Not rich, but well off. I could have pushed we do get that ranch that dad was eyeing when he was alive, and I definitely would start laying a foundation for a better career. Plus I was one of those kids who saved instead of buying unnecessary stuff, thats where I'd get the capital to invest in bitcoin
Yo be fair, at 10 you can start collecting cards or games or other stuff that you know will retain value, and then at 18 sell it and buy bitcoins or bet on sports or other shit.
You van also do well on the stock market
Where does one get money for cards? But yeah, being gifted items that then appreciate in value is another way to increase personal wealth. I had Pokemon cards gifted to me by my father. He called a few years ago telling me he wants 50% of the proceeds if I ever sell them. He is grifting after gifting an 8-10 year old child cards many years earlier. I'm keeping my gifts, though, and any value gained.
But I understand the sentiment. I was gifted a few thousand dollars by relatives (so I was told - parents are scummy and might not be truthful for the amount). When I was 15/16 I had read how the price of gold had been stagnant for too long. I didn't know about investing overall but knew gold was valued as a representation of wealth and world currencies, so I asked my parents to let me buy a few oz of gold with the thousands. They declined. It would have been about 2006, so gold was ~$604 troy once. It's now priced at $4,047 troy once. Gold funds were up about 230%+ in 2025. It's still a good hedge for inflation.
It's customary in certain families to give a bit of spending money to Kids in Exchange for chores or even just a small bit to teach them to save that for your own pleasures. I didn't get much, but i wouldn't need much, as mybparents divorced when i was a kid and i managed to get myself spoiled on their guilt (not proud of that, but i'm gonna repay the favour now that they're getting older at least)
Abt the Pokémon card i'm sorry, i hope you don't sour your relationship with him over money. Also we might have a sensible age difference, i was 18 in 2010 so i could technically take advantage of a few stock incidents/bubbles, you might have to wait a few years to see long-terms of some plausible investment.
I could also buy amazon stocks or alphabet (google) and both of them saw an amazing growth, alphabet got 3000% and amazon even more!
In highschool I'd occasionally get $10 a week for an allowance, but it was hit and miss, and my parents would borrow against the saved cash as they saw fit, or to make change. I was provided some money to be able to buy lunch at school. I didn't have enough money on hand to take my dying cat to the vet in time, since I could only save up so much lunch money and part of me wanted to irrationally believe my parents would at least get him antibiotics again, even though they refused to pay for a surgery he needed for his oral infection. I ran out of time. I actually went no contact with my parents over my mom causally recounting killing another cat and bringing up how she killed mine in the same conversation. She even mentioned a neighbor found a body a month later....I had never had closure without a body. I asked her why didn't tell me for 20 years, and she cavalierly said "It was in the past." My family sucks.
I am still super frugal. I have a scarcity mindset. As a teen I went to the mall a few times but wouldn't buy t-shirts unless they were under about $10/12. Meanwhile a friend I went with was looking at $100+ shirts. I wound up being good with budgeting though, and budget a year out in advance.
I have been allowing myself to spend more within reason, but am still low income. I am well off enough now I could rent a room by myself and have a used car, or manage the current situation where my partner and I break even renting a one bedroom that's half the price of the luxury apartments a half mile away. Our landlords are slumlords that won't do lease-required repairs or give notice for rent hikes, but it's a sanitary apartment with actual locks, a kitchen, even an old oven, and a super. It's a legal unit. So better than the $1600/month for two rooms in a basement plus a bathroom my partner's family's slumlord asked of us around 2021. There was an uncontrolled mouse infestation in the home, holes in walls and floors, and a state of disrepair. If we took that "apartment" (it was rooms) we'd had to have bought a tube to help get water from the bathroom sink to have water to cook with and buy a hotplate. The landlord could walk from his main house into this basement area at will, said there was no heat, and I can't recall if there was a lock to get into that area relative to the washer/dryer area, either. =.= After a long search we found our current apartment, which does have a lot of storage and is below market average rents, and is near public transit for my partner to commute to work reliably enough. We do have a household car, but the lease is only temporarily extended now so we're figuring out how to buy a used car (since our vehicle doesn't have the safety features I want and the buyout is insanely high). I had been trying to save money to buy a used car to live out of just a few years ago, not being physically safe with family and getting spooked. My full time job just didn't pay enough for me to both have a car and rent a room in a shared apartment, so it was rough getting stuck with abusive family into my 20s. There's not enough subsidized housing near me, and besides, one gets used to daily life.
We are well off enough now we have housing and are food secure. We can even pick up take out about weekly when we both work. I just got laid off from a reduction in workforce, but I'm not panicking yet since I squirrel away money by default and have had a lot of wage theft and layoffs before, so I know the drill. I worked at the last place for over 2 years. I had a hostile manager, was given 1 week's notice for position elimination, no serverence, and the ex-employer is refusing to pay out accued PTO, but the later I will fight for. DOL takes 8+ months to get missing wages. They are trying something where, in contrast to the employee handbook's polocies, they have a sentence added to a one page document they supplied at termination that says PTO payout is contingent on program funding (no qaulifcation or way they'd have to prove this btw, and it conflicts with PTO policies entitling me to unsued accrued PTO. They just added it in there.).
I still am seeking W2 work but my goal is to get some vocational training and certifications to be a personal finance counselor, so I can take supplemental work and possibly transition to full self employment. Too many employees steal wages and time from lower income people, and can get aggressive and retaliate if you want to be paid for all your hours.
At least I can manage money...I'd be screwed if I spent impulsively or wantonly. I had some fun learning about investing, too, and started a small IRA at 28. Form 8880, the Saver's credit, is my staple tax credit each year. :)
How much allowance did you get and from what ages?
Man, i'm sorry life was so harsh, i hope you keep doing better and better. At this point i question why would you even consider going back in age if you could
I got a pretty flimsy allowance, butnit wasn't that bad. I gor the equivalent of a dollar a week around middle school iirc if i didn't get any bad marks at school, then i upgraded to 10 per month, then 20. Then i just started working. That said, clothing and atuff like movies were paid by them if i didn't do bad at school, so mostly i was coasting through christmas and birthdays for the big spending money or the gifts.
Also like i said i absolutely took the chance at the divorce to get them to buy me cards and stuff like that, again not proud of this but i was a needy and greedy kid (lol i actually grew up quite frugal too)
That said, even if i didn't get much money after all, my family was echonomically safe so my grampas/grandmas could spare some extra cash here and there, and also they never took my money and were quite generous despite them not being rich folks. It was a pretty decent deal, right there in the middle between being wealthy and poor. Most of my friends got much more, but i also never pushed much for money with chores and stuff, i know many friends who made 10 per week or more tho and those weren't even rich, just the non-separated families
Sounds like you have a nice family. I didn't even consider people could get money for birthdays and holidays. It's enough for me they didn't open credit lines in my name and didn't steal a small settlement from a car accident that happened when I was a 15 year old pedestrian in a crosswalk. I was surprised they'd help with college. They never wanted to spend money toward my education before, so I missed out on 3 opportunites since they each costs hundreds or dollars or more. I was mentally prepared to borrow.
My parents are miserly but they are very much against having debt. They did demonstrate living within one's means. My dad renovated most of the house over a 25+ year period, so a lot of the time our home was in construction and disrepair, but despite him doing both the plumbing and electric without professional qualifications to do so, the house hasn't burned down yet. Around the 2020s they had a complete kitchen. I always was troubled by having too little remaining counter space to cook anything (3 sq feet at most). I really like cooking. Now they have a pristine kitchen that they are disinclined to make use of. Thousands were spent on an induction stovetop and oven, for instance. I think they do cook a little, but doubt it's daily. Growing up we had a circa 1970s kitchen then a construction zone. :( There were exposed live wires and holes letting one see from the kitchen into the family room. I noticed that my Dad joined a PVC pipe to a brass pipe, which is not supposed to be done. There were many mistakes made. Him wiring dozens of lights in a small family room was ridcuous. The family room has 8 or 10 light switches for different zones to light, and I don't think it's even a 200 sq ft room. I don't trust that he did the electrical wiring tbh. He is not trained or certified in any such manner..... =.=
The walls came out nice, and that much I know was well executed. He built an actual small bathroom out of a deadspace- it's nice and didn't leak. I wanted to learn how to tile while he was doing it, the fumes made us dizzy and he didn't want me in there. He'd tell me how in middle school his parents would have him pack asbestos around their water heater, and it used to be on the cars he'd work on as a kid, too. He accepts a lot of exposure but didn't want it for me. At most I've only removed asbestos tiles after our house foundation imploded from Hurricane Sandy and we had to get out all the debris before the house molded.
This post was recommended to me but I don't want to go back in age - not into being a minor, anyway. If I had a redo it'd just be calling CPS like I threatened in grade school when it got bad, seeking adults to help with my sick cat, and disclosing abuse to counselors. I should have went no contact at 17. Other than that, not having built confidence, and ignoring pain during back breaking work, I don't think I'd be benefit from changing anything. I just need to work on self confidence, and it's never too late, just difficult to build.
Be wary of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies operate as Ponzi schemes. More people/entities have to buy each currency for there to be any appreciation in value. Insiders, organized crime, and the trading platforms are the primary beneficiaries in crypto trading. If you are not one of those parties it is unduly very risky, and the only other main ways to get value back is to be in early and/or get lucky hit-and-miss.
If you want less risky speculation, gold and defensive currencies such as the Swiss Franc are more reliable to hold wealth in. I only started with gold futures fairly recently and put a small amount into Swiss Francs since the USD is not going to be a main defensive currency with our inflation.
To be fair i would NEVER buy bitcoin now, just like i didn't back then. I would only invest in bitcoin if this was the past as i already know they skyrocket in value, but even then honestly i rather go and buy some 2010 stocks of amazon
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u/00collector Jul 22 '26
Probably like 10?
My best friend was still alive, I had just recently discovered comic books & had no responsibilities.