@Johanna, there’s nothing wrong with living within your means, even if a little austerity is in order.

Personally I buy very expensive coffee, because I wont drink it otherwise. If it’s not “Fair Trade” or Colombian forgedaboutit it. *BUT* we recite the phrase “use it up wear it out make it do or do without” when it comes to anything material.

Isn’t that a GOOD thing? Aren’t we better off for having a stronger social safety net? Isn’t society’s net happiness INCREASED by not having to skimp and save every penny, knowing we’re required to survive any bout of unemployment entirely on our own?

Those social safety nets allow us to relax a little and truly enjoy life, instead of frantically fretting over every little break in employment.

You said it yourself – three generations have passed. And thanks to those safety nets, they’ve been protected from the perils of an economic meltdown. However, there hasn’t been another Great Depression. If those 3 generations had foregone the rich life experiences that their money afforded them, and had instead hoarded it in fear of another Depression (and lacking the social safety net), they’d have missed out on a lot of quality living.

I think we’re better off for not having to be pathologically frugal.

We should all strive to help ourselves and others enjoy “the things that matter,” as Trent’s grandfather did. He sounds like a wonderful man to remember during the holiday season.

For our grandparents, and their brothers and sisters, they did without high school educations in many cases — college was fantasy land back then, which severely hampered them (and their earning power) as it also did for some of our parents, who could not attend and/or complete college (not everyone can get a scholarship or financial aid–as families today are now finding out as kids either cannot enter or are dropping out of college due to costs.)

Aside from daily hardships and economic worry, which does take a toll, no matter how hardy and upbeat people are, they did not lead the fullest lives they could on so many levels. There was very little social mobility (and social interaction) for the poor during our parents and grandparents’ lives, and they missed out on a lot of opportunities (Yes, a few managed to escape poverty by hard work and incredible luck. Luck IS a factor because they all worked hard.)

With no social interaction (beyond church) they did not have access to meeting people who could help them with work and lots of other things we take for granted today in a very networked world. (Poor people don’t tend to have a lot of friends who are “better off.” for lots of reasons.)

Emotionally, being poor affected them in a lot of ways –obvious and not so subtle. And did imprint on their children and their children’s children. It’s a bit more complicated than how they saved or how they approached frugality. Far more complex in how they viewed the world and how they felt about themselves based on how the world viewed them (and this was long before designer clothes, etc.)

You can have a strong internal core, but you know that the world does indeed divide between the “haves” and the have nots, on many levels and this did take its toll on them. As it is taking a toll on people today who suddenly find themselves without jobs, a sense of identity (from their work) and without cash for the basics. Not all of these folks were spendthrifts, who purchased big-buck items and spent money foolishly. Not by a longshot.

Losing things in your 50s and 60s now, if you came from a family history of poverty, is devastating in ways others who grew up more secure cannot even imagine.

Lenore, your comments were a good reminder Poverty is indeed violence.

The fact, as you point out, that so many fellow “citizens” would indeed deny healthcare to other citizens is truly frightening.

I was raised to believe that each of us “arrived” with certain skills and abilities and that it was our responsibility to develop them and USE them to help our fellow man. That if one succeeded well in life, that one had an absolute obligation to give back (and not just easily) to help others.

Because the reality is, those of us who have a business, for example, succeed because of others who buy a product or service. Without those customers, we’re nothing. So when we profit, that profit was meant to be put back into the world to help those who did not arrive with the same set of skill and abilities–and opportunities.

What truly frightens me today is the selfishness of so many people. Ironically, it’s the well-off who are often unwilling to part with their money. The average Jane or Joe who struggles, will be the first to lend a hand. And those with old money will often quietly give. It’s those “nouveau riche” in the middle who have trouble parting with their cash.

By the way, frugality is important. Always. IT’s about conserving resources as well as dollars. However, there is nothing glamourous to being poor or in poverty.

Let’s keep that in mind.

When we think about the “good old days” we need to remember people often gloss over grisly details when reminiscing or smile for photos no matter how they feel. For every time my family has laughed about my grandmother burying jars of money in her yard, she no doubt suffered sleepless nights and distrustful days.

The phrase, “Poverty is violence,” has come to resonate very deeply with me. Our Depression-era ancestors might have thought Unemployment Insurance or Social Security as superfluous as some believe Universal Healthcare would be today. Just as we can’t imagine life without a few financial safety nets, future generations may be amazed we allowed citizens to suffer and die for lack of health insurance. Nobody is openly advocating extermination of the poor, but it’s amazing how many Americans would deny medical care to their fellow human beings.

I agree with #19-Kara, I have seen folks who also grew up in the same way come into a bit more money than their folks and grandfolks as adults and spent it quickly and very much out of control to the point where they didn’t have much saved for the future, nor have real plans for the future other than plans for future purchases. That mentality is really hard to kick, the feeling of getting what one deserves because the rest of the world seems to have one (think smartphone(s), flat screen tv, new cars versus preowned, etc).

It’s hard to balance and remove some of those thoughts two generations later and not behave in a strange obsessively hoarding way when it was all we knew growing up. Trent’s grandpa had the right idea about some things, kicking back with his banjo and family, it can’t always be about being poor, hard work, and hoarding food scraps all the time.

What with riciulous fees at every turn, and their inability to govern themselves, there is rampant distrust these days.

Second, how we are just beginning to get out of this financial crisis we just went thru. How about our grandparents who some probably spent the better part of their LIVES in one.

Now that would take preserverance and frugality and prudence and a whole host of other qualities that for some of us its hard to get into our lives for a few weeks, much less several years.

Great post.

The FDIC that back stops the banks has gone into a negative balance now, and will need its own bailout.

Diversification is the correct answer i know you’ve preached, and i’ve followed: CD’s, Bond, Gold, Silver, Cash on hand, index funs (0 allocated right now.)

Still, of everything my grand parents knew, “Do NOT trust the bank.”

I can tell you all about my great-grandmother. Her and her second husband took everything they could get for free, if they thought it had any monetary value. They visited my grandparents one day, and were offered a roast from a cow that was just butchered. They took the largest one, one that was earmarked to feed 20 or so field hands during tobacco season. My grandparents later paid them a a visit, and they were invited by my great-grandmother to stay for dinner. This upset my great-grandfather, who insisted they had nothing to prepare. So my grandfather gave the old man a $20 to pick up something for the women to cook. The old man went to the store, came back with a loaf of bread that was so thin holes wore through, a pack of bologna that came with a rind and stained the bread and fingers red, and a stale bag of potato chips. He also kept the change.
The great-grandfather died. My great-grandmother developed Alzheimer’s. My grandmother was offered a deal by her brother, where she could have the entire inheritance if she would care for her until death. She took the money. Then she went to a nursing home, paying for g-gma’s care until her death, which came quickly. She was left with an extremely large sum of money, as there were large cash reserves from the stinginess, and liquidating the estate added to it.
The great-grandparents hoarded and spent as little as they could, their stinginess did not encourage visits from relatives, no one received cards nor gifts from them, no one sent any to them either. My grandmother died soon after getting the money, she had her own anyhow and spent it freely in her later years. She didn’t touch the inheritance. Then she died. The money wound up in her son’s hand’s, my uncle. He spent the next three years not working, buying cars and wrecking them while drunk, and snorting the rest of the cash up his nose.

The money that was hoarded didn’t bring my great-grandmother any pleasure, my grandmother didn’t live long enough to need any of it, and her son was brought nothing but endless misery by it.

I believe the money should never have been hoarded, it should have been tossed around freely to provide a higher standard of living for all in the family. Then everyone involved would have had a little experience in spending. Just like a college kid that never drank at home suddenly winds up with alcohol poisioning their freshman year, this kid that never had free money to be a little wild with couldn’t handle it when it came all at once.

Those of you out there that are hoarding and hoarding money, just remember, you can cross the line between having an emergency fund and being a miser pretty quick. You’ll die sooner or later, and that money will go somewhere. It’d be nice to be idealistic and donate enough to charity so as to not overwhelm your children, who will probably resent your frugality and buck right against it, but will you be among the very few that make their last act one that snubs their children? Can you do that to them? You better spend it while you’re still here to hold people accountable.

Tea bags were used al day long, for 2-10 cups- it was one tea bag a day. Soap shards were fused and reused. Fried potatoes with sliced hot dogs was a staple. The basement was full of musty stuff- for a rainy day. Nothing was wasted. not a thread, not a red and white string from the bakery box, not a button, no a scrap of food, not a slip of paper, not a box. Prepared food- what’s that? Presents were wrapped in the funny papers, or fabric with a bow that would be sewn into something later. All the trees they planted bore fruit. Clothes were let out and taken in as the wearer needed, with the sewing machine I still use- it has a foot pedal. Shoes were re-soled, special occasion clothes were re-worn again and again for decades, things were repaired, not replaced.

I grew up relatively “poor” in NY. We survived on surplus cheese, and had meat once a week. My dad had meat more often as he worked at hard physical labor literally digging ditches. We ran out of things, and I remember entire days waiting at the free clinic for my shot. My clothes all arrived in a green hefty- supposedly from a distant cousin- no one I had ever met. I think now they may have been from charity.

It is the frugality deeply instilled through the generations that helped us survive. We did, and I still, use every little thing till there is nothing left of it. Gifts, decorations, curtains, bedding, were all made, not bought.

The real challenge for me as an adult was not to hoard useful items I had no planned use for. The ability to let go, and give things away, trusting more will come to you if needed, comes long after the actual security arrives. My grandma had a hoarding tendency too. Luckily, the neat freak gene keeps it all in order.

It has a happy ending though- my parents each started their own business from our garage, and they are now retired, living on the entire side of a mountain they own in the Catskills, and winter in FLA. I wish I could say they are still frugal- they are not. Instead, they try to “fill the hole” caused by hardship. It affects different people quite differently.

@#11, I love giblets. My friend’s grandmother ate lard sandwiches, but that was because she had syphillis. Anyhow, I don’t know many people from large families that weren’t scrappers for food their whole lives, no matter the economic ‘times’ they lived through or the money and small households they had later in life. Liver and chicken offal may be economy meats, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t tasty.

I think we are having a much easier time of it than they did, I think the poverty found in Africa and Asia are far beyond even what they felt.

While some people kept those frugal by necessity habits (my grandparents did but then farmers have always had to be frugal) a lot of the post-WWII explosion in consumerism I’m convinced was a reaction to all those people in their 20s and 30s who grew up in the depression making up for lost time.