[SSLance]

I'm not sure about the how you are raised part, my brother and I were raised the same way and his financial skillz couldn't be any more different than mine.

He makes great money, always had...but recently lost his 4 rental houses and had to claim bankruptcy to get his cash flow in order. He has always spent more than he made, lived on credit and his death blow was re-financing his homes with adjustable rate loans over and over again basically using the equity in them as an ATM. Some short stints with no renters along with rising interest rates and the inability to refinance them when the housing industry tanked did him in.

I've been trying to tell him for years he was going about things the wrong way, he wouldn't listen to me though.

He grew up just as poor as I did and had to make his way in this world the hard way, just like me...not sure why or how my financial sense turned out so much different than his.

It was probably most attributable to the budgeting I was forced to do in my senior year of high school where in my COE class I was required to bring my paycheck stubs in and keep track of every penny I spent in a budget for the whole year. To this day I still track every penny I spend in Quicken. If you don't know exactly where it's going, how can you track and manage it as it goes away?