Did your Parents get smarter or stupider?

[Burghardt]

From my perspective, my parents tumble from one financial nightmare to the next. Partly because of well-intentioned care for me in my youth, but i'm not taking full credit for all i've seen.


When i was young they moved out of the city increasing their daily commute by 20km each way and person (1 by car, the other by train).
Not just any house, but a ww1 era farmers house with castle-like wall thickness, a 200m^2 paved court out front, a 300m^2 garden in the back and a bloody half-derelict BARN they ended up using as garage, renting out one half to a local farmer to stash his combine harvester.
So, obviously they couldn't pay for that outright and took out some loan or other and engaged in various half-hearted home-improvement ventures (which usually ended by calling a professional and paying him.)

Also my father had co-signed a contract with one of his relatives, related to opening a store in Berlin. Turned out they didn't have a clue about managing a store and went bankrupt with financial ties attached to my parents.

Then we moved into a different town, slightly closer to the city but somehow keeping each of their commutes intact. The house there was owned by my grand-uncle at the time, and my parents moved in on a hire-purchase contract. Only it turned out there was a clause in that contract over 75.000€ to be demanded at will, which they had "talked about" never being used.
After my grand-uncle (93 at the time!) married a "young" immigrant woman (67) it barely took a year for him to demand his money to build / renovate a house in her home country, Hungary, for her own grown up children to live in.

Just a few months after that disaster struck, my father was sent to the US, Alabama, to help a supplier of his employer get their issues straightened out. Ended up staying longer than planned, then was hired by the company over there and BOUGHT A FUCKING HOUSE - and of course to go along with that house, he "needed" a new, gigantic, gallon-guzzling American SUV. He's been back in Germany for 5 years now and the place is STILL unoccupied, neither sold nor rented out ("too much work", "don't want responsibilities of landlord"). I dare not ask about the car, it's probably gathering dust in a garage somewhere as well.

They both drink, smoke, are overweight, around 60 years old, still carry debt from all they way back (though refinanced to a cheaper rate at least) and do not plan to change either of these.
Did i mention my father's in the car industry, made his way through the ranks and the car still gets hauled to the car workshop every time something's off - or even just to change from winter to summer tires.


Luckily i have failed to pick up excess weight, smoking and outside of my depressed phase have good grasp on my drinks as well.
work/career/money wise i have come out in a strange place. Maybe because i've become aware of my parents financial troubles very early, seen (or not seen - daycare until i was 8, then took care of myself after school and the TV became my new parents) them work all their life and get nowhere.

I'm happy i found this blog a few weeks ago and for the first time embark on a journey into proper adult life with positive outlook ahead.

[Geffling2]

My parents are much more smarter than me for their time and scope.  My mom passed in February.  My dad is still alive and kicking after his first stroke, he was away taking care of a family member who just had surgery when it happened. I am/was caregiver for both of them.  It is just that the world is ever changing.  My dad brought his house for $40K and both had pensions.  They really did not have to concern themselves with the plight of 401k or investments though my dad dabbled and was able to pay for a kitchen remodel by investing.  My mom comes from a place of fear of investments. 

I should have listened to their advice when they said save or do not buy that house.  I was in shackles from debt for a long time while, they always paid their credit cards off monthly.  But when I finally became more fiscally literate over the last 6 years, I shared.  It is harder because of powdered butt syndrome but they trust me.  Later in life, my dad was going to refinance the house at one point in time and then buy a car and just have one mortgage payment.  I quickly convinced my sister and then my mother to join forces and steer him against that transaction. 

Other than that, he probably could have had the house paid off by now but he is so close, I do not bother him about it.  They retired at 51 and 55.  I hope to be able to retire within that range even though I am late in the game.  They are proficient at computers, my dad has a smartphone and fitbit.  I am pretty darn proud of them.

[gggggg]

My folks were/are pretty good with money. They have 3 paid off houses, and 2 paid off new cars. They drilled the "don't get in debt" message into us when we were kids. They have had some missteps, like buying a beach house, barely using it, then taking a loss on the sale of it. In general, they are pretty good though.

[Helvegen]

My mother has never been good with money. She got that from her own father who was also a complete disaster with it.

She refuses to learn from her mistakes and as long as she has my grandmother to bail her out, she never will. My grandmother doesn't have long left, so the day of reckoning is coming.

I learned in my early 20s that whatever she did with money, do the opposite. If she ever gives you financial advice, do not listen to it.

[Letj]

I barely believe in smart or dumb but my parents are definitely hilarious.

Back in the day my dad was a real cranky old scrooge who got mad for dad reasons like the GODDAMN THERMOSTAT and ANOTHER DENT IN THE DAMN CAR and idk anything really but he loved savin them pennies and he loved workin those 15 hr days plus my mom started working when i was like 12 and got a good career so eventually she was like "i dunno if you noticed but we're really rich? so idk why you care about a dent in your dumb car that has 260,000 miles??" But all that time he'd occasionally buy really expensive weird stuff for himself like the 1994 CHEVROLET K2500 AUGH AUGH AUGH Tim "the tool fellow" Taylor special deluxe. He still has that truck actually with an entire 60,000 miles upon it lo these 22 years later. He also bought a boat one time?? And then we used it like six times in 5 years and every time the scuzzy old engine would crap out or it would get a DAMN DENT and he'd get really mad about it.

Dunno all the details really but they got divorced when I was in college and the way they split stuff was that my dad got his retirement account with like 800k in it or something and my mom got literally everything else. So there were a couple years when my dad had like 0 dollars at hand and I basically dunno what he was doing all that time bc he'd just sort of show up around the old house at Christmas and then trundle off to wherever he lived. I was in college but my brothers were still there and they dunno where he lived either BUT EVENTUALLY he got a new goof house with like a guest floor. He got married again to a wife he actually likes and now they have more money than God cause he's some kind of executive. As u can see he's not so forthcoming on the details but the other day he was like oh yeah I hit the SS cap and that was in like, the middle of May. They keep doing silly stuff to the house like it was new when he bought it in 2008 but they remodeled the bathroom for like 20 grand and it has like the world's finest toilet aka Emperor Commodus aka the gilded turd gobbler. Haha oh yeah and he installed a driveway to his basement so he could like drive his ATV in there but now after 5 yrs hes like on second thought im gonna rip that out and install a gazebo?? He bought a motorcycle but was too lazy to get the license endorsement so he'd just putter around his neighborhood at 20 mph for 10 minutes every 6 months. Oh and of course the guns my god the man loves guns he's got these Caesar Guerini shotguns that cost like 10 grand and idk what all else but at least like 40 or 50 guns all in a man size safe in the garage and like 4 refrigerators for the 2 resident humans lmao. lmao. What are you doing Jimbo. But like I say they got millions of dollars or something so I guess hes just like ohhh its so inconvenient carrying around this heavy wallet time to take a load off *shakes hundreds of $100 bills into the trash*

WELL ANYWAY MEANWHILE like I said my mom got a good career so she's also livin the dream doin weird ass stuff like having the A/C on upstairs while the heat is on downstairs and she still lives in the house I grew up in so she basically dodders around like Miss Havisham with like 6 rooms she literally never enters and she's got this boyfriend The Dreaded Tom who will like, call her up at 10pm and come over to have a sitdown at the kitchen table for a rousing discussion of libertarian politics and how WIC coupons enable takers and so forth. Tom is a really intense Adult Practitioner of the Martial Arts and he kind of reminds me of this anecdote I read one time about Peter the Great where I guess old Czar Peter was a perpetually hyper energized nutbar who like, well he wanted to build St. Petersburg right. So he made all the nobles schlep out from Moscow and they were all really cranky about it cause St. Petersburg was an under construction shithole and they had to drag their whole estates through the muddy busted ass roads and as they were resentfully hoofin it Peter was like doing cartwheels and handstands and shouting DOES ANYONE WANNA TALK ABOUT LATHES? LOTTA RECENT INNOVATIONS IN LATHES YOU GUYS. That's Tom.

All in all I'd say things rule

Too funny, good sense of humor. Hilarious.

[MauiNut]

Parenting doesn't come with a flowchart or an iPhone app (at least not way back when).  If your parents are still alive 25 years from now, after you've been through the arduous task of supporting a family for many years, maybe then you have the right to criticize their means and methods.  Maybe.  Or just perhaps you'll realize that they did the best that they could under circumstances and conditions that at the time you weren't aware of, because those Stupid Old Farts insulated you from the realities of providing for a family.

[One Noisy Cat]

I say it declined from "my parents are super smart" to "my parents were pretty smart". My dad worked for IBM for 35 years so he bought IBM stock on the employee discount plan (and U.S. Savings Bonds). Which probably didn't hurt too much but I don't think any reasonable financial advisor would recommend having all your stocks, plus your pension, in one basket. But it worked for them despite the risk.

But they were thrifty, did home repairs and cooking and caning with a vegetable garden. They weren't bi cigarette smokers and quit in the mid 1960s (my mother when cigarettes went to 35 cents a pack..and she only smoke about three cigarettes a day).  We'd go on vacations but were practical about it..camping in a tent, cooking meals with no restaurants, eating sandwiches in the car while driving.

[PhrugalPhan]

Interesting question I had to pass on as how I felt about their intelligence didn't change much over the years.  Both were good with money, talented, moderately smart.  That said she divorced him when I was young and then they both married down to gawd awful people.  My father could fix anything - period - he was amazing.  I tried to learn from him on the few chances I had, but I had the honor of growing up with a jerk instead most of the time.  When the step father died only one of his four natural children would show up for the funeral.  I was going to skip it too, but the GF insisted we go.  It was interesting to go, in an anthropological sort of way.

Probably not what you wanted to hear, but I pretty well knew what I had for "family" by the time I was 12, and my maturing hasn't changed my opinion of their strengths / flaws over time.

[FireHiker]

I voted "stupider" because my parents were wretched, though it wasn't until I was an adult when I began to see that not everyone lived that way.

Dad was a chain-smoking alcoholic (a really nice guy who sadly died in 2007 from COPD, but unstable and undependable). Mom has always been financially incompetent, verbally abusive my whole childhood, and a total deal-hunting shop-aholic (who buys 13 $70 tinkerbell snowglobes on ebay as a grown woman instead of groceries or paying for utilities? That would be her). We spent 8 months legitimately homeless when I was 12/13. It was commonplace to drive unsafe vehicles because they deferred maintenance (brakes should NOT sound like that!). Constant calls from creditors/utilities being shut off. I think I counted 21 or 22 different homes by the time I was 17?

I got straight A's and got the hell out. It has taken a long time to learn how to be financially wise, but I'm finally doing pretty well. Definitely in spite of my parents and not because of them!! It is hard to try to figure it all out on your own, though there were a lot of examples of what NOT to do! My mother is still entirely incompetent financially and is living with her sister. No idea what her long term plan is, because I am sure she doesn't have one. I have the only grandkids so I keep up civil contact, but we don't talk finances anymore. I have tried to offer advice and she has made it clear she doesn't want to hear it. Oh well! I will say, after having my own kids and looking back at the decisions she made during my childhood, it has made it a LOT harder for me to have any kind of meaningful relationship with her now. I don't understand her at all and never will.

[iris lily]

I voted "stupider" because my parents were wretched, though it wasn't until I was an adult when I began to see that not everyone lived that way.

Dad was a chain-smoking alcoholic (a really nice guy who sadly died in 2007 from COPD, but unstable and undependable). Mom has always been financially incompetent, verbally abusive my whole childhood, and a total deal-hunting shop-aholic (who buys 13 $70 tinkerbell snowglobes on ebay as a grown woman instead of groceries or paying for utilities? That would be her). We spent 8 months legitimately homeless when I was 12/13. It was commonplace to drive unsafe vehicles because they deferred maintenance (brakes should NOT sound like that!). Constant calls from creditors/utilities being shut off. I think I counted 21 or 22 different homes by the time I was 17?

I got straight A's and got the hell out. It has taken a long time to learn how to be financially wise, but I'm finally doing pretty well. Definitely in spite of my parents and not because of them!! It is hard to try to figure it all out on your own, though there were a lot of examples of what NOT to do! My mother is still entirely incompetent financially and is living with her sister. No idea what her long term plan is, because I am sure she doesn't have one. I have the only grandkids so I keep up civil contact, but we don't talk finances anymore. I have tried to offer advice and she has made it clear she doesn't want to hear it. Oh well! I will say, after having my own kids and looking back at the decisions she made during my childhood, it has made it a LOT harder for me to have any kind of meaningful relationship with her now. I don't understand her at all and never will.

22 homes, and you got straight A's in school while going  through all of that chaos?

wow! What an amazing testament to bootstrapping your way up into stable middle class behavior That is! Good for you.

I do so wish we as a society could figure out why some kids, like you, figure out early that in order to survive and succeed they hsve to get out of their home place and then they use their upbringing  as a road map for what NOT to do.It is powerful hard to throw out the family values you were raised with.

Did someone in your life model good life choices early on for you? Was there someone who showed you a path to get out of the chaos?

[FiftyIsTheNewTwenty]

My parents did the usual "right things" when my dad had a good job with good prospects, everything was getting paid, and there was money in the bank.  But when things got dicey, they made increasingly poor decisions, to the point of disaster.  The worse shape they were in, the worse decisions they made.

My parents went through this cycle several times, with at least one Ch. 7.

Upper middle class (executive) income and lifestyle, if you must know.  But does it matter?

[FireHiker]

Thanks Iris; yes, straight A's with 22 homes and homelessness. From the second I was old enough I worked any paying job I could find (summer babysitting before I could get a "work permit"), two part time jobs the summer between high school and college, averaging at least 60 hours a week. I saw the choices my parents made and decided I was NOT going to live like that!

It's an interesting question to consider, why some people can break the cycle and others can't. In my family of three kids, I am the only one who I would really call truly financially stable or aware. And still, I cringe at the "bad" money decisions I've made over the years! I have a brother who got his doctorate (his wife is a vet and, OMG the student loans between then are insane, $3K a month for the next 30 years!!), but he is a spender and I doubt they have anything saved. At least he works hard and they do have a good, steady income. They'll likely inherit gobs of money from his mother-in-law someday. Then we have a sister who is 33, lives with our mother, and has dropped out of more schools/careers than I can count. She's trying to go back to school again, this time for accounting. They are currently living with my mom's sister I think because they can't afford rent anywhere, but they both got new cell phones this year, an SE and a 6S Plus because "it's only xx more dollars per month" (WTF is wrong with people?). The common characteristic between the two of them (mom and sister) is that they both feel they are victims and the world is unfair and owes them something.

I would say, distantly, that my aunt and uncle modeled good financial behavior (and good decision making in general). My mother kept me pretty distant from them growing up because they were on my dad's side of the family, but when I graduated college my aunt called and stressed the importance of planning for retirement, etc, because she knew (I quote) "you have no one else to tell you about these things". They retired at 52 and 55 comfortably, and were definitely good role models in my life. Getting to and through college was all my determination to get out and not live that way, though; it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when my grandfather died that I reconnected with my dad's side of the family. It's interesting when you grow up in a very messed up situation; it takes a LONG time before you realize it isn't "normal"!

[J Boogie]

Despite watching fox news, they're pretty smart.

[Papa Mustache]

My parents have done well.

Whether they are smarter or not is a somewhat mixed bag. I realize that some of their choices have seemed wiser as I've gotten older and emulated them.

Then there are other choices that have become fixed characteristics of my parents that they won't ever change but that they should. These issues lead me to think they are not as smart as I think they should be. Graded no worse than what my teenager brain thought of them. ;)

Retired in their late 50s. Never divorced. At least some of their financial success was gift money given to them by my grandparents enabling them to pay off their mortgage early and invest. That fact was glossed over during their lectures to me about being responsible, studying hard, etc. You see those lectures were designed to set me on the right path in life but also to pat themselves on the back a little too at the same time. ;)

They followed some of the MMM concepts that back then were just called "common sense". Save money, scrimp and save, new cars and cable TV are not lifestyle requirements. This was the 70s and early 80s. All in all they set a good example.

They also made some mistakes (although minor in the big picture) along the way. They are not technology savy but bought the best of some things that rapidly went obsolete. Might be a lightly used computer but it's still useless b/c it is old.

What's more they bought them and never made good use of them. We'll set up this computer upstairs in a spare room where nobody wants to spend any time - rather than downstairs where the people are and prefer to be. They needed a tablet rather than a computer long before tablets existed.

Also several expensive new cars that they could easily afford but I wish they would have helped us kids pay down or payoff our mortgages instead so we too could afford to invest at a faster pace like they did.

Their biggest mistakes were not financial but interpersonal family relations. They clearly have a favorite child. They consider themselves as infallible and everyone else is less than perfect. They jump to conclusions. They lay unfair blame on spouses. There is denial at times. They are stingy with their time - unless you are the favorite child. That favored status also filters down to the grandchildren. The children of the favored child are somewhat fussed over more. Long distance drives are not a hurdle while being part of our lives (much geographically closer) is somehow a bigger burden.

That said I would not trade places with the favored child.

A recent thread topic here on MMM helped me understand our family dynamics and things about myself tremendously. It was like a light switched on and I was no longer fumbling around a candle lit room. Just having this understanding now makes me so much more content with what we have even though I can't fine tune the situation much.

The in-laws are easy to spend time with unless the topic of Barack Obama comes up. Too much FoxNews. Too much Trump. Too much Hillary. Too much spending on a fixed income. Here is to hoping they have a comfortable retirement and don't run out of money...

[debbie does duncan]

It's interesting when you grow up in a very messed up situation; it takes a LONG time before you realize it isn't "normal"!

Yes jillinsandiego.....you are so right!

[lukebuz]

So, what was the post that helped you see the light??   I have some favored child action going on here too.  Strikingly similar!

[Papa Mustache]

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/aspergers-and-mmm-lifestyle/

Helped me define some things that I had suspected about myself. 

I'll be checking myself more around people. No more rambling stories for example. 

Won't be anything I share with other people. Just a list to reference in my mind so I don't seem so quirky.