Lessons from my mom on finances

Well I just spent a good hour talking to my mom about how she dealt with finances and I guess I have learned quite a bit from her. (Although it seems like I already know what she did).

She worked at Con Ed, an electric company for 25 years, which she receives a pension, social security, and has a bit saved in a 401K and an IRA. She has her house paid off and makes more than enough to live on her pension and social security (when she told me how she doesnt touch her 401K or IRA and said that she will need to at 70 I know she is in REALLY good shape).

So I asked her what she did to get to this situation, and it was pretty easy. She would save up to the match on her 401K, the rest she would simply save in her checking account until it got to a certain amount, and she would buy CD's with that money. Thats it! I asked her what she invested in her 401K and she simply said vanguard. I wanted to know where in vanguard but she did not even know the answer! This is definitely keeping it automatic.

My mom turned out to be fairly conservative in her retirement accounts and super conservative in other accounts, and it worked out extremely well for her. Then again she does get a pension and social security which is extermely hard to do these days (If I teach for 30 years I would get 2/3's of my highest salary there, by then I might need a decent retirement account as well.)

The biggest thing I have learned today was that as long as you stay the course and automatically save/invest each month, its not too hard to have a secure lifestyle.


As for frugality, I could write a whole book on what my mom and step dad do. Whenever my step dad doesnt get what he wants when he buys something he will complain to the manager, the manager will usually ask my step dad, "what can I do to make up for this?" and my step dad will simply say, "I dont know, what can you do!" Simple yet extremely effective.

P.S. I have some videos of the house and the community, I will put them up when I get back to Austin in July