Most of us here had Depression Era parents..

[az_cyclist]

both of my parents grew up on farms in the 1930's.  My paternal grandfather owned the farm, so was in better shape to weather the depression. They had a garden, raised chickens for the meat and eggs, had 2 milk cows, and hogs and cattle.  hand me down clothes were made use of.  things were repaired rather than replaced, if possible.

[Prophet Zacharia]

On 7/29/2018 at 8:31 AM, Wilbur said:

When you come to the cottage for a visit, the admission is MomCheese's hashbrown casserole. 

Whereabouts is your cottage, Wilbur? My Highschool girlfriend’s Family had one in Lions Head. Cold water when I went in early July one year.

[Prophet Zacharia]

My Grandmother grew up as an orphan in Manhattan during the Depression. She boarded the rest of her life. Nothing thrown out, saved for spare parts or refurbish. She took it to the extreme, her collected newspapers were a fire hazard and almost got her evicted from senior living centers.

[Wilbur ★]

2 hours ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Whereabouts is your cottage, Wilbur? My Highschool girlfriend’s Family had one in Lions Head. Cold water when I went in early July one year.

North Okanagan in BC.

[MickinMD ★]

My parents grew up in the depression and the two big ways of economizing were comparison shopping and delay of gratification - MAJOR delay of gratification since we didn't have much to spend on gratification: we spread the jam very thin on bread to make the jar last..

Examples of both things served my siblings and I well.  For example, my sister bought some excellent-made but awful upholstery furniture from Goodwill and paid to have it reupholstered, ending up with spectacular, new-looking chairs for a fraction of what they were worth. The laptop I'm typing this on lists for $1599 and I bought it refurbished for $514. I waited a few years for the prices to come down on HDTV's until Costco had a $150 off coupon on a $799 55" Samsung Smart TV that was $1029 on Amazon at the time. We all share the best discount, etc. store locations with each other as we find them. We buy store brands when they're as good in quality as brand names, etc.

My parents - and this was common of Depression Era kids - were very wary of putting money in the stock market, not that they had much to put in until they were in their 50's.  Consequently, they didn't max. returns on their savings.  But they were, on average, much wiser about money than the avg. person today.

Tomorrow, I'll spend $100+ on two nephews and myself at Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium and restaurants, but on other occasions we've gone to places like the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Visitor Center ($0 admission, $0 parking), the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. ($0 admission, about $20 for parking all day), and the Kinder Farm Park's working farm -chickens, pigs, goats, cows, etc. ($0 admission, $0 parking if you have a lifetime county senior park pass), and that allows me some big-spender days every so often.

[shootingstar]

On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 6:51 AM, Square Wheels said:

Same here.  You people are old.

I'm not so sure....there's enough non-English language immigrants who are desperately trying to survive....NOW.  I use the non-English language....as barrier to finding higher paying jobs, etc.

My parents were teenagers in the 1930's.  They escaped from Mao's iron fist Communist rule in mainland China.  China had...starving literally millions of people in 1950's. The dreams of some immigrant stories entering in North America with very  little money are so true...it is true in my family  for my father..and then my mother.  

But yea, maybe we are sounding old...but again not really :  there is a resurgence of having home gardens for food, sewing, knitting, cooking and other DIY activities to save money and control "quality" at home.

 

[Prophet Zacharia]

8 hours ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

My Grandmother grew up as an orphan in Manhattan during the Depression. She boarded the rest of her life. Nothing thrown out, saved for spare parts or refurbish. She took it to the extreme, her collected newspapers were a fire hazard and almost got her evicted from senior living centers.

That should read as “hoarded”, she hoarded the rest of her life.

[Prophet Zacharia]

5 hours ago, Wilbur said:

North Okanagan in BC.

Ah, I assumed it was northern Ontario.

[maddmaxx ★]

My dad came here as a young boy from Hamburg Germany right after the end of WWI.  He traveled by himself on the boat and was picked up by an "uncle".  He grew up during the depression and I know little of those years other than that I have/had two half brothers whom I never met.  He passed away when I was 10 so we never really got to have those son/dad talks to fill in the blanks.  My box of "stuff" from him consists mostly of the paperwork from WWII in the service of the merchant marine and some pictures of him building houses when I was young.

Most of what I know about the family and the depression years came from my stepdad who worked in the camps.  Many of them went to the work camps just to unload a mouth from family resources stretched to thin to feed everyone.  It seems to have been a pretty harsh life by our modern standards. He grew up to be a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman who was good at his job in the mornings and a drunk in the afternoons.  He didn't arrive in my life till sometime in the 60's.  His presence had a lot to do with me enlisting.