Thursday, November 8, 2007

Childish Misunderstandings About Money – Meme

I was tagged! My first tag. Very Exciting.

I was tagged by centsprout on the Childish Misunderstandings About Money meme. I was racking my brains this morning trying to remember what I used to think about money when I was a kid. Nada.

I do have an instance to illustrate how much my idea of ‘a lot of money’ has changed since I was a child.

When my sister and I were kids my parents convinced us we were poor. We weren’t really, but I guess it’s their way of making us think about our spending and need versus want. Being the younger one that means I don’t get a lot of new stuff.

I learnt to skate on my sister’s old skates. One day I outgrew my sister. Mum took me to Canadian Tire and got my first pair of skates for $29.99 (I did not understand about taxes then). The next day we had a skating field trip and I got to wear my brand new skates! It was amazing.
On the way home I put them down to tie my shoe laces, got distracted, forgot the skates, and walked home with my friends. When I realized I didn’t have my skates I had no idea where I left them. It took me 2 hours of retracing my steps to find them. It was the worst 2 hours in my life. My world was going to come to an end. I couldn’t face my mother. $30 was SO MUCH MONEY!

Compare that to present day. My cell phone bill is about $30 a month. A few months ago when I was traveling for business I used my phone and ran up about $50 on $1 - $1.5 per minute long distance. I couldn’t even be bothered to take that up with the finance department to expense it because it’s too much hassle.

How times have changed. I use about a pair of skates per month just on phone bills and just recently about 9 pairs of skates to buy a camera. Maybe if I got back to my childhood way of thinking about money I could save even more.

2 comments:

Emm said...

Oh my! I can totally relate to you on this one! My parents totally raised me thinking we were poor. I was a BIG figure skating fan as a girl (still am).

I remember a particular time asking for skates, and scoping out the flyers in Canadian Tire for sales on them. I finally got the courage to ask for them, only to be shot down with the explanation that they were a large purchase and that it was unreasonable to buy them because my feet were still growing. This made sense to me at the time.

But I still haven't bought figure skates! And my feet stopped growing eight years ago.;p

SavingDiva said...

I totally agree! I thought $5 was so much money! I remember how my sister and I would count change in order to have $1.50 to get two ice cream cones (I'm sure they were little) at a local ice cream place (a few blocks away from our house). On the afternoons that we had enough money, we would ride our bikes down and get an ice cream cone...it didn't get any better than that...