Poppa once took me to a deli for dinner. I was a boy of about 10 years old. We went to the cashier to pay and he realized he didn’t have enough change.
“I’ll borrow a nickel,” he said to the cashier, but the cashier rejected the offer. His grandfather fished out his $1 bill and collected 95 cents in change. “I’ll keep this in mind,” he warned the cashier with a threatening look on his face.
Benjamin Sheft never took anything in life, especially money, for granted. Whenever we dined at a restaurant, he studied the check as if it were a sacred document. When paying cash, he peeled the bills from his billfold as if peeling off his own skin.
As I was growing up, no one was more passionate about teaching me how to make, save, and lose money than my dad. The success rate is also low.
This year, British financial services firm Legal & General conducted an extensive study. Survey of 2,000 grandparents and 2,000 grandchildren. Among the questions we asked our grandchildren was: “What is the most important life lesson your grandparents taught you?” As a result, almost a third (30%) of grandchildren cite their grandparents for passing on “financial and savings advice.”
Similarly, Charles Schwab last year published a guide for grandparents on teaching financial literacy to their grandchildren. Role of grandparents | Over 50s | Legal and general. He even advises his grandchildren to “talk about money in everyday situations” and learn how to budget. “Starting these conversations at an early age can help ensure that your grandchildren grow up to become responsible money managers,” the magazine says.
My Papa came to the United States from a Russian village in 1909 at the age of two. His father was a seamstress and he spoke little English. He married in his 20s and became a father at 21, but his daughter (later my mother) suffered severe hearing loss in infancy. He graduated from the City University of New York with a degree in accounting and was the first in his family to attend college.
Looking for clients during the Great Depression, this new CPA goes door-to-door in his neighborhood, including dry cleaners and auto repair shops, offering to do bookkeeping for a pittance. I offered.
But by the late 1940s, during the first flashes of the post-war boom, Poppa began to come into its own. He formed an accounting firm with a partner and rented an upstairs office across from East 42nd.n.d. Street from Grand Central Terminal. There he prepared taxes, bank records, payroll, etc. I always admired his view of the Empire State Building when visiting the grounds.
In the early 1950s, he moved his family from the Grand Concourse in the Bronx to the suddenly fashionable Upper East Side neighborhood of the recently demolished Second Avenue El. He sent his son to New York University and Yale Law School. He bought my parents a two-story, three-bedroom house in the northern New Jersey suburbs, and a Cadillac for himself, the standard symbol of financial success in America at the time. Eventually, his grandparents joined a country club, where Poppa played golf, smoked cigars, and drank scotch on the rocks. They attended Broadway shows, got season tickets to the opera and ballet, and vacationed in Europe and Asia.
Still, Poppa always believed he was chronically a day late and a dollar short. His son, Uncle Leonard, once told me that. One day, Poppa verified his claim. He told me how he and some partners once invested in a garden apartment complex.
“I sold the stock too soon,” he admits, his voice hoarse with regret. “I wanted to make some quick money.” He shook his head in embarrassment and disbelief. “If I had held on longer, I would have been a millionaire by now.”
He seemed to be saying that no matter how much I eat, it’s never enough. Perhaps he never recovered from the emotional scars caused by the Great Depression, even decades later.
He was trying to teach me about money, how to count, observe, and increase, but I couldn’t see money the way he did. I grew up spoiled and convinced that money would magically manifest itself. His $5,000 bar mitzvah gift in 1965? Broke down 10 years later. After accounting for inflation, that cash would now be worth more than $47,000. What about the $17,000 gift at their 1979 wedding? These were squandered by his late 1980s. Today, that amount is at least $74,000.
Before I could learn anything from Poppa, I had to make mistakes myself. It took me until age 35 to develop a strong work ethic (which happens when you have two kids) and it took me until age 45 to get out of debt. Some of us never learn, and some of us are slow learners. Eventually, I pulled myself together.
“It’s all about addition and subtraction,” says a character in a film noir whose title I forget. “All that’s left is conversation.”
There is only so much our parents and grandparents can teach us. As I found out, and as Poppa taught me, there are certain lessons we have to learn for ourselves.
Bob Brody is an Italian-based consultant and essayist and the author of this memoir. Playing catch with strangers: A family man (reluctantly) comes of age.
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