Managing Money Like Your Grandmother

Whenever I would use the f-word, people look at me horrified.  Apparently we can cuss to our heart’s content, but mention frugality and people recoil.  I’m not sure when “frugal” and “budget” became really-bad-words.  But one thing I know, I wish I had learned to embrace frugal habits and the concept of budgeting long before I did.  I would be financially independent by now if I had.  Not the get-rich-quick way (which, we have seen, leads to bubbles that burst and trash the economy) but in that old-fashioned get-rich-slowly-by-earning-it way.  Instead, I’m still paying for the poor choices I made while I was in graduate school…and I’ve been out of school for a long time.

This week, I’m going to share with you movies that you would have seen in home economics or life skills classes during the post-war era.  Even though it has been 50+ years since these movies were made, the fundamentals still hold true.

My grandparents literally lost their farm to the wind during the Dust Bowl.  I draw a lot of inspiration from them right now because, like my husband and I are having to do because of job losses, they were able to reinvent themselves and go on to live a fairly prosperous mid-century middle-class life.  They were very conservative with their money but they always had top-quality things in their life.

Today’s film, “Your Thrift Habits” is a basic introduction of how to think about managing your money that came out in 1948.  I love the theme of this film–We CAN have what we want but we have to prioritize our needs/desires to determine how badly we want what we want.

Click here to watch film if player doesn’t show up.