Are you more thrifty, OS and MSE than your mother?

Hmmm, interesting. I think I am on a par with my parents. My mum taught me to knit and how to turn up trousers - a skill for which I am profoundly grateful since I am under 5ft:rotfl:

She cooked from scratch most nights each week so I learned how to peel veg from her.

I'm more moneysaving in that I grow some of my own food, shop around on the internet for best buys and buy clothes from charity shops, something my mum wouldn't do. But I learned from my parents the value of saving for things I want. As children, my sister and I had to pay our pocket money of 50p/week to the lady on the market stall to save up for a Sindy doll if we wanted it. A very valuable lesson in delayed gratification that has stood me in good stead all the way through my adult life! It means I can now stand back and assess if I really need (or want) something or if I can do without or buy cheaper elsewhere.

So thanks Mum (and Dad, of course)!

Both my grandparents and hubbys were sensible with money maybe partly because of the war years.
My mother started her working life in the 1940's/50's on a good income and so didn't have to think about where her money was going to come from. I think she rebelled against her own upbringing which was ultra frugal.
On marrying dad, she was soon struggling for money as he was a compulsive gambler, she was having to guard every penny.
She still gave up her lucrative working life though as she wanted kids and married mums didn't work in her opinion.They were homeless for a while and then we all lived in one room till I was 7 when we got a council flat with the arrival of our younger sister. Mum took on cleaning work to get by, as dad gave her nothing after he had paid the council flat rent.
Life was very mixed for us kids, on the one hand there were ready meals ,sweets and comics and constant TV,dad was never without his packet of ciggies, on the other hand there were jumble sale rejects and no holidays and many many embarrassments.Mum still rebelled against austerity and would come home with packet meals or tea time fancies on a whim.
I think we always were thinking,if only dad won the pools we would be fine.
I began work at 15 with a paper round ,£2.20 a week which I used to pay for new plimsolls and my own essential toiletries.At 16 I got a job full time and left school and after a year of getting used to the novelty of money ,saved like mad.
When we got married 6 years later,we bought our first place with a mortgage and my squirreled savings.
Hubby's parents were both very free with money but not always sensible and that lead to a struggle for me in trying to keep our outgoings below our income as he adjusted to real life where you don't blow £20 on videos you will watch once.
When I gave up work to have kids,we sat down with a budget book and wrote down everything.
So I think in the end, we have become similar to my grandparents and hubby's because we do watch the pennies,make rather than buy,grow our own and generally let the pounds take care of themselves.

I am different to my mother - and we are at different stages in life too.

She was a nurse, but gave it up when she got married and hasn't really worked since (she did one week in a shop a long while back, but it didn't suit her and Dad does support her very well). She is very busy now as a senior office holder in an organisation similar to the WI - unpaid, but she gets expenses for her meetings, and she enjoys the work involved.

When we were growing up, there wasn't a lot of money and there were 6 littluns to feed. There were lots of veggies and quite a bit of soft fruit, as well as 2 apples trees, grown in the back garden. We'd go to the fruit farm reasonably regularly to buy 2 boxes of eating apples and one of cookers - which we'd then use for lunches (with sambos) and other snacks for the next month or 2. But we generally had good food on the table most of the time (I remember occasional "economy drives" when we ate bread and jam for dinner, but they were rare) - as we'd spent 18 months in the US, Mum had learned about Italian and Indian foods, so was more into dinners that stretched than plain meat and 2 veg, which was the norm around us here. And she did a lot of baking and preserving of her own too.

Mum made a lot of our clothes and sewed most of the knees on trousers, hems fallen down etc. She made a lot of hers too. And we all wore hand-me-downs from each other and our grown-up aunts. We walked to and from school a lot. We didn't get pocket money until quite well into secondary school.

We still have open fires at home, but a lot of the wood for it was chopped ourselves - I remember being given the chopper a lot from about 12 to cut large rounds into logs (it was a great way for me to get rid of lots of pent up rages and hormones!!).

Nowadays, there is a lot more money in the house (Dad has risen through the ranks in his professional job and the kids are all grown up). Mum is a lot more busy too. So she buys a lot more food from the weekly farmer's market and tends to go for the quality brands (always did, but now she goes for the luxury rather than "good" ones). A lot more convenience food too, and plenty of wine. She rarely sews anymore (no need and no time). She has a huge wardrobe of clothes from her travels. I am not sure that savings are ever really considered in the household - they live day-to-day more or less.

I didn't give up work when we married. Or even when our child arrived. I didn't want to, although we probably could have managed on DH's salary. We do a lot of our cooking from scratch - but we do have busy lives so I also have a range of decent jars of sauces and other fast option meals in the cupboards for when it's hectic. And I do double batches of dinners and freeze half, for similar occasions. I do a lot more baking and preserving than mum used to do - as I like it and use the results both to eat and to give presents.

I have an allotment - our garden being less than quarter that of "home" - and I grow quiite a bit of veg and soft fruit there. We are not self-sufficient, but apart from tomatoes, I probably get more than Dad used to at home (his tomatoes and courgettes were in a polytunnel).

I am not great at sewing clothes. I have a machine and I do sew things for the house, and am getting better at things that would be under closer inspection. And I do a fair bit of knitting - last year, all my and DH's siblings and significant others got handknitted facecloths with a soap to match the person, and the year before, my 8 aunts and uncles each got a scarf with different colours, wools and patterns to suit the recipients.

Both DH and I will repair our clothes a lot though - Dh is good at sewing buttons and wunda-wedding hems. And sewing a little, not seen, seam if necessary. I do thiose, and any visible repairs also. And if it is beyond us, but worth doing, we WILL bring our clothes to the tailor for repair. And we bring our shoes for heeling/soling to the cobblers - which Mum doesn't do at all. I buy a reasonable amount of clothes, but tend to go for quality items that will last for years.

We also get our appliances repaired - much to the amusement of others. We do most of our own DIY jobs of all descriptions, and know the local plumber and electrician to call on them too.

We use public transport a lot - not something my mother would dream of, even when in the city. She is utterly wedded to her car.

And I have savings plans, both short and long term. Some of my own, and some shared with DH (not that I have money "hidden" from DH, but both of us know that each of us has different savings). I use coupons where i can - and am part of loyalty schemes all over the place (we had a free 2 night stay in a hotel recently from one, for example, but it's mostly grocery stores).

And I am cetainly more environmentally friendly than my mother in lots of ways, many of them OS and money-saving but also green.

I am probably a bit more OS and MSE than my mother, but then again, there are areas where she was better than me in the past (at the same life-cycle stage as me). Who knows what I will be like at her age

My mum knows how to be thrifty, has been thrifty but now doesn't have to be so she isn't!

My grandmother was frugal to the end - she didn't get an automatic washing machine until 2005 and that was under duress. She made do wherever she could and didn't spend on things she didn't see to be important. What she had was great quality so she rarely needed to replace things. She died with plenty in the bank. When we were growing up my dad worked very long shifts to keep the household going and my mum knew how to make the cash stretch. They kept how little money they had from us really well, it was only when I became an adult that I realsied how tough it was for them. Since my dad retired and we all left they enjoy life and they enjoy the cash they have. They love DIY, growing their own, my mum like knitting and baking and they think the budget supermarkets are the best thing ever. But they won't scrimp on things because they did it when they had to and find no need to do it again. Which is fair enough imo.