However, I really think it comes down to how we watch our parents with money. Depending on their style we quite inherit their money styles

I wrote a post similiar to this

I paid my way through college making less than $7 an hour. I was bringing home $900 a month when I first started out in insurance during the 90s, but this was sufficient. I worked my way up but never breached the $30k threshhold, EVER. I am now disabled with a small part-time job. I get enough from disability to pay the mortgage, keep the utilities on and feed myself. I have used the food pantry, soup kitchen, free coat handout and clothing charity. I buy food at Walmart, toiletries and cleaning at Dollar Tree, meat at Angel Food Ministries and clothing and housewares at Goodwill.

I am comfortable and can afford some furry babies. I am involved in my community. I can indulge my hobbies. Life is pretty good and pretty low stress now!

So I don’t feel frugal, but I know I am more frugal than someone the same age and income because of a fear of being poor.

I always knew that they made careful spending decisions so that we could afford to have a nice house and vacations without going into debt. For my birth family, wealth was about education and culture; it was more important to have a membership to the symphony than to the country club.

My late husband came from a poor background; he was the first member of his immediate family to finish a tradition high school, let alone go on to any college. He had a very poor sense of frugality, though. He was all about ’spend it now, it might not be there tomorrow’.

So I don’t think frugality corolated all that well with income in my case.

Interesting topic, though.

Indeed, my super wealthy relatives are the ones who are secret discount shoppers who will save up rather than put on credit and never steal from the allocated ’savings’ amount of the cheque whereas my often poor relatives are more likely to spend half a paycheque on a big screen TV.

Many genuinely rich people are simply better at concealing frugality and figuring out where it matters versus expending a lot of energy on “making their own dish soap.” My financial position is very good because I’m ’secretly frugal’. HOWEVER, the magic combination is (a) general wealth, partly self made, combined with (b) a period of having very limited resources, allowing you to develop methods you retain when you return to a ‘rich’ period.