The road so far: Childhood memories of personal finance & real estate

I was one of those middle class kids in an upper middle class neighborhood who didn't realize how tight the family budget truly was. Dad is an insurance attorney who also does some family and school system legal work. Mom was a stay at home mom and she passed away my senior year of college.

Since mom was always home with me, she took me on shopping trips and I learned almost everything about frugality from her. It wasn't until my 20s that I realized some people didn't comparison shop for every item in the store. Almost nothing was purchased for convenience or at full price, but if it was, it was usually for me (an only child and spoiled first granddaughter on mom's side) at Christmas. Or for school, which was considered sacred in my house growing up.

One of my earliest memories of financial awareness was being at the store with mom who bought stuff she didn't need just because it was on sale. I'd say to her, "Just because it's on sale doesn't mean we need it!" As a kid. To be fair, at whatever young age, I had no concept that maybe we would eventually use the item and perhaps it didn't go on sale very often. She was the daughter of my depression era grandparents, who raised 8 kids on my grandpa's New York City police officer. I recall the stories of just barely having enough food for everyone to eat. Suffice to say, frugality is in my blood.

I remember my parents arguing about money when I was in high school. Even though Dad was the breadwinner, Mom has the money smarts and made the budget work. I wasn't privy to most of these conversations, but I did get good at eavesdropping from the top of the stairs and even a kid can tell when the tone of the conversation is stressed.

Another childhood memory, nearly forgotten until recently, is from grade school. My parents used to flip houses. I remember one childhood spring where I would take a different bus home from school so I could be dropped off at the house my parents were flipping. I wanted to help paint (I was always a crafty kid) and being told I was too young to help. I would try to get homework done, which was light in those days but made harder by the surrounding sounds of construction. I think back now sadly at all the missed learning opportunities those memories represent. Nobody ever showed me how to even hammer a nail.

I talked with my dad about their flipping endeavors a couple weeks ago. Apparently they started in the 1980s before I was born. They kept it up through 2001. A month after Dad's brother was killed in the 9/11 attacks, they found out they couldn't finance their next flip because a second mortgage was somehow on our home. That mortgage had been taken out to help fund the last deal, and should have been paid off earlier that year. A lawyer my dad used to work with handled the closing but embezzled the funds. Seemingly in cahoots with someone at the bank, the lawyer somehow arranged things such that my parents were never notified that the second mortgage hadn't been paid in full. It took over a year for my parents to be made whole, but the investigators never fully got to everyone involved in the scheme. My parents never did another flip again.

As a lawyer's daughter, I'm grateful for the ways my dad has taught me to protect myself over the years. As the daughter of a frugal mother,I learned enough from her that I managed to escape my teens and 20s without ever making a single regrettable, high dollar frivolous purchase. While we all inherit some money hangups from our parents, mine are a drop in the bucket compared to what they could be. I'm indebted to their efforts in building a solid foundation for me.

In the next installment, I'll tackle the more recent influences on my views of personal finance. Stay tuned :)