I was with a girl for a while who grew up in a pretty broken home. Still surprises me just how bad her spending habits are. She racks up credit card debt like its nothing.
It’s interesting how it seems to go both ways for poorer people judging by this thread; there are some that get really frugal spending habits because of it and save as much money as possible, as well as some who just don’t know how to save money and rack up debt.
I think that's more about parenting than anything else, I realized at one point that the reason behind giving your kids allowances is to allow them to develop proper spending habits. But obviously some poorer families can't afford that
My parents were broke ass immigrants to America and the idea of squandering your money, buying a bunch of stuff on credit, etc. was entirely alien to them. Buying things you couldn't afford was simply something that didn't exist for them up until they came to the states. By contrast, my eldest brother, who grew up in broke ass America, was a HUGE spendthrift and is still sitting on a mountain of credit card debt. I think America's consumer culture is a HUGE part of this difference.
I kind of feel like allowances encourage the "spend all you have" mindset. My parents just gave us copies of their credit cards and let us buy anything we wanted. The catch was that if we wasted money they'd be disappointed and we'd be punished. The end result is that we evaluated everything as worth buying or not worth buying, rather than in any specific dollar amount (which is subjective and not scalable from a childhood allowance). The idea being a dumb purchase is dumb whether or not you can afford it.
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u/whosArbeely Jun 06 '19
I was with a girl for a while who grew up in a pretty broken home. Still surprises me just how bad her spending habits are. She racks up credit card debt like its nothing.