How Wealth in Childhood Shapes Personality Later in Life

[cilantro]

Not groundbreaking, but a good read:


www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-wealth-in-childhood-shapes-personality-later-in-life/390939/?utm_source=SFFB

[spunkarella]

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

[cilantro]

I feel the exact same way. My H wasn't way more $$ well off, but his parents had reliable professions as opposed to my parents blue collar backgrounds and were responsible with their money. He never stressed.

[4speedy]

i think my DH and I are an interesting case study. I grew up thinking I was firmly in the middle of middle class, although we did go through some upheaval that put us into lower middle class during my high school years. DH would tell you he grew up upper middle class and that his family was "well off."

Turns out, from an income and networth perspective, our families were dead equal, except for that period in high school. (My dad started a business which led to some pretty lean years during the startup. It never did particularly well, by the time all was said and done, he broke even when he sold it.) the difference is that my in laws felt upper class because they had upperclass spending habits. My parents didn't spend as much, but they were much better at spending and got "more for their buck." My MIL will tell you about how fancy she is because she lived on a golf course until she went into senior housing. But the truth is, is was a par 9, community access course not a country club course. Her house was similar in size and value to my parents home and yet she thought now her circumstances made her upperclass while I am a class beneath her. It is just so odd to me how DH and I view our upbringings as being in different classes and yet we were nearly identical.

Now that we are getting a clearer pictures into our parents finances (our mom's only, both of our fathers have passed) we see things have flipped. Our mom's are both retired teachers and get SS as well as a pension. My mom takes a big trip every winter, enjoys her vacation home and has a great lifestyle all the while, her bank accounts keep growing because she hasn't touched her principle. my MIl on the other hand, is depleting her accounts at a rapid rate and doesn't having anything to show for it other than a hoity toity senior apartment. She sits in her expensive apartment doing nothing except keeping up her appearance of being well off. MIL still is under the impression that she outclasses my mom, even though the numbers paint another story.

It's funny to me that how we view our own class and that of our spouses seemingly has nothing to do with actual numbers and more to do with where our parents told us we belonged.

[kellygreen]

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

Same for my husband.  It's frustrating that he doesn't see this.

[dottyblue]

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

This is very true for DH and I.  I grew up poor and I'm the frugal/planning one.  He grew up comfortable/well off and is very chill.  I think we balance each other pretty well, but the different approaches can be amusing sometimes.

[katieb4tom]

Apr 28, 2015 12:21:49 GMT -5 dottyblue said:

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

This is very true for DH and I.  I grew up poor and I'm the frugal/planning one.  He grew up comfortable/well off and is very chill.  I think we balance each other pretty well, but the different approaches can be amusing sometimes.

Thirded. I grew up poor and am watching our money religiously and planning. He believes money isn't all that important and things will work out.

[Cicero]

Apr 28, 2015 12:40:09 GMT -5 katieb4tom said:

Apr 28, 2015 12:21:49 GMT -5 dottyblue said:

This is very true for DH and I.  I grew up poor and I'm the frugal/planning one.  He grew up comfortable/well off and is very chill.  I think we balance each other pretty well, but the different approaches can be amusing sometimes.

Thirded. I grew up poor and am watching our money religiously and planning. He believes money isn't all that important and things will work out.

This is us except in reverse. He's the child of two factory workers that weren't together who needs to plan and freaks out when things don't follow that plan exactly. I grew up on the other end of the economic spectrum and although I am also a planner, when things don't go accordingly I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

[dr.girlfriend]

That's the problem with anecdotal evidence...the author has her theory, but is it truly the case, or did she pull information to suit her own expectations? Is it cause or effect? -- maybe worriers push themselves for high-income jobs, and also give birth to worriers, while go-with-the-flow people are more likely to tolerate insecure jobs and give birth to go-with-the-flow kids.

I will say that there are certain things that I've had to wrap my head around in meshing my financially stable childhood with DH's exceptionally financially unstable childhood. For example, to me, owning a home signifies security. To him, it was the exact opposite -- owning a home to him meant coming home to the sheriff at the door and all your property on the lawn, because you were foreclosed on and kicked out. I know that his mom probably had plenty of warning, but to him as a 10-year-old it was an overnight lose-everything scenario. Renting to him felt much more secure because you knew where you'd be for the whole year of the lease. In the same way, he FREAKED OUT the first time we went to a restaurant with reservations, because we were running about 10 minutes late. I don't know what he thought they'd do, but he had never made reservations at a restaurant before. There was definitely a lot of stuff I considered "common knowledge" (how to make airline reservations, how to drive, how to use a checking account) that he had to learn pretty much from scratch. But, he's an amazing guy, and learned it all and is a very successful adult. In the go-with-the-flow versus planner scenario, I'm not sure -- I think we both fall closer to the planner side.

[soxin2]

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

Well, this just 100% described my household.

[mskitkat]

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

This is us, too. I remember in college he spent $100 on some game. I flipped the fuck out, because I couldn't envision spending that much money on a whim.

[Deleted]

Apr 28, 2015 11:48:18 GMT -5 spunkarella said:

Huh. DH and I have different experiences.

I grew up poor and now I'm the neurotic planner because I never, ever want to be back in a financially unstable situation. He grew up more well off and he's very go with the flow. I think he can sometimes take for granted that things will work out in part because they always have, and he has a great safety net.

This is me as well.  I've gotten better over the years but there's still the little voice of "what if" in my head.  It sucks, I wish I could be more relaxed about it.

[stretchad]

I feel like this is a weird article. I bet if I spent a year interviewing college-educated people like this author I could find the reverse to be true; those who grew up poor are the planners (presumably because they feel the need to control the money they have now) and those who grew up well off are more casual about it (because it's never been a worry for them in the first place)......

So the amount of stock I'm placing in this "finding" is about zero.

[irishbride2]

Not that anecdotes matter....

But I grew up wealthy and h grew up in a blue collar family. I am the over planner who is always stressed about money BECAUSE I don't have the level of wealth I grew up with. So to me, having x in the bank account leads to stress and tears but for H it seems like a lot.

Right out of college we made about the same. (we lived apart but were dating). He felt like a millionaire and viewed it as enough to buy whatever he wanted. I viewed it as a low salary that required scrimping and saving. And he had more expenses (like student loans) than I did.

But like I said, it's just an anecdote. I don't think generalizations work.

[les]

I grew up upper middle class and have always been a fastidious planner and saver. My ex and current BF are from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum and have a similar laid-back approach to finances, although the contributing factors to their tendencies are quite different.

[gibbinator]

I grew up in a working class family. My divorced parents each made about 9k and 14k annually. Dh has a similar background,thouhh his parents were fairly well off by the time we met.
Dh and I are solidly middle class.

I am unable to make purchasing decisions because it might be the wrong one. I cannot handle the idea of wasting money. I put myself through so much mental anguish when I bought myself a bread maker for Christmas. I made a humongous cost comparing spreadsheet when deciding flight dates, hotels and cities last time we went on vacation.

Dh neurotically tracks dollars and cents and plans everything we do down to the smallest detail.

[Marmee]

I do think it plays a part but other factors are more important. I mean my Mom & her siblings (grew up basically in poverty) have nothing in common with each ther financially/attitude wise. Same with DH & his brothers who grew up relatively well-off. I'd say risk-taking does play in somewhat but in a mixed sense. My mom grew up poor & so wasnt "scared" of it as she knew she'd survive even if the bottom fell out, so she was willing to take risks but my Dad grew up comfortable & I think he'd have fallen apart if he'd ever lost his job long term, etc. But it's a mixed bag because if you were wealthy & have parents still wealthy & willing to save/share with you, then risk taking (like opening a business) is easier. It's just way more complicated than the author touches on here.

[sillygoosegirl]

We both grew up upper middle class, and we are both very frugal. I'm a planner, whereas DH goes with the flow... In basically all things, not just money. I feel like a large part of what shaped my attitudes toward money though, were my mom's attitudes toward money, and she grew up poor (like, family of 7 living in a car poor). DH's mom also grew up poor (though not as poor). I think this shaped our perceptions and made it easier for us to see our privilege and also see the importance of being smart with our money and careers to hold onto it. My perception is that by the 3rd generation of privilege (people whose grandparents grew up poor but became upper middle class, and whose parents were like us), people tend to take the privilege for granted and often end up often being pretty dumb with money. How we keep that from happening to our child is something I worry about.