Can’t find the link to the video, so I’ll tell my story below https://twitter.com/callieabost/status/1329034376634568708

To start off, my family was never well off growing up. Solidly lower middle class with a few rough patches, especially when I was younger.

(BTW, it’s fascinating to think about how your family’s finances influence your own money beliefs. Thread for another day).

I was a junior/senior in high school during the GFC, and my family was doubly exposed to the financial crisis (mom worked as a bookkeeper at a home construction firm, dad was a residential/commercial electrician)

So the GFC was rough for us. Mom lost her job, dad’s business dried up for a few years.

I obviously never understood the full impact of the GFC on my family’ finances, and we weren’t as hit as some families.

But there was a lot of pain in those years.

Lots of screaming/crying about money (from me and my parents), things obviously cut out of my life (and I didn’t have much to begin with).

I was a little insulated from it too because I had a part-time job then, so I had some spending money of my own.

One Christmas around that time I remember my parents told us they didn’t buy gifts and I lost my mind at them. I vividly remember that and I feel terrible about it now.

Anyways, things turned out OK. Dad’s business picked back up, mom is doing fine now (dad died two years ago). All of us kids are adults and doing fine.

As an adult, I have always been SUPER conservative with my spending. Embarrassingly frugal, because that’s how I grew up.

It’s kind of a nice feature bc impulse spending to me now is buying a $50 shirt. Takes less to make me content.

M and I are fortunate in that we can prioritize saving now, and we’ll probably always have an extremely low risk tolerance when it comes to money.