Ahhh parents, that lovely odd couple that gave you the gift of life without consulting you first — what a hoot! Sure, they changed your nappy, and fed and clothed you, love that, don’t get me wrong. Mucho appreciatedo. But for all their years of head start on this planet, they sometimes don’t exactly give the hottest advice, in the right place their hearts may be.
It can be tough navigating this strange, unforgiving world built upon an entire social fabric that relies on trading digital numbers on a screen. Super daunting, and so it’s natural that we first look to those who birthed us for help traversing the financial landscape. But parents, bless their hearts, aren’t always right. To illustrate this, we asked a bunch of people to share the worst financial advice ever given to them by their ‘rents. Big OK Boomer energy. Enjoy x.
“Spend a load of money on a car. That shit depreciates and I only need to get from A to B.” — Ben
“Get a credit card ‘for emergencies’ was Dad’s parting words when I went to uni as a fresh faced 19-year-old. The $5000 limit went straight to my uni bar, parking fines and Maccas within my first couple of months. I was hit with a 20% interest rate on that card until I was 25. The irony is the same boomer (my dad) recently told me to cancel my Buy-Now-Pay-Later account with the $600 limit. Lucky for my time at uni, I was able to give a 60-year-old a lesson in compound interest.” — Jack
“Oh, I have a friend whose mum doesn’t make her own money, so her advice is to marry someone with money because there’s no need to make your own. And now her mum has to ask permission to buy things all the time.” — Kristen
“This is going to sound weird, but they don’t trust banks. I think it’s just ingrained PTSD in their DNA thanks to the part of the world my family comes from. To a certain extent I understand the reasoning, your money is only as safe/stable as the society you live in — if the government is unstable then there’s cause for concern, but I don’t see that as being the biggest of my concerns living here.” — Frank
“My mum doesn’t believe in saving her money because she’s survived this long without doing it?? She has five kids and lives paycheck to paycheck.” — Leah
“Don’t invest in the stock market because that’s basically gambling. I actually believed it for a long time until I hit my 20s. Love them, but they’re just afraid of what they don’t understand.” — Omar
“My stepdad has always said ‘get a credit card and make repayments on time because this is what banks look at when you apply for a home loan’. I made good friends with a home loan lender, and she told me this is not true and you don’t need to do that at all lol.”— Alene
“They never seemed to grasp why I was rejecting potential jobs when I was unemployed. Like, I didn’t want to just work anywhere, I wanted to have fulfilment, or at least something that didn’t make me want to kill myself every day. Anyway, I didn’t listen to them and waited for the right opportunity. Now I love my job.” — Issy
“Oh how my dad loves saying rent money is dead money. Okay, sorry I wasn’t around when houses cost $50k” — Jodi
“My parents always/still do recommend staying in a job for as long as possible for financial security even if I’m getting paid pennies and aren’t being treated well.” — Lauren
“I got stuck paying a loan I could barely afford for a car that was out of my price range because my parents seemed fine with it so I went along with it. I still have the car, and I like it, but it caused so much stress for years. I feel like looking back I could’ve got something a lot cheaper and spent the extra money on travelling or stuff like that.” — Nadine
“So neither of my parents went to uni out of high school. One did it later in their 20s when tertiary education was still free, while the other went as a mature age student. When I started uni, my parents heard about the 10% discount you get if you pay your tuition fees upfront instead of just putting it on HECS, and they strongly advised me to take it. Being an 18-year-old with no life experience, I begrudgingly took their advice as gospel. But after the first semester I realised that I was giving away a huge portion of the money I had earned at my part-time job. I realised that even despite the 10% discount (which only ended up being a couple of hundred dollars), the money was more valuable to me now as a teen than it would be once I have a career. That money could instead be put towards travelling, y’know? So that’s what I did, and now I have a big, fat HECS debt to show for it.” — Luke
“Not specific advice but more general constant pressure to buy a house — like that’s literally the only measure of success in life. I feel like they will only really see me as an adult when that happens, I don’t think they fully understand how fucked our generation is thanks to theirs.” — Andrew
“Buy high, sell low.” — Liam
There you have it folks, a cool collection of hot tips you definitely should never follow. For financial tips you perhaps might actually wanna heed, head over to the SmartWayToPay site.
And remember, more often than not, the smartest way to pay for something is with the money you have saved. However when this isn’t an option, BNPL (buy now pay later) services may be an option worth considering rather than a high interest credit card.
