I was raised by very frugal parents that were children of the Depression. My parents did many projects themselves around the home and garden; remodeling projects, painting, growing a garden, landscaping. Mom had cooking skills that were a bit more unusual for the late 60's and early 70's era of convenience foods; she canned fruits and jam, made bread, cooked our meals from scratch.Among his long list of accomplishments, Dad refinished antiques found by scouring a local flea market, rebuilt a player piano, re did the rotted caned seat of an antique rocker and built a grandfather clock from a kit. Dad also worked on our cars himself, changing oil and making minor repairs. Mom could often be found in the garden or yard working and it was a normal scene in my childhood to come home from school and find my Mom repainting a room in our home. My Dad worked long hours as veterinarian and Mom kept the house running smoothly. My brother and I were expected to help out with chores around the house to earn our allowances. Nothing was wasted and I saw how doing things yourself provided you with a rich sense of accomplishment and a better lifestyle.
You might think that with these parents as an example, I would have chosen a frugal lifestyle myself. You would be wrong. I rebelled as teenagers often do and although I earned money babysitting and later with regular part time employment; my money seemed to slip through my fingers almost as fast as it landed there.
I bought lots of clothes, albums, books and who knows what else with my hard earned funds. I was offered a credit card and I took it and felt very grown up. I also bought the gas for the family car I was allowed to drive to school. When I went to college, I was surrounded by children of families with great wealth and I started to want to be like them.On the first days of school, I remember being offered a credit card in the campus quad. Of course I signed up, I felt so grown up! I continued to work through college and while I would like to say my funds went towards my education, I instead financed yet more clothing and my very busy social life. I took out student loans,continued to work part time on campus and my parents provided much of the money towards the expensive private school tuition costs.
After college I got a job as a teacher earning much less than many of my fellow graduates. I wanted my freedom and moved out of my parent's home and into an apartment with a room mate and later into a place of my own. I was miserable. I was growing in debt from credit cards, spending most of my money on rent, utilities, my student loan payments and on occasional graduate school classes. I had very little money left over at the end of the month, wanted more professional clothing and to enjoy a social life and so I added more debt to my credit cars and thus began the vicious cycle of paying minimum balances on the dratted things.
Eventually I came to my senses, gave up the lease on my apartment, put my stuff into a paid storage unit and moved home to my parent's house. I paid them a nominal rent and began making headway on three goals: pay down my student loans, pay down my credit card debt and make my expenses...more to come
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