The other option seemed to be to throw it all out the window, bury my head in the sand, and hope for the best. I believed being good with money meant settling for a boring job and forgoing all luxury or comfort until retirement, and I didn't want to live that way. I paid the maximum security deposit to move into new apartments. I paid 11% interest on a seven-year loan for an $8,000 used car. I lived paycheck to paycheck - spending when I had it and restricting when I didn't. I maxed out a credit card by 24 and stopped applying for more. I borrowed student loans for college and promptly ignored them as soon as I stepped off campus. Instead, I became an adult who was bad with money. ![]() I internalized all of it - work hard, ask for nothing, spend nothing, do it yourself. My parents' disciplined approach to money is pretty much in line with the maxims of overall budget culture - the mindset that good money management means restriction and deprivation, and financial wellness is about hoarding what you've got. (Because we're white and able-bodied, we were inherently trained to believe paying work would be available as long as we were willing to do it.) Overcoming internalized budget culture You don't expect more, you don't spend more than you make, and you never ask for help. That makes money management a matter of discipline. Operating on work ethic means you make do with what you get. It convinced my dad not to chase down payments owed for his construction jobs, even when his electricity was being cut off. It motivated my stepdad to be promoted to supervisor in his manufacturing job, only to lose all the protections of his union - and to turn his bitterness on the union workers instead of the system that pit him against them. "You do the work because it needs to get done" is the attitude that kept my mom silent when she knew she earned less money than her male coworkers while doing more work and honing more skills to stand out. It underpins millennial hustle culture and the ridiculous politics that have stuck us with a federal minimum wage that hasn't budged in more than a decade. My efficiency, stoicism, and persistence have earned me the life my parents hoped I'd have - one where I earn double what they did at my age and have the adventures they delayed to raise us.īut the glorification of work ethic is insidious. What 'good work ethic' means for your financesīecause it's in my DNA, I can't help but see strong work ethic as a virtue. My parents taught us how to work, and that shaped everything I believed about money. We didn't talk about financial services, because they aren't built for people like us, who are, as my parents put it "not born rich." My parents didn't teach us much about our country's financial systems - because, I assume, they were as much in the dark about them as most Americans are. In our part of Wisconsin, with its German roots and farm families, work ethic is our moral code. We're a rural, working-class family from the Midwest. The lesson? You do work because work needs to be done. That's the earliest I remember learning anything about money from my parents. So they pulled the allowance and instituted a "You do the chores because we told you to do the chores" policy in its place. The novelty of cap erasers and Airheads from the school store wore off fast, and money didn't have much luster.īut the housework still needed to get done. We were elementary school children with parents to feed, clothe, and house us, so we had little need for money. Our parents realized using money as an incentive meant we could forfeit the week's pay if we didn't want to do the housework on our list. ![]() ![]() We were each responsible for a rotating set of weekly chores, and we each got $3 per week for completing them.īy the time I was 10 or 11, they discontinued the allowance program. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my parents offered my sister and me our first allowance. By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from InsiderĪs well as other partner offers and accept our
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