What are your earliest money memories?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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4 Comments:
So, I wrote a really great comment and blogger lost it.
And now I don't have time to recreate it... so...
BLEAH!
I don't know if it's my first money memory, but it's my strongest early memory about money. I remember getting a 25-cent a week allowance, and I told my mom I wanted a raise in my allowance, and she encouraged me to ask my stepdad...I was so nervous about it, and he said "How much do you want?" And I said, "50 cents a week." (My older brothers were getting more than this.) And he actually raised it to $2 a week! So that was a really great money memory - work up the courage, ask for what you want, and be open to more!
As a child, I was quite the money saver! (I can't say that is true, now, unfortunately!) When I was about 9 years old, I had saved my allowance for nearly a year in order to buy my family Christmas presents with my own money that I had earned. I had saved up about $17, which seemed like a HUGE amount at the time!
My mom took me shopping at Wards and before I had a chance to spend any of the money, I lost my little wallet I was carrying it in. I must have laid it down somewhere inadvertently and didn't realize it was gone for hours.
My mom told me that more than likely I would never see the wallet, much less the money, ever again. She explained to me that even if someone turned in the wallet, that she was sure the money would be gone.
I don't remember if I had ID in the wallet and Wards called us or if my mom called them, but amazingly, someone HAD turned in the wallet with ALL of the money still in it! I never got to thank the person who turned it in and didn't touch my money, but as a little girl this made a HUGE impression on me!
Years later in high school, I was working at a Sears store when an elderly couple came in and made a purchase. It was the middle of winter, snow on the ground and below 0 temperatures and I realized after the couple had left that he had left his wallet on the counter. Without even thinking of grabbing a coat or looking inside the wallet, I ran outside and through the parking lot, finding the man and returning his wallet to him. He thanked me for it and informed me it contained hundreds of dollars (for Christmas shopping). This man later wrote a letter to Sears and I got a HUGE award with a ceremony, etc., for the good deed.
I really felt like it was a "pay it forward" moment and that I got to give thanks for my returned money by returning the money to this man. And if the same thing happened today, I wouldn't do it any differently!
Ok, so I'm going to try to recreate my original comment, the one that blogger lost...
It went something like this: My earliest memories of money is having coins firmly grasped in my sweaty little hand, and then using those coins to buy a popsicle. I must have been about 3 years old.
We never had any money, that was the story we told ourselves. And yet we always had enough for little pleasures like popsicles, cafe-con-leche, small pastries, or little toys.
And we couldn't really afford anything "big", another story we were told, and yet we always had whatever "big" thing it was that we needed.
What we didn't have a lot of was new stuff. If there was a special event requiring something extra special to wear, a seamstress made the "new" clothes by looking at pictures in the sears catalogue. It was never quite the same. Most of our things came out of "missionary barrels" sent from the US.
A missionary barrel was a 55 gallon drum packed full of all the donated items that the people at that church gathered together to send to us. Whenever we got one it was like christmas.
I do not ever remember feeling resentful or unhappy that very few of my clothes were new or "in style". And I do not ever remember a time when I didn't have what was needed. Money was never important to me, I very rarely thought about having it or not having it.
I was too focused on staying alive in boarding school and wishing I had parents.... neither of which could be purchased.
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