What’s your earliest financial memory?

cnewq5

One Christmas, I got a toy sweet shop. I could have made a massive profit selling sweets at a penny each. But for some reason, giving change seemed like a loss, so I wouldn't give any - and lost all my customers (parents & older siblings).

Savvy_Sue

Savvy_Sue said:

I think my earliest memory is that Mum would go to each shop / supermarket and cost everything, before sending one of us to buy what was best value in each place. 

Then I remember the excitement when Dad got one of the first cashpoint cards! Unlike today, you'd have to go to 'your' bank, put it in the machine, and hope it would disgorge £10 (which you won't be surprised to learn, was a lot of money in those days!) The machine would retain the card, and it would be posted back to you. This saved a trip to the bank in Dad's lunch hour, which was the only other way of obtaining cash (I'm not sure if he was paid by BACS or cheque, but it wasn't in cash). 

Every now and again, the machine would swallow the card but not give £10. Very irritating!

The MSE newsletter seems to suggest that Dad had to go INTO the bank. He did not. He had to go to HIS bank, where there was a cash machine outside. That's where he put his card in, and crossed his fingers that £10 would come out. Of course if it didn't, he then had to wait until he card was posted back to him before he could try again, or he'd have to go to the bank, in his lunchtime. Ah, the lunchtime queue at the bank! 

dancingmaster1651

Earliest memory is Christmas stocking at the end of the bed which always had a thrupenny bit in the toe, discernible underneath the tangerine through the dense knitted wool. (Ha! Some of the lovely people posting here will have no idea what a threepenny bit looks like! As thick as a £1 coin, i.e. thicker than pennies and ha'pennies, and 12-sided -- instantly recognisable to touch.) I don't remember what I spent them on, but I do remember deciding how to spend my weekly sixpence from the age of about 6. A mobile shop, 'the van', used to stop in our road every Saturday -- oh, the excitement of clutching my sixpence and clambering inside! Steps at the rear, inside floor-to-ceiling shelves with the sort of stuff corner shops sell: fags, mags and bags [of sweeties], as well as basic groceries. As other posters have described, I took ages to decide whether to buy an entire bar of chocolate, several smaller tubes of sweets, or the tiny 'chews' at four a penny. Good for practising arithmetic. 

TheWoodler

Lots of early financial memories. 

- When I was about 5-8, Dad gave me 10p a week, Granddad 5p, and my uncle 2 1/2p and a comic. Twinkle, then Mandy. 

- Opening a post office account at junior school and paying in some of the pocket money and my birthday and Christmas money. Dear Mrs L, who my Mum lodged with before she got married, was so thrilled for her when I arrived that she sent me £5 every birthday and Christmas. That was a lot in the 1970s. She was such a kind lady.

- The bank. Blotting paper and leather on the table, and the pen on a chain in its angled holder of the kind only banks had. And onion skin carbon paper in the paying-in books. 

- Practicing arithmetic and the times tables by helping Mum & Dad cash up the takings and filling out the paying-in book in my best handwriting. 

- Inflation. Dad’s customers used to pay him in 50ps and £1 (Michael Watts’ “crisp oncers” in his column, if anyone remembers that?) then over the years, people paid him in £5, £10, £20 etc.

- My pocket money went up too. As a teen it was £5/week. It was still a lot in the 1980s. Dad’s accountant didn’t approve. 

DebbiO

My dad worked at Barclays and was one of the very first bank staff to work Saturdays. He was very unhappy about it, not least because suits were out for Saturday work and he had to wear a bright red polo shirt with "Barclays on Saturdays" emblazoned across it! 

astroL

Earliest memory: I was about 7 and it was ~1952. My sister's birthday (so it was March ~1952). Someone gave my sister 2/6d - the most money that I had ever seen.  I cried (presumably with jealousy) but my Gran promised me that if no-one else gave me 2/6d on my birthday (2 months later), she would.  It stopped me crying.

Chriso51

My two banking memories are;

One - sitting on a polished wood counter in a cavernous room, which smelt of what I now know to have been wax polish, whilst a cashier unlocked my imitation 'book' money box and counted out my pennies and writing the amount into my 'savings book' (and keeping my pennies). 1950's

Two - Applying for a loan to move to a new town and set up home with my then Girlfriend.  I took in a cash flow forecast for the coming year.  I was granted a loan of £75 and was told by the 'Manager' that I was to consider the money, that he was going to put into my account, as 'his' not mine!!! 1970's

Eeee the good old days?

Westone67flower

Not my earliest but in these days of financil hardship it is sometimes nice to remember when things were unbelievably cheaper.

During the miners 1972 strike the government were going to start rationing petrol and issued petrol vouchers for 50p (ten shillings old money)!!

They never came into use but could you imagine actually being able to put that amount of petrol into a car drive away on it!!!!

MrsCD

I remember, in the 1960's, having a money box which looked like a book, but you had to take it to the bank, TSB, to be emptied and paid into the savings account. Later I had one that looked a bit like Woody Woodpecker, but I had a key for that one. 
I also remember my granda saving lots of old pennies for the Tipping Point type of machines at the fair at South Shields where we would go for a day out during the summer holidays. We never brought any home again! 

Tiger_Tony

Two financial memories from the late 1950s. The first was my mum's coop divi number - 26852. The second was my father telling me that due to the budget, an ice cream had gone up in price from 3d to 4d.