Our parents are mere mortals, and never is that more apparent than when we look at how they handled money. Most of our parents’ personal finance advice—solicited or, more often, not—reflects wisdom from a different time. After all, certain money habits only made sense when college was cheap and eggs costed a dollar. Whether or not you actively turn to your parents for financial advice, you naturally internalized their teachings from years (and years) ago. And those teachings are likely far from perfect.
Maybe you inherited your parents’ aversion credit cards, because they taught you that using a credit card automatically means going into debt; or perhaps you internalized certain money etiquette rules, like never talking about finances with friends. It’d be nice if we could all inherit generational wealth, but most of us are stuck inheriting money habits that may have caused us more harm than good. Personally, I received conflicting messages about saving money from each parent, leading to me becoming an anxious, panicked spender as soon as I had money of my own.
So I’m asking you to share your financial journey in the comments: What unexpected money habits did you have to unlearn from your parents? And most importantly, what steps did you take to break the cycle of bad habits? Did you find a money mentor to help you out, or did a spouse come into the picture and open your eyes to the error of your ways? Hopefully, you sharing your experience can help others unlearn their family’s bad money habits.
After sifting through your responses, I’ll round up the best tips to share with readers next week. Maybe if we work to fill in the gaps in our own financial education, we can avoid passing on bad money habits to our kids, too.