Do you feel like the only Frugal member of your household?

[kork13]

I struggle with this... My wife is relatively frugal, but also tends to be totally willing to buy meaningless junk that we have little to no need for.

For example, she recently bought a ($10) coloring book for our son that uses a special marker that theoretically won't mark other surfaces. Nevermind the fact that our son had shown no interest in coloring books (vs. loose papers), and has never tried coloring on the walls... Filling a need that doesn't exist...

To mitigate this, I just save aggressively and automatically. If/when our spending gets too high in a particular month, I'll tell her we need to tone it down, and she typically does. I also actively return things that I can, and even more so, talk her out of buying stuff on almost every other shopping trip we make. It's an active defense, but she accepts it. She probably views me as a scrooge at times, but when I agree that something is worthwhile, I readily spend on it. So things work for us.

[~bs]

^

That's kind of hilarious. She's going out buying various knickknacks (as some spenders like to do), and gets her fulfilment from that. Then you see the stuff she's buying and return it to the store, saving money, which you get fulfillment from.

[bigdaddybus]

For kids living at home 18 years old and under, I think it's much more important to just get them working, shut off the hand outs, and get them earning their own money and buying their own "stuff". If you can accomplish this, they will learn a lot about the value of a dollar on their own.

Realize that this is a saving forum, but saving for the future, setting up retirement accounts, etc. has a hard time getting much buy in or interest till they move out on their own and begin starting families.

My 16 yr old daughter is started working part time a month before her 16th birthday. She has been doing pretty good so far budgeting her limited income. (gas, food, save a little, movie tickets, chip in for prom attire, etc.)
My son is 15 and only works around the house for an allowance and he definitely doesn't have any interest in earning money or spending it wisely. My brother in law wants to hire him to mow weekly for $15-20 an hr. I told my BIL to "go for it" but unfortunately my son just isnt interested and I am not going to force the issue.

[bigdaddybus]

To answer your question, my wife is frugal although she and I sometimes disagree on certain frugal actions or behaviors. Overall, though, we're on the same page.

My daughter is pretty good. I think we've done a good job of teaching her the right way to do things. As she starts doing more things independently (she's 21 now), she often asks questions or asks for my help to make sure she's getting a good deal, like last week when I helped her buy plane tickets for a trip she's taking this summer.

I can see by daughter doing the same in the future. We put babysitting money in a Roth IRA when she was 14 and she overall just has an interest in being wise with her limited resources. Just need to get the boy moving in this direction

[bigdaddybus]

YES!! But I hope my kids are learning from me. I know my DD21 is, she's good with her money. DD18, well she's like her dad, its not really worth her time to go about finding something a few bucks cheaper than what she can buy right now. And DS16 tends to be the same way. I constantly try to get him to WAIT 2 days for a video game he wants from Amazon prime and save 5 bucks, but nope he's gotta go to WalMart right now and get it to play. Waiting 2 days isn't worth 5 bucks to him either.

Now before all you think I buy stuff for my kids I don't. They've all worked odd jobs since they were 10, paper routes, reffing youth games, mowing grass for my son, so they all have bank accounts with at least $500 in them. The older two have part time jobs. I do try to explain to them why a different purchase or waiting for something to be on sale would be beneficial, but at the end of the day its their money, and as hard as it is for me I gotta let them spend it as they please.

Although I did refuse to drive DS to WalMart to get his game, so he got his older sister to take him

Ahh, the big sister to take him! We have this too

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Your kid did some raking and you took him out to eat.

At age 14, my kid took a sledge hammer and busted up a 10" thick 12X8 foot concrete slab and 1950's granite block barbecue, hauled off the debris, planted cabbages, fermented cabbages into sauerkraut, canned it, and ate that. I did not pay him; I did not take him out to eat. His own work resulted in his own food.

I don't think I ever paid him for work, but I won't swear to that. He's 28 now so I don't clearly recall. My husband used to pay him for books read, , a practice I thought superfluous, but of which DH was fond because his parents had done that for him. Son is a frugal adult. My husband and I are both frugal. We both come from frugal families.

Oh, who could disagree that teens have wolf-like appetites?

[msomnipotent]

I think I'm the only "intelligently frugal" person in the house. Our last debate was because hubs wanted to buy the cheapest paint roller covers Menards had and a nice handle. We didn't need another frame and the covers weren't the nap I wanted. Plus, they looked like they were falling apart already. He also buys clothes from Kohls with a coupon and then doesn't bother to return what he doesn't want. It drives me nuts.


I'm the type of personality that can't keep my mouth shut when someone is making an obvious mistake. I really have to control myself to let my daughter make her own mistakes to learn from. When she was 10, she just had to have the $110 shoes all the other kids had, so I gave her what I would normally spend on shoes (because she needed a new pair anyway), but made her use her own money for the rest. I calmly explained why buying them would be a bad idea but I was tearing my hair out on the inside. Sure enough, she outgrew them within months and wasted a lot of money. And I actually got a stomach ache when she decided to buy an Iphone 7 at full price last month even when I told her that it will go on sale soon. Sure enough, Target was offering a $100 gift card 5 days after she bought it. I think the lesson sunk in this time because she was really mad. It was all of her own money and it took a long time to save for it, so it really stung. My work here is done!

[disneysteve]

And I actually got a stomach ache when she decided to buy an Iphone 7 at full price last month even when I told her that it will go on sale soon. Sure enough, Target was offering a $100 gift card 5 days after she bought it.

Did you have her go back to the store when that happened? I'm not positive what the policy is on phones but typically, if an item goes on sale within a certain number of days of your purchase, they will honor the sale price.

[msomnipotent]

We were in AZ during the sale and didn't have her receipts. I wanted to go to a Verizon store just to see if anything could be done, but my husband decided against it.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I was raised frugal and DH too. Hard habit for us to break. I suppose our kids are. They certainly understand and make a lot of interesting statements since DH says all the time we're not millionaires. They get we can't afford everything. But since we're in the house buying process they ask us what is going on. When and how. I haven't an answer. And soon I think we're about to teach them that we can afford to buy a house and it's due to certain choices we've made. so we'll see.