Musings on How Childhood Frugality Impacts Adulthood

One of my favorite new podcasts is Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. Every Monday, he publishes a two-hour interview with someone different – so far, all Hollywood folk. I loved his interview with his wife, Kristen Bell, and hearing him talk to Zach Braff was fun because Scrubs is one of my favorite shows. Dax is a fantastic conversationalist and he’s also very self-aware, which is not what I typically expect from famous people. (It’s not a fair characterization, I know.) I also like that after the interview, he talks to his producer, Monica, for a few more minutes. Monica fact-checks the entire episode, which also leads to some entertaining moments.

Last week I listened to his conversation with Ashton Kutcher and they brought up a really interesting idea. While discussing some of the things they enjoy, Dax said, “I think 90% of the stuff I’m doing in life is really – I’m still trying to medicate whatever thing I wanted as an 8-year-old.” While this can apply to stuff, they were also talking about it in the context of hobbies and activities.

I think we’ve all seen this play out in tv shows where (I’m making this up, but it’s the general idea) a middle-aged father who always wanted a dirt bike as a child has a mid-life crisis of some sort and comes home with one. But I’ve never thought about it a context beyond physical stuff.

I am fortunate to have grown up in a house where we had everything we needed. I never worried about three square meals a day or having a roof over my head. There were times when we had extra and times when we didn’t, though I never explicitly knew of those times as a child. In retrospect though, I can remember not joining a dance team because the cost for competitions was too high. We went on vacation once every 3-4 years, always somewhere in driving distance, while some of my friends flew to the beach every summer. Going back to physical stuff, my mom drove one used car after another until my parents saved enough for her to get something new when she was almost 40.

When I look at my life now, I think I can see how those experiences are shaping me. For years after I got my full-time job, I paid to take an adult dance class at the Cincinnati Ballet. We make it a point to save throughout the year so we can take annual vacations, usually to Florida (and usually by plane, although with two kids now, that may change). And although I’m not a “car person” by any stretch, I have always owned new cars as an adult. In other areas of my life, I have zero problem with pre-owned or used, but when I think about what I want in a car, my mind immediately goes to new.

These grown-up hobbies and experiences feel like they can be directly correlated to experiences of privilege I didn’t have as a kid. They are things I’ve generally taken for granted as an adult, although all would’ve seemed extravagant in my life in the 90s.

Would these things be important to me if not for my experiences growing up? Did I really want to take that dance class, or was I just thankful I could afford to do so? There was a time in my life when an annual vacation felt totally unnecessary, and now I crave the smell of the ocean if I don’t get there every 12-18 months. It’s hard to imagine NOT having my reliable transportation, although as a child, I assumed everyone’s parents drove cars that had previously been owned by a great-grandparent. We are not rich by any stretch and I am a minimalist in many ways… but reflecting on the bigger picture, I can absolutely see that my expectations and standards have changed.

I also question how this impacts my kids. Growing up, we got new toys on our birthdays and Christmas. That was it. My daughter gets those for sure, but when potty-training her, we started giving her little dollar-store toys as motivation every day that she was accident-free. She’s recently been having a little trouble staying dry and we went right back to that. How much money have I spent on dollar-store toys? I’m not sure I want to calculate.

Some of her “potty prizes” were experiential. We made trips to the park and my husband is now a pro at constructing blanket forts, but our default was a coloring book or a puzzle. We said it was because it’s easy, but it’s possible that I’m compensating for all the times I wanted something as a kid and my parents were firm in their no.

I recognize that I’m writing this post from a position of great privilege, but I’m also proud of how hard my husband and I have worked to create life that we have. What I’m left wondering though, is what choices my kids will make someday as a result of things we said no to in their childhood.