It's pretty much a given that most people's financial education starts at home. Some people learn what to do with money. Some people learn what NOT to do with money. I learned a little of both.
My parents aren't exactly terrible with money. They made a lot of the typical knucklehead moves like buying a timeshare or refinancing the mortgage multiple times. They probably shouldn't have credit cards as they tend to go through the cycle of:
1.) Run up the credit card balances
2.) Do something drastic to pay them off (see multiple refis above)
3.) Close all but one "for emergencies"
4.) Rinse and repeat
That being said, they've never been evicted and they've never defaulted, that I know of. We never went hungry. They didn't have to worry about saving for retirement because they both have pensions, though dad did a handful of part-time gigs starting basically the day after he retired from his full-time government job.
My maternal grandparents were great financial role models. They were stereotypical children of the Depression, though my grandfather was quick to tell you that the Depression never made a difference because they were poor before it happened and poor afterwards. They used everything they could and when they were done with it, they used it for something else. My grandmother made a lot of my mother's clothes when she was a child (and a few unfortunate outfits for me as a kid). They grew food and canned/froze it for the rest of the year. No lie, when I cleaned out their deep freeze in 2010, there was frozen corn that they had grown in 1998. And he would have insisted that it was still fine. They invested. My grandfather had a monthly ritual of calling around all the local banks to see who had the best CD rates for the one that was coming due that month. I'm pretty sure I get my love of playing with my money from him.
My paternal grandparents were...not so great role models. Though it wasn't until they passed that anyone had any idea how bad it really was. I mean, as a kid you don't quite understand the reality of the absolute mountain of gifts at Christmas when grandma and grandpa are on a fixed income. My dad was the executor of the estate when we found out that they owed something like $40k on 13 different cards and had already taken out a loan against their house and land to pay them down. I still remember the calls, and the calls, and more calls. The scummy creditors who tried to convince my dad that it was his responsibility, as the executor, to pay them even if it meant paying them out of his own pocket. I remember some of his very...colorful...replies to that request. It took months to straighten everything out and, in the end, they weren't able to save the house.
From all this, I can say that I probably got my saver personality from my maternal grandparents. There are quite a few skills that I wished I'd paid more attention to, but at least I have YouTube because my mom paid even less attention than I did. All in all, I'd say that I was very, very lucky to be able to (mostly) learn from watching my parents struggle. I think that my paternal grandparents situation is the one that had the most impact on me. I was 15 when it all went down, so it was still fresh on my mind when I went to college. Because of that, I resisted the credit card companies who were set up outside the university bookstore pushing free t-shirts and pizzas for filling out credit card apps.
At the end of college I fell into the trap of being married to a super-spender. He had both a drug problem and a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses problem. I left that marriage with between five and six thousand dollars worth of credit card debt with a foreclosure and a car repo on my credit report. In what is now a funny side note, when I got the first draft of the divorce papers from his attorney my ex demanded that I cut him a check for "my half" of the credit card bills. We had similar amounts on cards in each name. No joint cards. Seeing as how he had never dealt with the checking account or bills while we were married and wouldn't even know where to start to pay my credit cards, I not-so-politely turned down his "generous" offer. I'll post about the shitstorm that was that time of my life soon.
After that, I moved back in with my parents. I took a shit job and then quickly moved on to bartending. That was about the time I decided that I had to get myself back into school. I saved up and paid for my first two classes in cash. Because I already had a degree, most of my general ed classes were already out of the way and there were only a handful of my new major classes that I had the pre-reqs for. I tended bar at night and went to class in the mornings, paying as I went.
Eventually, I landed a co-op position that allowed me, nay required me, to go to school full-time and work 10-32 hours a week, depending on my school schedule. They paid books and tuition. That job transitioned to full-time a week after graduation. That was 7 years ago. I still owe them 2 more years for all the tuition they paid, but I mostly like my job so that's not a big deal. It's also a great paying job for my area with fantastic benefits and one of the best retirement plans available.
I'm remarried with a kiddo now. He's not fantastic with money, but understands that and lets me handle everything. I like it that way.
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