at a megacorp and we hire many young people. After their training, I have a one on one with them to go over job expectations, etc. I finish with a spreadsheet illustration of how they can become millionaires by participating in our defined contribution plan.

What growth rate are you using to get to that million? I hope it's not the standard 8 percent!

I use 7% in my illustration as the investment return. I'm showing what's possible in our company's defined contribution plan, which includes megacorp contributing 75 cents for every dollar (up to 6%) that the employee saves. I then explain that my illustration assumes a continuous straight line growth pattern which isn't reality: the market goes up and down. I tell them to stay the course when the market dives and know they're buying stocks on the cheap. I also review the investment options in the plan. Since most have no idea about asset classes I try to steer them to a LifeStrategy-type fund.

[Padlin]

After years of chasing returns, I read Common Sense on Mutual Funds after reading a review. Followed that with 4 Pillars then a couple from Larry and Rick mixed in with 7 or 8 years with the pre and post Morningstar Bogleheads. So self taught wouldn't exactly be true.

[Cherokee8215]

My parents taught me the basics of saving but I was pretty much on my own to figure out the rest.

[rickmerrill]

Loved reading these stories. Thanks everyone for contributing. Amazed how many of us are self taught, did not expect that!

[Peter Foley]

I'm going to nit pick a bit as I think the questions begs both an answer about money and its place in our lives, and investing.
My parents certainly taught me the basics of money, credit, deferred gratification and living below one's means. My father, born in 1903 had some pretty lean years during the 1920's and 1930's. He was frugal, but not cheap. My mother's parents lost their business during the depression, she was born in 1917 and was about 16-17 at the time.
So they were careful with their money, investing only in CD's and US savings bonds. My mother inherited some stocks from an uncle in the mid 1960's, General Electric, AT&T, a local utility and a local brewing company. She reinvested the dividends. My father died in 1973 and my mother gradually shifted from buying CD's to buying stocks (my father refused to buy stocks because he had puchased stock in a company during the depression and had lost money).

In terms of investing I give credit to some extent to my mother who gave me some exposure to the world of stocks. But I also must credit Sylvia Porter, Andrew Tobias, Jonathan Clements and the PBS show Sound Money for their more systemmatic approaches. Too many years later I found Boglesheads which really helped me refine my approach.

[Juniormint]

Self-taught. And Part luck.

My parent's aren't good with money and so just from observation, I came to the conclusion at a young age that I didn't want to live hand to mouth with no clear path of how I was going to fund tomorrow. That combined with the fact that I'm a natural saver and someone that likes to research everything before making a choice, I learned to weigh my options well. Luck in the sense that not many around me were financially savvy as far as investing was concerned. Because of that, I was forced to research for myself the best way to invest and my initial searching lead me to bogleheads from the get-go.

[zenb]

I have looked at it as two parts: saving money & investing.

Saving money - parents, friends. Parents had a very tight ship in terms of income/expenses and i was always made aware of the constraints of money. Also my da started me with a savings account by the time i was 7-8 years old., and always took me with him to the bank when i had enough saved in my piggybank. I had to fill out the deposit forms n all. We didnt save much but learned to prioritize & ask if its prudent to spend money on X or not.

Investing - Mostly trial & error, and google. After my first year at my first stable job, I had 10k saved which i invested in bond fund based on advice from an advisor in my local bank. That was 2003, and the advisor asked whether to invest in stocks or bonds. Of course with 2002 downturn, i just picked bonds. I filled in my risk tolerance questionnaire without an understanding of risk and how it relates to my age and long term strategy. I lost about 1% in a year, leaving me wondering why on the world., im loosing money on bonds while stock market is up. got introduced to 401k in next job and a ill-fated financial advice consultation with an ameriprise advisor as part of my 401k plan. Researching about 'what is a financial advisor' lead to additional revelation. Learned about vanguard at my current job through 401k plan and while researching about strategies to reduce taxable income on google, stumbled on bogleheads forum. Most of my current understanding about AA, long term and indexing is based on reading through the wiki and the user forum threads here in the past 3 years.

[Mudpuppy]

I like to joke that I have learned by counter-example, as so many in my family are extremely poor with money. But the truth is more like a lot of counter-examples mixed in with some good examples, as my great-grandparents (Depression-era folks) were good examples about how to live within one's means and save whenever possible. I owe a lot of where I am today, fiscally speaking, to my great-grandparents.

[obgyn65]

I am self taught.

[reggiesimpson]

Who taught me about money? I did. By losing it.

[Hub]

My parents have always been practical with their spending and life choices in general. That's no small thing that I learned from them, but so far as money goes that's about all they taught me. Both are retired on government pensions (thank goodness) so they never really knew anything about the type of retirement savings that I must do.

In my late 20's we realized that the debt we were in was ridiculous. Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover was a great jumping off point for a couple of people that had never budgeted. After I got rid of the debt and got the emergency fund in place I started looking into various retirement saving materials (realizing that Ramsey's thoughts here are inadequate), happened across Boglehead's Guide to Investing and after reading that this personal finance stuff has just become a hobby. I'm pretty much always in the midst of reading one book or another on the subject. And of course this forum. I'm convinced that the knowledge and general philosophy here is cutting edge and I feel sorry for seemingly everyone around me that will never know.