When you were a kid how forthright were your parents about family finances?

My folks refused to tell us how much they made,which I suppose is fair enough, but they also failed to really give us any understanding of budgeting and financial planning. Always said that it wasn't our business to know the family finances. I'm more open with my kids about it, when we're broke I try to reassure them that we're going to be okay but that we can't afford to do all the things we used to do or that they want to do. I'm terrible with finances and I wish I had more skill in budgeting and prioritizing spending. Do any of you have any advice on how to teach an old dog new tricks in this regard? Is there any kind of formula to help a financial moron figure out the percentages of income to allocate for different needs? I'm running out of time to get my shit together or I'll be eating dog food in my old age. How expensive is it to hire someone to help start financial planning and how do you know you're not getting scammed?

but we knew that our parents rarely had any extra to spend.

I can remember being 10 or 11 years old and thinking that after my parents paid the household bills (electricity, phone, house payment), everything that was leftover was for us kids. :eyes: Naturally, I was not aware of car insurance, savings plans, health insurance, taxes.

dad did for a living. He was a machinist at a refinery, but what did he actually DO???? I have no idea. He never talked about work in front of us kids....who his boss was, how much he made, etc.

Kind of a "kids should be seen, not heard" mindset.

It was an off limits subject. I knew my Dad was a printer on those big old Heidelberg presses. Other than that, no ides. In fact, now that I think of that, no part of family finances was ever discussed with the kids. To tell the truth, I never talked with my kids about income either. We did talk about ways to conserve and make our finances work for us. Never had much but never had much debt either.

when my father used a pay-cut as the excuse for why he cheated on my mother. (changed companies) He said he was "under stress."

are in the banking industry? We have a friend who is ours. Great guy.

And, I didn't have any idea how much my dad made. I know it was a great deal because he paid cash for all of us to go to private colleges and private prep schools.

But as far as numbers go, I have no idea.

was kept from us mostly. I knew we weren't rich, but I also knew we weren't poor. That is as much as I knew.

..money DID NOT grow on trees.

mainly about what money doesn't grow on.

I think parents who try to hide that stuff do their children a disservice.

Most people I know who make enough to live relatively comfortably don't even do a budget. They have no idea how much they spend on frivolous things... cause they don't even think about it.

Growing up we gathered around on Sundays to do the famiy budget... my dad would show us how you chart income and expenses... the expectability of "unexpected" expenses and the need to plan for those too... I thought all families did it.

which went from quite modest to quite well off over about a decade. They also had us work in the family business and earn wages, and do chores at home in exchange for an allowance. We actually had to do the chores and do them properly before we got the allowance. After a specific age, behaviour infractions in the home met with fines from our allowance or wages. The fines went into a jar and were saved for discretionary family expenses. We all got bank accounts at an early age and were taught the value of working for the things we wanted and the importance of planning ahead and saving. Taught, not by lecturing, but by actual hands on experience.

There were 5 children in our family and there's not a fiscally irresponsible one of us in the lot.

...except what dad wanted or wanted to do. The "Ward Cleaver" generation.

Which means they weren't extravagant spenders, but they weren't necessarily cheap, either. They just put their money into what they thought was most important, and didn't really believe in just buying flashy things for the sake of looking good.

They would buy a car via cash, and then keep it for a long time (sometimes longer than I wanted them to keep it.) But it made sense, and they always kept them running in tip-top shape. My dad kept his Dodge Caravan through 240,000+ miles, and for the first 200,000 it ran flawlessly.

And we were basically middle middle class. But when it came time to buy a vacation condo in Florida, they invested in doing so, because vacation time was always important for our family (the highlight of the year, in fact) and they found that to be a worthwhile investment of their money. So that was the one thing that others would consider our big ticket "luxury" item.

As for income, my mom stayed home. My dad worked, and for a while I didn't know how much he was paid. When I finally sneaked a peak on his tax returns, I found out that he was paid about $30,000 more than what I thought he was paid.