I came from a middle (maybe lower-middle) class family, and my parents were always scraping to get by. They never talked about 401k, 529 plans, HSA Accounts, or any of the other financial ‘buzz words’ you hear in financial articles nowadays. Finances weren’t something we talked about a lot. They were treated somewhat like taboo subjects.

In fact, I can’t remember getting any financial advice from my parents at all. Nada, zip, zilch!

After talking to a number of my friends around my age, this seems to be pretty common. Finances were something that Dad (or Mom, in my case) worried about and didn’t involve the rest of the family. Now, there’s blog after blog that are actually publishing running totals of bills, methods used to pay debts, and net worths, this blog included.

It hit me; “How did we get to this state, and why is it suddenly ‘OK’ to reveal, and even flaunt, your finances?”

I’ve got a of theory on that;

Growing up During the Reagan/Bush Sr. Years - During the 80’s and early-mid 90’s, America was all about the ‘Conspicious Consumption’. BMW’s were the ride of choice and the Yuppie (Young, Upwardly Mobile individual) was a desired label. You were judged and identified with what you did and how much you made. MTV was new, and showed people what was ‘cool’. People worked and spent like there was no tomorrow. Success was the Holy Grail. Growing up in this age shaped a lot of my deep self-image and ideas on self-worth. I still have problems NOT working 60+ hours, even if I have to do extra work at home. Vacations and free time still don’t appeal to me like they did to my parent’s generation.

This was at the tail end of the Baby Boomer’s era, and seems to be a lingering symptom of the entire demographic. Even today, much of the Boomer media paint the later Gen X generation as ’slackers’ and ‘lazy’ because they refuse to adhere to the idea of long work weeks and attitudes that you are what you make. Gen X’ers are far from lazy, and being original and unconstrained by stereotypes of the past is a plus, not a minus.

This is when I believe finances started ‘coming out of the closet’. To be able to judge each other based on income, you had to reveal that income. While women have always at some level judged male suitability by support and income potential, during the 80’s it became much more blatant and common. Right or wrong, to score during that period, depended to a much greater extent on the money a guy had.

At the same time though, because of the changes in attitude about finances, I was poorly equipped for the change in attitude about spending. Credit cards were a ‘force majeur’ just coming into their own, and everyone HAD to have plastic, or they weren’t ‘with it’. The Gold Card was the new gold standard.

As a dutiful consumer during a period of consumption, I was completely taken in by the whole sales speech. And since my parents had never had credit cards, they didn’t have any useful advice for these devilishly addictive devices. No one was defaulting on their debt (yet) or shuffling zero balances around (yet) or getting Home Equity Loans to pay off their CC balances (yet).

So I got no advice.

I’d like to hear what my readers got as advice from their parents and if it helped them in their life.

Technorati : 80s, MTV, conspicious, consumption, finance, parents, yuppie