The Great 'best money lessons from your grandparents' Hunt

tanith

Sadly all my grandparents died before I was 9 but my Mum never borrowed a penny in her life... if she couldn't pay for it she saved..

big5

My gran is in her 90s and sadly suffering from dementia, but in better days she'd have loved MSE. She was always cutting coupons and vouchers out of magazines and newspapers, and whenever we went out for a meal, she'd smuggle out sachets of ketchup, sugar, etc in her handbag! My granddad gave her housekeeping money every month and she had a little notebook where she'd write down what she'd spent. I used to think that was a bit crazy, but when money is tight, it makes you think about what you need to buy and what you can do without.

libra10

I was always taught 'neither a lender, nor borrower be' - never borrow from others, and don't lend money.

Like margaretclare, my two brothers and I were given 6d (pre decimilisation) to pay into a savings account, collected at our Primary school. When £1 accumulated our main savings book was updated. It instilled in us the need to save for the future.

Although the second world war had finished when I was born, rationing was still in force, and all families were issued coupons, depending on the size of the family.

I suppose all these measures taught us to be more frugal than many of today's generation.

mumps

At my school we took in our 6d for the missions in Africa.

mumps

I remember my mother crying talking about the 30s and how hard it was and her asking my granny why she wasn't eating and granny saying she had eaten earlier. My mother realised years later that there wasn't enough for everyone so granny, my poor granny who cooked like an angel, would go hungry. The awful thing is some people are still going hungry.

Ann60cee

My mother in law always said "You should always have fair to middling" in your cupboard. She was a shrewd Yorkshire lass and by practising what she preached, it meant that if funds were low, she could always put together a few meals from her store cupboard. Good advice still for anyone on a tight budget. Just buying one extra item a week builds up and will put food on the table when the going gets tough.

meritaten

margaretclare wrote: »

All the preceding advice is very good and mostly, grown from bitter experience of a time when there were no benefits. They didn't automatically think 'what can I claim, what am I entitled to?'

My grandfather hadn't the money pay for my granny's funeral in 1938. A proud man, one of what was then called the 'respectable working class', he had to pay it in bits at a time. He is said to have growled to my mother 'Get that bairn insured'. Because children did die in those times, as well as others.

I grew up in a desperately-poor family but one of my abiding memories is of being given a few pennies to take to school each Monday morning to the school savings-bank - the school acted as sub-branch of a bank. This was when the Battle of Britain was still raging but they still thought it was worth starting me on the habit of saving. It's something I've never forgotten.

For myself, if I'd saved a shilling out of every pound I earned over the years I'd be very comfortably-off today. That's 5% of every pound over almost 50 years, plus interest...you can see where I'm going. It's possible to waste an awful lot on just rubbish, and never more so than in the present day.

So my advice would be: always save! Even if you can't afford to save much, then save something.

DH, by contrast, says 'don't save if you have debts because what you're paying on interest on a debt is always going to be more than you're earning in interest on savings'. So, always always always pay off any debts at the earliest possible opportunity. He's very good at negotiating the best deal!

That was still going when I was a child! I can remember taking my 'Thruppence' or 'Sixpence' in! Wonder what happened to that?

My lovely nan always said 'never pay on 'tick', save up and you will get it for half the price'!
she also said ' never a mickle makes a muckle' and even though I am now 58 - I still have no Bluddy Idea what she meant!

dragonette

meritaten wrote: »

That was still going when I was a child! I can remember taking my 'Thruppence' or 'Sixpence' in! Wonder what happened to that?

My lovely nan always said 'never pay on 'tick', save up and you will get it for half the price'!
she also said ' never a mickle makes a muckle' and even though I am now 58 - I still have no Bluddy Idea what she meant!

The phrase is "mony a mickle maks a muckle" - many small things add up to a big thing. I still hear it n I'm 25. Much more common up here I would imagine

I also remember there being a savings bank through the school, not sure how many used it though

meritaten

dragonette wrote: »

The phrase is "mony a mickle maks a muckle" - many small things add up to a big thing. I still hear it n I'm 25. Much more common up here I would imagine

I also remember there being a savings bank through the school, not sure how many used it though

Thanks! its not a phrase used here in S wales and I think she must have heard (misheard) it while in Service.

maman

j.e.j. wrote: »

I like that interpretation, but I thought the phrase 'fur coat and no knickers' actually had a different meaning..

I'm sure your interpretation is great fun jej.:rotfl:Where I come from it was used to describe people from a certain part of town who were all up front and for show. So, for example, they might have a posh house or expensive clothes but not decent food on the table or everything was 'on tick'.

On the clothes theme, my nana taught me to look after my clothes. These days I don't keep my 'best' for going to chapel on Sundays (like she did) but I do get my moneysworth from them by wearing them for different occasions as they get older. I think we're too much of a throwaway society these days and most of us have far more clothes than we could possibly need. Thank goodness 'retail therapy' seems to be dying out with the recession.