To be annoyed that my parents never gave me a sense of responsibility when it comes to money?

[spendyspend]

My parents have always been pretty well off - a successful business, rental properties and healthy pensions.

They have never been ones for investing, and although my dad is quite tight, my mum is the opposite. If i ever saw something I liked as a child she’d tell me to buy it, birthday money would always be “oh let’s go on a shopping trip”, there was never any mention of saving it. They never really bought into the saving for your kids thing either.

That attitude carried on, and I ended up in a bit of a mess in my early 20’s because of it, and I’m only just starting to get myself out of it in my late 20’s.

But looking back, I can’t really believe they did this? I’m not in a hugely well paying job but they encouraged me to act like I was - if I ever mentioned liking something they’d just say “oh well buy it”, never encouraged saving for a home etc., and I just feel like it was really irresponsible of them. They’ve not taught me about pensions, investing, anything like that. I feel a little let down by them to be honest. AIBU to feel that way?

But that’s my point. At some point you have to accept you’re an adult and it’s now your responsibility.

Some kids were brought up on terrible food or abusive homes then they spend a lifetime trying to undo all that damage. You are fortunate in that this is very fixable.

If your parents are rubbish with money how on earth would you expect them to educate you on it? People can’t pass on skills they don’t have. It sounds like your parents did pass on their beliefs and attitudes towards money, which was to spend. Now as an adult you are able to educate yourself and can choose to follow a different attitude, but you can hardly blame your parents for not teaching you something they didn’t value.

Your questions is akin to somebody who was brought up Christian but as an adult decided they aligned more closely with Buddhism questioning why your parents didn’t teach you about the Buddhist faith. Your parents can only teach what they know and will only teach their children things they value as important, if they don’t have money skills you can’t expect them to have taught them to you.

If this is the worst complaint you have about your parents they did pretty well

Which is totally fair (they don’t need to), but that’s not something you teach your children? You should still teach them the sense of budgeting. When we got pocket money as children it was straight to the shops on the way home to buy things. There was a sense of “you must spend it right now!”, I didn’t get a savings account until I graduated uni because I’d been taught it wasn’t important to save.

And I’m not here trying to say they’re awful parents?

So you had a really financially comfortable upbringing and you watched your parents succeed in their own business and you also worked for them, but it is somehow their fault that you, as a fully grown adult, are not financially responsible? I just want to make sure that I have understood this correctly?

There are so many online guides out there about how to be wise with your money. Instead of complaining on here about how negligent your parents were, turn your attention to what it is you want to find out, ask questions, get informed and start making your own grown-up decisions about your own financial future. You are responsible for your life now, not your parents!!!!!

Oh, good god, grow up.

I don’t think most parents talk to their children about pensions and investments, people tend to find out for themselves as adults.
I guess you pick up some attitudes from watching them and if they were always short of money you can learn to be careful.
Siblings brought up in the same family often have very different attitudes to saving and spending.
This is just part of a trend to blame parents for your own failures.

So what's the plan now?

Just get on with your life accompanied with the knowledge you've acquired about money and accept your parents weren't perfect (just like all parents)?

Fester away in resentment for ever?

Console yourself with the feeling that you didn't do anything wrong and it's Not Your Fault?

What do you want from this thread?

But you said your dad is tight, so assume he doesn’t just spend. How do you think they ended up having money to spend?

I wouldn't have learned anything from that either as a child unless told.

I learned by my parents giving me a pocket book "bank account" for pocket money and adding +1 or -5 etc when I gained or spent money. They actually panicked a bit when I saved up for a car age 10 and got close!

I agree that you can't blame parents endlessly, but she's not - she's educating herself now, and wishing her parents had educated her then.

I have similar gripes about teeth - I have loads of fillings, but they're all about 25 years old - right when my parents should have been responsible for me! But the filling is still there, even though I haven't got new ones.

Well your mum obviously doesn’t think saving is important so why would she try and teach you something not useful? Perhaps she has been lucky enough never to need to economise. Perhaps her parents taught her not to save, so blame them?

Yabu, my parents are terrible with money. Earned vast quantities which they burned through like water their entire lives and are now broke in retirement. It took me until my mid twenties to get my act together financially but that's nothing unusual. It's never occurred to me to blame them for my own actions as an independent adult.

I understand where you’re coming from to some extent but I think you need to be looking forward not back and take responsibility for your own life. You don’t always need to find someone to ‘blame’ when things are not going the way you hope. We all make mistakes and can’t hold our parents responsible for everything. You are going to encounter lots of challenges in life and your parents can’t prepare you for every eventuality. You have agency and the ability to make better choices. It’s a process. Your parents are human who may or may not have been taught things by their parents. But they seem to be doing ok as they have a business, rental properties and healthy pensions. You mention that they haven’t saved for you like you are owed that but many people manage without money from parents. You have a low paid job, start planning how you will your improve your income. To me it sounds like you’ve been spoilt a little but you are an adult now and need to stand on your own two feet and educate yourself. There’s lots of free courses online. Be grateful for what your parents gave you rather than what they didn’t and focus on what you can now do for yourself. Good luck.

I came from a poor one parent family so I learnt nothing about money management but I suppose what’s the point if there’s no extra money to save/invest?

However I taught myself when I started working as a teenager and saved enough to forgo a loan in my first year of university (no fees in my days so easier)..

Yes it would have been nice to have been informed a bit more but I don’t think my mother knew herself and is still the same.

But I’m an adult now and the responsibility is mine. My DH was also from a family with no spare money and we have a similar attitude. We are both savers and have mortgage paid off in our early 40s and a lot of savings/substantial pension pots etc.

I see your point of view and your parents did set you a crappy example which is regrettable but you are an adult and some responsibility has to be taken by you. Once an adult, no-one forced you to spend the money and you knew what your salary was. At least you have realised and are now trying to pull yourself out of it. Well done! It’s never too late. I don’t want to say you are BU as I think you’re somewhere in the middle.

Omg if this is all you have to be upset about about you have lived a very privileged life. Uour being ridiculous.

I’m genuinely curious how it’s my “own failure” when this is literally what was instilled in me as young as two or three? When I started working I was on minimum wage, but because they have no sense of the price of things I was still encouraged to spend it all. Even now, when we travel together they have no sense of the fact that €45 for breakfast is probably too expensive, and get angry at the fact it’s too expensive for me!

I am surprised by some of the responses on here tbh.
On MN, parents are expected to provide free on -tap childcare to their grown-up children's exact specifications, share their money and accept nothing they have achieved is through .anything other than good luck because they were born when they were, yet at the same time are to blame for every shortcoming of their adult children's personality usually

Learning is a life long endeavour. Your parents only cover part of what you’ve learned even in early childhood.

Adults are legally fully responsible for creating their own lives once they are adults no matter what they have learned along the way and there are people who are literally given nothing that counts as useful towards being an adult by their parents. You are clearly not in that situation so this one is on you to learn. Blaming your parents is only a distraction to you cracking on with learning how to manage money.

So your parents were generous with their money, and now you regret it? Sounds like you had a charmed childhood.

You were working from the age of 12, so they did give you responsibility.

Did they have hard childhoods, so didn’t want their children to go without?

You are an adult, how long are you going to keep blaming them for spoiling you?

if they had insisted on you saving and not bought you stuff, you could be on here complaining that they had loads of spare money and bought for themselves but never let you have anything

My parents were big savers and sensible with money which rubbed off on me but not my siblings so it works both ways!

Sounds like your parents were just very well off and so didn’t need to budget. What you are describing is not people bad with money, but people who for whatever reason didn’t think to teach you how to budget. My DH grew up with parents who were genuinely terrible with money and was very poor as a result. He’s learnt how to save and budget as an adult. I understand your frustration because you feel like you might have not got in a mess if you’d been given better tools but the good news is it’s easy to learn. Get on MSE and educate yourself.

In early adulthood, I got into debt. I grew up in relative poverty and my parents never talked to me about money, just argued between themselves about it. I had to learn the hard way, but learn I did.

They could absolutely have done a better job of teaching me about money management, budgeting and pitfalls like debt. I was a little annoyed when I was in my early twenties because yes, they did let me out into the world completely clueless, but ultimately it became my responsibility and now I’m in an ok position.

I’ve talked to my own children about money from when they were little, gave them an allowance to manage, and shared the household budget with them as they’ve gotten older, so they understand how expensive life is and how easy it is to get in financial trouble.

There’s lots of things I’ve done differently to my parents, money was the tip of the iceberg really. But continuing to be annoyed with them wouldn’t have helped me. It would have been wasted energy.