Thanks for the posts. Id love to join in.
Im 23 . Im Irish & made silly decisions in school. I have a good permanent job now but Im crap with handling money. Growing up in a council house, sick father & my mother working (not supposed to be) to try earn enough to keep us going. I can remember at around 7 or 8 years old I stole pepper from the supermarket to save her having to buy it in the shopping.
I have a fear of having nothing, I cant relax thn when Im around people who are rich, Maybe its my dad who kind of thought us to believe that rich people were bad in a way even though I understand they worked hard for it the majority of the time.

Well my main concern is I am like a broken record. I am in the same cycle as I have been last year & cant seem to get out of it & because I do not knowwhat I want to do in the future or whats gona happen then I get stressed out & basically I feel its after leading to a mild form of anxiety.

Its seems to me like a loosing battle so I wrote dow a list last week of my goals ect & a budget . After paying my bils this week, I should have been left with 100 at least but checking my account this morning, The bank charged me over 100 in interest charges & loans so Im totally broke again this morning, It seems like aloosing battle all the time or is it just me ? ?

My family never had much money while I was growing up. We would drive around in broken down vehicles, the sort that I would have to push down the street in the mornings while my father steered because we were too poor to replace the starter.

The problem was that I was surrounded by people who lived hand to mouth. No one had any money and, it seems to me now, no plans for getting any. My father worked a piddly job for 40 years with absolutely nothing to show for it at the end. He was always complaining that he never had any money and then would start lashing out at us kids. It just seemed logical to me to run up debt as fast as I could because that’s just what we did. Running up credit debt was the only way, I had been taught, to get what you wanted. Once you had run up the debts, you would then start getting Demand letters because you had no money to pay the bill.

There was never any discussion about savings, finances in general, or money management. One memory I have is of my mother announcing to us all in general that she was going to be “economizing”. Even as a child, that stopped me cold in my tracks. How could we economize when we had nothing to start with? When I left home, I didn’t even know how to write a check. Such incredible ignorance put me in the recurring situation that I’m in today. For the third time, I’m about to lose everything. It just seemed to me, as a child, that life was extremely difficult for everyone and that money had no real value aside from buying food and clothes.

Investing money was out of my realm – it seemed too complicated to even bother. I had no clue what investing was.

Another childhood memory I have is of my father ridiculing my uncle behind my uncle’s back. My uncle had taken out a mortgage on a house in town and he was the ONLY member of the family to ever do so. I remember my father scorning my uncle, saying, “bloody mortgage! I’d never have a bloody mortgage!” Well, that uncle today is more than financially secure and retired early, while my dad is falling out of oak trees at 70. He cuts trees down for a living. To this day, my father continues to be unteachable about money. This, for the first 20 years of my life, was my influence.

In adulthood we have choices to make, no matter our circumstances I believe all of us can improve our circusmtances with education, support from other and perseverance. I look at the emotional and familiar challenges of financial maturity from childhood wiht no regrest. It was my mother who always reminded me to put some money into your sock. She might be surprised to find I am listening.

I grew up in rural Michigan during the 80’s and 90’s, which as i am sure you all know was pretty much the meat of the decline of the auto industry for most of the US manufacturers. And of course, Michigan’s industry was almost wholly dependant on it for many years.

Point being, while most people in the country were living quite well and carefree. My childhood was forged in a localized depression that still exists today in that area. I have long since left and venture out to life on my own. But I am quite certain that my environment has been a crucial element in making me the man i am today.

-Jobbik-