Things your parents did to save money

[dawson5]

as far as I know, we never did the powdered milk but my mom would keep it on hand for "just in case."

both sides of grandparents had huge gardens, we would spend weekends at each of them helping out. my mom filled our freezer with it. i still love the taste of fresh frozen peas.

my mom knew how much we loved lucky charms but they cost a lot, even back then. she made her own with store brand alpha bits and colored marshmallows. we still knew the difference.

lots of kool-aid in the summer. frozen popsicles made from that.

my grandparents are children of the depression. my grandmother can make a penny cry. to this day she still washes out ziploc bags and wipes off foil, puts them back in the drawer. also had the odd assortment of margarine containers for storing things. my grandfather would turn bread bags inside out to store ice in. he's been gone for a few years now and he left my grandmother reasonably well off. they never had to do these things but i'm sure it sat in the back of their minds that it could happen again.

I hated those iron on patches for the knees. I know why she did it but still hated them. I have done it to my boys but I would iron them on the inside right after we bought them, it made the pants last longer and they didn't have that patch on the outside.

 

[happygirl]

My parents had a car that didn't go in reverse. That was fun.

handy me downs from girls or boys didn't matter
Never went on vacations
We never had cable/satelite

 

[jacobsmom]

Vacation's revolved around conventions for my Dad (a minister), but when we were in St. Louis about once a year for his classes we would shop at Aldi's and fill 2 grocery carts with ketchup, pudding, jello, etc.
Never had name brand cereal (except at grandma and grandpa's house)
We had liver and onions
Some from our church would tithe eggs so we constantly had eggs (I'm allergic)
Mom makes everything from scratch! Since Dad was a minister and she stayed home we had a lot of soup and casserole.
Mom can/did craft everything! Every year she would sew matching outfits for the entire family!

 

[B&Bforever]

This is a fun thread.

 

[HunnyPots]

I don't remember any weird money-saving food things but, oh, the homemade clothes will stick with me forever! In elementary school it wasn't so bad but in high school it was an enormous embarassment! I was so thrilled when I became old enough to get a job and buy myself REAL jeans!

 

[cheerforchelsea]

My parents divorced when I was small - and that itself was almost unheard of in the 60s!!! My sister and I lived with my mom and it was a struggle.

I soooo remember our neighbors having a COLOR TV - it was the first one that I ever saw. At the time we had a 13" black and white tv with an antenna made out of a coat hanger.

I took a lunch to school (pineapple sandwich) and if we had a GREAT supper it was fried chicken legs, english peas and beets.......to this day I won't eat any of those things.

Mom's car was the best she could do (my dad paid someone to steal her good car)-it did not go in reverse and once when we were moving to a better apartment it caught on fire with all of our belongings in it. Sure makes me appreciate things now - and we now can laugh about it.

 

[patsal]

My dad repaired everything, and did the usual tinkering withthe cars as well.
My Mom would stretch things and I remember more than one meal of fried macaroni with ketchup. She would stretch hamburger helper with extra noodles to the point of no flavor at all! she also sewed a lot of our clothes.
We took the bus if we wanted to get somewhere or walked.
Now that I think about this my kids are really spoiled. While I will use it up and do without, I don't think they ever have.
I remember my mom going years without new shoes, and I remember wearing hand me downs from my school teacher aunt--let's just say that sort of makes you a fashion don't in 8th grade!

 

[Poohbear5]

I was born in 1964 and I do remember that my parents made me wear undershirts in the winter under my clothes. Me a girl wearing undershirts! We also had to wear socks on our feet in the winter time because with bare feet you would catch cold and then it's a doctor's bill


Me too! Must have worked because I only recall going to the doctor's office twice in my childhood and that was for serious illness!

 

[Vivianne]

I took a lunch to school (pineapple sandwich) and if we had a GREAT supper it was fried chicken legs, english peas and beets.......to this day I won't eat any of those things.

Mom's car was the best she could do (my dad paid someone to steal her good car)-i

This made me want to you.

I can relate to the coat hanger wire antenna...

The stolen car is

Second hand clothing was normal for me..unfortunately, I've always been shorter than my sister...now she's 5'9" and I'm 5'2". There was always a size difference and I had to wear whatever I was given...

 

[Belle5]

This is a GREAT thread! I remember eating a lot of fried green tomatoes (breaded), breaded zucchini out of the garden. We did the powdered milk thing, too. My mom made something called tomato dumplings which were made with bisquick and canned tomatoes. We ate a lot of bean soup and corn bread. We did not eat meat every day--more like twice a week--once on Sunday (roast) and maybe some roasted chicken another night. Lunches for me were white bread, cheese and mustard with a piece of fruit in a brown bag. I never had a cookie or twinkie. I know that lots of kids who's families had more money than my family were on a free lunch plan. My parents wouldn't dream of doing that. We ate at Howard Johnson once a year and maybe McDonald's once a year. (This is after the older three kids were grown and my parents were slightly more comfortable) We also had chipped-chopped ham sandwiches and chips a couple of Sunday nights each month. I remember having spam and vienna sausages with apples in the car when we traveled to relatives houses (our only vacations). I dressed from K-Mart and garage sales but my mom always bought me one good pair of shoes for school. For birthdays I got things like one sleeping bag. That's it. I didn't get Barbies because my sisters who were 10-12 years older passed their toys down to me.

Until this thread I don't think I had put together in my mind how much more my kids have than what many of us had. My kids (six of them) take yearly vacations (usually to WDW) where they do things like order French presses of coffee to drink and creme brulee for dessert. They think this is normal...

 

[MickeyP]

Yep, you said it. My daughter (4) woke up and wanted to eat in Cinderella's Castle, like that's a normal thing to do. She obviously doesn't know about ADRs.

 

[NC State]

My dad repaired everything.

We took the bus if we wanted to get somewhere or walked. Now that I think about this my kids are really spoiled. While I will use it up and do without, I don't think they ever have.

I do remember my daddy repairing things like the washing machine to a broken lamp.

I was never allowed to drive a car to school because daddy told me "that's why I pay taxes, you get on it and ride it" I never asked again because we never asked twice. That's because we respected our parents...

Kids are spoiled today and they have no respect for parents or themselves.

 

[NC State]

Another reason why we didn't get sick is because we got outside and played in the dirt, sunshine, run here and there. I don't recall ever not having nothing to do and just setting in the house. Mama made sure we had things to do.

 

[finz2left]

1. Bologna sandwiches for every lunch. And if we took trips, a cooler with bologna, mustard, mayonnaise and bread came along. NO breaks from bologna. I can't even serve it to my kids for any reason now.

2. We never had lasagna except on very special occasions, and my mom gulped at the prices of all the cheeses.

3. "Goulash" which was just the leftovers from the week thrown in a pot.

4. Saving bacon grease for other cooking so she didn't have to pay for oil.

5. Dad always did his own oil changes, etc.

6. Mom CUT OUR HAIR...and even gave us PERMS :lmao. Ah, the 70s!

7. Made own clothes before fabric was so expensive and Walmart came into the picture. I still wish I had some of the amazing outfits that she made for me back then!

8. Bartered her sewing skills for my dance lessons -- she made tons of the costumes.

9. Dad was the volunteer handyman/builder for the church for a few years so I could go to Parochial school when tuition was just to high.

10. Finally...my worst nightmare ..... CUBED STEAK with mushroom soup. I think I'd rather eat fried bologna, LOL

 

[lucigo]

My grandmother (now 91yo) grew up in the depression on a dairy farm. They traded milk for what they needed.

One of the weirdest things I remember growing up was that she always had a tub on top of her washing machine. She would recycle the rinse water to use for the next load.

My mom says that growing up they all used the same bath water also, and that they only bathed once a week.

My great grandparents would never have imagined that we pay $250 for a cell phone bill, $150 for cable, etc etc.

 

[NC State]

4. Saving bacon grease for other cooking so she didn't have to pay for oil.

5. Dad always did his own oil changes, etc.

6. Mom CUT OUR HAIR...and even gave us PERMS :lmao. Ah, the 70s!

I remember mama saving all the grease too. Plus we would kill hogs in the winter and she would cook everything in lard! But it was so good.

I also remember having those bad hair cuts, my hair was never even.

 

[tanyabanana]

This thread is great

My parents heated with wood. We cut it, split and stacked every stick of it.
Then in the winter, we had to keep all the doors shut in the house so the only warm rooms were our living/dining room and the kitchen.
I would sleep in a sleeping bag covered with 4-5 other blankets. My bed up against the window (why I'll never know) and sometimes in the morning my blankets would be stuck to the window frames with ice. I still cannot stand to have a warm room when I sleep. I never lived in a house with a furnace or heated with anything but wood until I was 20, and that was about 15 years ago!

 

[akcire]

6. Mom CUT OUR HAIR...and even gave us PERMS

That is so funny. My mom always cut my hair with a green tupperware bowl. I got the dutch boy paint can hair style--it wasn't too bad.

Then, my cousin went to beauty school, Mom with her bowl was much better. It took my cousin at least 3 years before her haircuts were equal to my Mom's--we all endured some horrible hair while my cousin learned. I remember she permed my uncle's hair--three days later he shaved his head.

 

[4Pirates&APrincess]

I was raised by my dad (with alot of help from my grandma). We ate alot of rice a roni and frozen pizza, together. We had a garden and the only vegetables I remember having as a child were green beans, corn and peas. I had never even tasted broccoli until I was in high school. We went on 3 vacations growing up, luckily 2 were to California and I got to go to Disneyland.

 

[NC State]

What great stories on this thread. I think back and wished I had some of these "good ole days back". Our families made sure we didn't go hungry and we didn't know just how tough we had it.