A fellow named Brandon, of Rinkydoo Finance, posed this question today on Twitter:
“What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you financially?”
The expected “parents paid for college” answer popped up a few times. Other responses were things I’d consider not mere kindnesses, but rather enormous advantages:
“Gave us $10k cash for a honeymoon. Loaned us $100k at 3% to refinance my wife’s high-interest student loans.”
“When they purchased my business.”
“Someone anonymously donated $13,500 to my brother’s medical fund when he was battling brain cancer. Never found out who it was. (The number was just under the gift limit for the year so they would not need to file any paperwork with the IRS.)”
Here’s mine:
When I was a 21-year-old unmarried mom, preparing to move from rural New Jersey to Philadelphia, an acquaintance took me out to lunch. He asked how I could possibly keep the baby and myself alive on my “permanent part-time” salary. So I laid it out for him: I make X dollars an hour, rent and public transit pass are X dollars a month, child care is X dollars a week, I just bought a scrub-board and we’ll eat a lot of beans.
Then I excused myself to the restroom. When I came back, he’d paid for the lunch and said, “Well, I have to be going.” After he hugged me goodbye, he put a slip of paper in my hand. Unfolded, it turned out to be a check for a month’s worth of child care. Immediately I said, “I can’t accept this! It’s too much!”
“Sure you can,” he replied. We went round and round and ultimately I did accept it. From the restaurant I walked right to the bank and deposited the money.
Last year I found out that this co-worker came from a very wealthy family. Probably I should have figured that out, given that the underground newspaper where he worked didn’t pay very much yet he traveled a lot and always bought lunch out.
He never missed that $140 from his account. But to me it was huge. It meant I had a slightly larger margin than before in my emergency fund. And I’ve tried to pay it forward ever since.
Gifts unsought, but appreciated
Some of the “gifts” mentioned in the Twitter thread were actually money lessons, and they helped shape the recipients’ financial worldviews:
“When I was 8, Vinny the barber gave me a dime for sweeping his shop while my father and brothers waited for haircuts, saying “Those that work get paid.” It resonated. I also started showing up every day after school and he kept paying me a dime. I have never stopped working since.”
“My parents taught me how to fill out a bank deposit slip when I was in early elementary. The habit of saving money was implanted around age 6 or so. A close second was the co-worker who explained the benefits of making extra mortgage payments against principal.”
“The nicest tough love I ever got was not having money I borrowed from a parent forgiven. I make payments to my mom every month.”
Other financial gifts were a hand up when it was desperately needed:
“I was dead broke, about to graduate from college and someone important to me bought me a suit so I could go to job interviews.”
“I was broke, and a friend from out of state asked if he could stay at my house seven days. I said yes. And after the seventh day he paid me rent (which I didn’t ask for). He gave me more money than he would have spent had he stayed at the Ritz. He insisted I take it.”
“I finished a semester at school and found out that I was short $7,000. Unless it was paid, I couldn’t register for the next semester. I visited my uncle in NY, and when I was leaving he gave me $10 for the train. It was paper-clipped to a check for $7,000.”
Still other financial gifts were a head start on a better future:
“My wife’s aunt bought us a house while we were in school. We made the deal we would rent to own and then sold it 6 years later for 70% more than we paid. Asked her if she wanted to split the gains and she said no, we will need it to move and pay closing costs on new place.”
“My grandmother paid my first month’s rent and deposit when I moved after graduating college and it was the sweetest surprise.”
“My grandmother left me some money. I was shocked. Wasn’t a fortune, but it was a nice nest egg that got me going. It was the seed for all my investments. Such a kindness.”
Financial gifts we don’t recognize
One respondent said, “I haven’t had that experience.” Yikes. I wonder if he really has, though, and just…spaced it? Or took it as his due?
Often we have what sociologists call “invisible” privilege, which may be disguised as decent parenting. For example, things like clean clothes, healthy food, regular dental care (including orthodontics), and an insistence on correct grammar and good manners can mean the difference between getting ahead in life or being relegated to Other-hood.
Some people grow up in households without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of – yet they still get gifts. They may learn the importance of family, of community, of kindness. The ones with single parents who go back to school get to witness true determination in action: I will make my life, and my kids’ lives, better by enduring this temporary hell of late nights and term papers.
And the kids who have a strong general work ethic modeled by their elders will be better-positioned to make their own lives better. They learn that showing up at the barber shop each day means getting paid each day.
Okay, readers, let’s hear it: What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you financially?
Related reading:
- Want to get? Try giving
- The $10 wake-up call
- “I can’t afford to retire”
- If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?
BEST DAY EVER: I train poll workers & stopped for a bite after a long day of classes. As I finished, the server told me a young couple who’d sat nearby had paid my bill. I was so tickled but couldn’t thank them. In my mind I’d already “budgeted” for dinner, so I consulted with the cashier. And there was a gentleman they allowed inside out of the cold on a regular basis — but he couldn’t afford to eat. The cashier & I were so excited to ring up a meal for him before I snuck out!
Paying it forward right away! That was very kind of you.
Thank you, but it was actually quite selfish. I’ll never do something huge to change things but on that day at that specific moment I was able to make a difference. And credit should actually go to that couple who treated me 🙂
My mother took us children, four under nine-years-old, into a bank and let us open a checking account with our meager savings, a dollar so. My $11 that I eventually deposited is worth $110.41 today. Thankfully, I was always a saver. And, we were corrected when we spoke and did not use correct grammar.
My father was born to a sharecropper’s family in 1920. During the Dust Bowl, there was absolutely no work and my dad’s family depended on a very kind man who hired my father from age 8 until the end of high school. Dad did any jobs for him including chopping what cotton that would grow and tending cattle that could live on the Texas prairie. He hauled water, cleaned barns and pens, and in general did anything. He had a bed in the hayloft and ate with the family. For this he was paid 50 cents a day which he immediately took home to his mother. They lived on that and what Grandma could can from her garden.
WW2 came along and my father escaped the poverty trap by joining the Navy and becoming a pilot. He never forgot where he came from, never. He, an officer, became known for his kindness to enlisted men and his exceptional skill in the cockpit.
When Dad died, we took him back to Texas to his small town to be buried, and it was heartwarming to meet the son of the man whose kindness saved the family from starvation. He was close in age to Dad, and remembered him with affection.
I, too, remember him with affection.
What a story! Thanks for sharing it.
I am in that “invisible” privilege group. When I graduated I was debt free, was able to purchase a car from my parents for $5k and then got $5K for a house down payment. (Wonder if I paid $6K if I would have gotten a larger down payment?)
My parents were not rich. In fact there were times when I was a teen, I envied those who had have fancy cars, belonged to clubs, took vacations, wore designer clothes. It is funny. Some of my classmates that I though ‘had it made” are still paying off their college loans and in debt for their own kids.
I guess I am doubly lucky. I benefitted from their generosity and by watching their thrift. I have money to eat out, but often cook from scratch because it was how I was raised. When the pandemic hit, I didn’t panic. I bought whole chickens when I couldn’t buy chicken breasts. I reused dishcloths rather than trying to find paper towels.
I never thought of the manners my mother instilled in us as a gift but I see from your blog it really is. I have held various jobs in my lifetime and looking back I can see the ones I held that required interacting with the public were aided by my mother’s insistence on good manners.
Another gift was my father’s good heartedness toward others, especially children. He came up the hard way in an inner city being raised by an alcoholic single mother and an alcoholic stepfather. How he landed where he did as he got older was maybe what some people would call the grace of God. WWII brought him over the skies of Japan on a B29. When he got home, he must have had an epiphany and told his mother he couldn’t take the drinking and fighting anymore and was moving out. She quit drinking that very day and never went back to it. I was so fortunate my sister, myself and my children had him as an example. At his calling hours, several people remarked on what a kind man he was.
These were tremendous gifts.
Both my parents and the grandmother who helped raise us were frugal to a T. I remember the advice my father gave me about how even one extra mortgage payment a year would shorten the life of the loan and to pay off your credit card debt monthly.
My mother and grandmother were all about home cooked meals and enjoying what you have. We didn’t get many new clothes but that led me into the enjoyment and benefit to the planet of thrift shopping.
My grandmother had a little notebook in which she kept track of every cent that went in and out of her household. She had been a bookkeeper so I think this not only helped her but she was very good at it and enjoyed the challenge of stretching dollars.
Best gift financially was being left money for an investment account from my parents which I added to my retirement savings. While not wealthy, I realize how lucky I am. I hope to pass this account onto mu own kids some day.
As a previous comment said, I never considered good manners and proper grammar to be financial blessings, so to speak. I see that they are now. My parents paid for undergrad, and in the year between college and grad school while I worked, my parents charged me rent, which was 10 % of my weekly
pay. When it was time for me to move out of state to go to school, they presented me with a check that was all the rent that I had paid them that year, and told me that that I should keep the habit of saving 10% of my pay. My parents have blessed me financially in other ways, as well.
Thank you for reminding me of it!
My folks were stellar examples of how NOT to manage money! But thanks to them, I know how vital it is to pay your bills on time & stay out of debt. I also know how to do laundry by hand, take a cold water bath, and make a reasonably healthy meal from almost nothing. People think, if you look good & smell good, you must have had it easy all your life. Not by a long shot.
Sometimes teaching by example is more like reverse psychology.
And I, too, can make a meal from almost nothing. In fact, we regularly make soups and stews from things other people would throw away:
https://donnafreedman.com/boiling-bag/
Over 45 years ago, when my college boyfriend and I were facing an unspeakable tragedy (which I do not care to discuss in detail), our favorite professor floated us the cash to get where we needed to go for the funeral. I will never forget this.
That’s one very caring professor. Glad that the two of you were able to pay your respects in person.
So good to see you commenting. I’ve missed you.
I had a job cleaning rooms for Alaska Airlines cargo pilots staying overnight in Fairbanks. I was in college and the money paid for my school expenses but not food or clothing. The pilots (it was the same guys all the time so we got to know each other) heard about my situation from my boss. They began bringing home all the extra lunches packed for them for their trips and giving them to me. They were very luxurious lunches and they did this for the two years I worked that job. They also gave me money for winter gear that first Christmas. I am not sure I would have lasted to finish my degree without their help.
The other gift was that my father made a lot of money on an invention. I was in my 40s by then. For the next ten years, he gave me and my husband each the highest IRS allowed gift. At that time, it meant $22,000 a year tax free for us.
What generous people!
Now that I work in dentistry I realize how fortunate I was to have good dental care all my life. Thanks to the planning of others I got scholarships for college. I think the kindest thing financially is when my mom would give me some cash in college to spend just for fun, just in something I wanted or would make my life easier.
My stepfather took out a life insurance policy in my mother’s name. He passed first, she declined rapidly, and that policy helped me put her in a good facility and hire a helper to deal with her troubling issues day by day. I lived two thousand miles away and it was still stressful but without his kind, generous help, it would have been so much harder.
My best financial gift was learning to save money. I always had an emergency fund, no matter what. Also a “friend” (in air quotes) borrowed money from me and disappeared soon afterwards. I learned never again to loan money without a promissory note.
What’s that old saying? “If you lend someone $20 and you never see them again, you got off cheaply.”
One of the kindest things anyone did for me financially was when my grandfather left me a small inheritance.
Secondly, I took my husband to the ER in the middle of the night. While I was there, I needed a bottle of water. I went to a vending machine, but then I realize I only had a $10 bill. Since it was the middle of the night, the hospital cafeteria was closed. So, then, I resigned myself to using the water fountain until the cafeteria opened. Then, a stranger appeared and gave me $2. I started crying because of the generosity of giving a total stranger money. It was such a small amount of money, but it meant so much to me.
So, I now pay it forward to others in small ways, like buying food for the food pantry at the college I work at and by shopping at a thrift store that supports the humane society.
Paying it forward is the best response, I think. At least some of those you help will then help others, who will then help others, ad infinitum. Or so I like to believe.
I’ve been blessed many times in my life. Scholarships & grants for college, my parents gifted us a chunk of equity when we bought their house, some friends have given us lovely no-reason-at-all presents, but I think my biggest gratitude moment was when we were facing some expensive medical bills at two separate medical places. I applied to the hospital’s need-based aid program to see if they could lower their bill a bit – and instead they completely waived not only that bill but also any others we might incur there for the rest of the calendar year! I was tearing up when I called to make sure I understood the letter correctly; it made SUCH a difference during a really stressful time.
Many years ago, in Baltimore, Maryland, someone at the school gave a dress for my 6th. grade graduation. I still remember the colors, yellow and black and white.
About 11 months ago, one of my sisters gave me $2000. I sat on the money for months in case she or one of her grown children needed the funds. I used it in combination with other funds (including emptying 2 piggy banks, stimulus funds, cashing in found money, cashing in aluminum cans for not even 25 cents per lb., and other random funds) to finish paying off my Parent Plus Loans. I had moved them from evil Navient to a credit union at a higher interest rate so that I did not have to deal with Navient. After giving the cashier the checks, the cash, and using the coin sorter, the balance was $76. I had them take it from my emergency fund and paid that sucker off.
I called her from the parking lot, and thanked her for the money, and told her what I spent it on. Also told her it was the first time in months that I felt like I could breathe ( I was doubling and tripling the loan payments). We both cried. I first took out the loans in 2000 and my adult child graduated in 2004. There was a 3 year period in the interim that I could not pay anything, so payments were suspended but interest kept accumulating.
I have started a savings account to pay her back the money, but so far she is refusing it. It will be there when she needs it back.
Wow. What a story. Thanks for sharing it.
During a time when all “good” mothers stayed home and raised their kids, mine went to work for the local schools. She didn’t have a college education so she became a secretary. Every summer, she worked summer school for extra pay, which was deposited in a savings account for my eventual college. Other mothers, and even my nasty 4th grade teacher, criticized her for “neglecting” me. (In a way that was true because my maternal grandmother, who babysat me when I was in the primary grades, was really harsh toward me. But starting in 5th grade, I got to stay by myself for the hour between the time I got home and Mom got off work; we had a nice neighbor who could be summoned in an emergency.) Mom worked summers for all 12 years of my public schooling and when I graduated high school, we had a nest egg for college. We were then criticized because I didn’t go to the mega-expensive private university in town, but went over 100 miles away to a more affordable state university. We got the last laugh, however: I received much better training for my chosen career field and mom’s work + my working for the college + lower state tuition = no loans and no college debt. I graduated debt free and was successful in my career. I lived a really good life for a young woman from a modest background. Our critics? Not so much….