Family photo: Ernest and Elisabeth Cassutto, archives of Hetty Cassutto Haden
On the way to her Mom and Dad’s house in Mill Valley this morning, Holly is thinking more about the idea of financial ancestry mentioned in yesterday’s New York Times article Money Talks to Have Before Marriage by Ron Lieber.
She and Jack have very different financial ancestry.
Jack’s mom Heather raised Jack and his sister Sarah mostly by herself. She met their Dad Ben at a Rolling Stones concert; two weeks later they got married in Las Vegas. Ben was out of the picture by the time Jack was three and Sarah nearly two. At first things worked out pretty well. Ben was a house painter and Heather worked as a receptionist in a dental office. They had a cute apartment in North Beach with a balcony overlooking Coit tower. Friends were always stopping by to hang out, play guitar and smoke marijuana. A lot of marijuana in fact.
Once the kids were born, Heather wasn’t enjoying the guitar and marijuana scene as much. Not meaning to insult him, she asked Ben about getting a real job. His response was to move out. To his credit, Ben dutifully paid child support, but he wasn’t really the fatherly type. The kids rarely saw their Dad until he remarried a folk singer named Kate with two children from a previous marriage–twins Zoe and Chloe, now 26. Kate set up weekly visits to bring the family more together. Lots of Saturday outings going to museums or parks until the kids became teenagers and wouldn’t go. Jack and Sarah like Kate well enough, but can’t stand her spoiled, whiny daughters.
Heather drifted from clerical job to clerical job, keeping household together but barely making ends meet. At one point she started a program in cosmetology, then quit the program when she met an attorney who seemed interested in getting serious. Things didn’t work out with the attorney or with any of the other numerous men Heather hooked up with over the years. She inherited a little money when her Mom died; her Dad died 10 years earlier leaving Mom fairly comfortable, and Mom was an excellent money manager, so there was about $100,000 after taxes each for Heather and her brother John. Heather immediately invested the money in a risky commercial real estate venture, only to be forced to sell at a loss due to high vacancies during an economic downturn.
Now Heather is 59 and always broke. Kate and Ben sometimes give her money to help her out. Jack and Sarah, both determined to succeed, fully funded their own college educations, taking on considerable debt in the process.
Holly’s own parents Stephen and Joan are financially conservative. They met at Stanford, when Stephen was finishing his MBA and Joan was graduating with a degree in English. Joan worked a few years as an administrative assistant for a non-profit, but stopped working to be a full-time stay-at-home Mom when Holly’s younger brother James was born. Stephen went to work for a large high-tech corporation in Silicon Valley, where he is now the CFO. Joan and Stephen both had modest student loans that were fully paid off within 10 years after graduating.
Stephen, now 62, always loved talking to his children about finances. When the kids were little he gave them allowances and made a game of it by helping them make savings thermometer charts. These were taped these to the refrigerator and colored in to higher tic marks as the kids accumulated savings. It got pretty competitive! Holly didn’t like giving up candy to stay ahead of James but she learned to do it without complaining.
When it was time for college, Holly’s parents offered to fully pay for her education at Santa Clara University, but Holly insisted on contributing to the expenses via student loans, recently paid off.
Joan, now 60, likes to say that she is frugal but doesn’t have a head for money. She’s been content to let Stephen manage the household finances, that is until recently, when Stephen was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. In seeing Stephen go through the whole ordeal of surgery and months of chemotherapy, Joan feels shaken and insecure. Stephen has a clean bill of health for now, but she knows the future is not guaranteed. She asked Holly to help her learn more about the household finances, in case–God forbid–something should happen to Stephen.
Today is Holly’s third Saturday in a row helping Mom learn Quicken and pay bills. Joan won’t let Stephen teach her because he is too impatient. Holly sees why her Dad would get impatient. Mom is impossible! Holly wonders how a person graduating from Stanford in 1971 at the dawn of the computer age could be so computer illiterate. It drives her nuts that Mom continues to make mistakes keeping the check book ledger balance, and that she always jumps a little in her chair when downloading new transactions to Quicken, like it’s a scary surprise. She goes to help anyway, because it’s important.
Given their radically different financial ancestry, Holly wonders if she and Jack will ever be financially compatible. It’s been bugging her for awhile, enough so that she’s let herself think a little about Craig at the office. Craig, a new Accounting intern at her firm, has been flirting with her in the coffee room and she hasn’t exactly been discouraging it.
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Another great follow up to the story. It’s so true that the way you are raised affects how financially savvy you turn out. My step-dad started me off early, learning to count money early in elementary school and really pounded in the idea of saving. (Of course, I did fall off track for a few years). My husband’s family, who owned their own business and taught him to be a hard worker and have an entreprenurial spirit, never really discussed personal finance. Large Christmases didn’t help either. Luckily, we are now old enough to openly discuss our wants, needs, and goals for saving.