What’s Your Earliest Money Memory?
Recently, I acquired Suze Orman’s Nine Steps to Financial Freedom through paperbackswap.org. The first part of the book invites you to think back to your earliest money memory: when you were a child, did you feel worried, ashamed, desperate for money? She asks a series of questions, all intended to glean information from your past. This, she says, is key in discovering your deepest associations with finances.
What were the best presents you remember receiving as a child?
Did your friends have things you didn’t?
Did both of your parents have to work, and did your friends’ moms not have to?
Were you ashamed to bring your friends home?
Did your friends have nicer clothes, toys, etc.?
Did you hear your parents fight about money?
For me, my earliest memory, as far as I’ve been able to think back, is of being embarrassed to have a nice house. It sounds a little funny to say now, but childhood perspective is very different. My parents lived in an upper middle class neighborhood, but most of my friends from private school lived in smaller or less expensive homes. I wanted desperately to just be the same as everyone else, to blend in and not be noticed for where I lived.
When my parents built the house we live in now, random teachers would ask me how it was coming along. I mean, teachers who’d never taught me or who’d taught me a long time ago–who never talked to me otherwise–knew about the house and wanted to ask about it. This was another way I felt singled out and resented it.
What about you?
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3 Responses to “What’s Your Earliest Money Memory?”
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My first memory was of my sister and her friend taking some money out of an aunt’s purse that had been left behind from a party from the night before. They game me a bill and told me it was mine.
When my father found out he was furious. He yelled and screamed, then held our little hands and walked us all the way to my aunt’s house telling us what we were going to say (that we were thieves) and how sorry we were.
When we got to her all we did was cry and open up our little fists with the crumpled money inside. She felt so bad for us.
I was eight.
Wow. Isn’t that wild how vivid the memories can be? Orman says our earliest memories somehow connect with our current financial struggles. I’m still trying to figure that part out, honestly.
My earliest memory is selling my tricycle for $15 and taking my family to Dairy Queen with my proceeds and putting the rest in my savings account. I also vividly remember a bank that I had a child that I would save whatever money I could get my hands on and put in it. On the front it said, “A penny saved, is a penny earned.” I looked like a big combination lock.
These habits still ring true today. I love spending money on family & friends and I save whatever I can get my hands on!