No, I am not talking about the group of famous Canadian landscape painters from the 1920s. I’m talking about the seven of us children raised by my parents, Sue and Paul.

Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, our family was like most others in rural Nova Scotia. Mom and Dad had plenty of mouths to feed and limited resources. But they were educated and determined to teach us life’s valuable lessons, including finance, during our early school years.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees!” was a battle cry I constantly heard from my parents. So the seven of us, 4 girls and 3 boys, were expected to earn our allowance in support of running a smooth household. Here is how Mom and Dad did it;

Step #1: Establish a master chore list. For example:

- Washing dishes = 24₵
- Making your bed = 12₵
- Empty garbage = 24₵
- Baking = 50₵

Step #2: Each child was assigned daily chores to be completed.

- If you completed your chores, you received your allowance payment at end of each week
- If you did not complete one or more of your chores, you lost some of your allowance
- If one of us completed extra chores, we received extra allowance (overtime!)

Step #3: Assign where the money goes.

- 25₵ from each weekly allowance went into the sick bank (unemployment insurance)
- 25₵ from each weekly allowance went into the vacation bank (vacation pay)
- 10₵ from each weekly allowance went into the church plate (charitable gifting)
- The remainder of our allowance was ours to do with as we chose (take home pay)

We were encouraged to save some of our weekly allowance for future purchases. Let me remind you, money doesn’t grow on trees. So if I wanted a nice $12 pair of Adidas running shoes, I had to purchase them myself, because Mom and Dad could only afford $3.99 Black Dash runners in their budget.

How did these early teachings shape my life in the years that followed? Needless to say, I quickly learned the value of a dollar, and adopted the concept of delayed gratification by doing things like:

- Investing in my own personal education
- Saving for a 20% down payment on a house to avoid CMHC insurance fees
- Investing in my retirement by always saving money from every job I have ever had, starting with picking commercial strawberries for Charlie Taylor when I was eight years old

Because of the habits adopted from my childhood household chore list, I feel like I learned to act in a responsible fashion throughout my life. I feel strongly that these habits may have deterred me from spending lots of money on things like the newest cell phone technology, or an expensive new sports car. However, these habits also enabled me to spend meaningful resources on more important things, such as summer camping with the kids, home improvements, and simply an overall “peace of mind” mentality.

What better way to pay tribute to Financial Literary Month in Canada, then to acknowledge some good habits I learned from my parents. Although I was too young to fully understand the financial complexities you established for us in 1968, I certainly have benefitted greatly all these years later. Thanks Mom and Dad!