My Grandmother
My grandmother was a tough, smart, obstinate woman who raised five children. She could organize the heck out of anything you put in front of her. She spoke her mind, usually whether you wanted to hear it or not. I had no idea, when she was still alive, how accomplished she was. I appreciate that my legendary stubbornness was probably passed down from her.
I don’t remember her doing anything without doing it as if she were a professional at it. My mother has claimed there was more than a little obsessive compulsiveness going on, but in any case, her mantra, “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,” has something to it. Along with that, “Can’t never could,” and “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” which my mother cross stitched on a sampler for me during one of my hell-years. It still sits in my kitchen. I never got off easy when I wanted to give up at something.
I remember a conversation my grandmother had with me when I was twelve. It was one of her rants, brought on by god knows what, and there was no option but to simply nod my head and endure. Now I think I understand. She lived through the depression, she knew the value of a dollar, and I’m sure the pain of not having enough dollars. My generation was raised with a new economy mindset. If you grew up in the suburbs in a middle class family, you probably never truly wanted for much. The parents that raised our generation seemed to work from the mind set that they wanted their children to have more than they did growing up. Don’t we all? The consequence was that we were shielded from financial reality, there was a never ending toilet paper roll that came from the gods of somewhere, and we didn’t talk about how essentials like that were really paid for—except for the low level drone about “money not growing on trees” and “the roof over your head.” As well meant as these things might have been, they were complaints against our ingratitude, not education in how to make it in the world.
This was my grandmother’s rant, more or less:
“Your parents, they expect to have the best of everything, and they want it right away. When I was married, we had nothing, we rented cheap furniture, we washed our clothes in the sink, and we ate [whatever it was they ate back then that was cheap]. We didn’t go out to eat. We didn’t buy a television or a car just because we thought we had to have one. When your grandfather started making some money, we replaced the cheap furniture one piece at a time. We SAVED our money! Your parents, they buy a house and they think they have to go out and buy a whole houseful of furniture to go with it! Absurd! We bought things when we could afford to buy them! We worked for years to have the things we had, and your parents think that it’s their right to have everything all at once, without patience, without working for it, it’s just supposed to fall out of a tree and into their living room!
What was this, some sort of hinterland philosophy of good cave keeping?
The problem my grandmother was talking about, whether she knew it on not, was that she was talking from a depression-era mentality, and the parents of my generation—and all of us since—believed in the new economy, an economy of plenty. That also happens to be an economy of credit and debt. We feel entitled, and we don’t get it when the good job doesn’t pay for the good life.
We know what happened during the dot-com glory days. No matter where you looked, someone was saying that the old rules did not apply. Price to earnings ratios? Old fashioned. Earnings?! You didn’t even have to have a product.
Maybe the best financial advisors around for these times are in the old folks homes, ranting away at the foolishness of the generations, while no one really listens.
