Lessons from my grandmother

My German grandmother recently passed. (My Italian grandmother passed over 30 years ago.) She was 103, nearly 104 to be precise, and had suffered from increasing dementia for a few years. We were all sad, yet we all agreed it was the end of a long and fulfilled life.

She was born in Germany in 1915 during the war. She had a strict mother who did not appreciate her falling pregnant while unmarried, so she quickly married the father of her child and had a total of 5 children in quick succession between September 1938 and January 1944.

Let me pause here for a moment. She had 5 children in 5 years and 4 months. In Germany, during the war.

She was a strong woman.

In December 1944 the house where they lived was destroyed during a war blitz, but luckily they all survived. After that they moved first to her parents and then to their own very small flat in a nearby town.

Her husband, my grandad, was a prisoner of war and returned home only in 1949 – 4 years after the war ended – malnourished and with diabetes. My mother, the last of the 5 kids, only really got to know him when she was five years old.

And if that wasn’t enough, for many years my grandad struggled to adjust back to civil life, drinking too much and spending most of his salary on drinks rather than food for his family.

Fast forward a few decades, when I was a kid growing up in Italy my mother decided that my sister and I should spend 6 weeks each summer in Germany. I went to my grandparents and my sister to one of our aunts and uncles in a different town. This is how I got close to my grandmother and how I learned German well.

I loved them both and loved my summers with them, a simple yet stable existence for a young child. I remember my grandad as not speaking much, while my grandmother was running household and finances. In the course of their marriage she was forced to take on the rains and get him to understand what was best for a large family.

With the wisdom of today I now see my grandmother as a strong and resourceful woman fiercely dedicated to her family, yet she was also obedient with a very small sense of adventure. My grandad was the open-minded and passionate and one in the couple.

Could she have strived for Financial Independence like members of today’s FIRE community?

She was resourceful

She was a trained tailor, and excellent at it, who made all of her family’s clothes herself. She also made clothes for neighbours in exchange of food and milk during the war, and some cash later on. After the war she was also employed at the local shopping centre as an alterations tailor.

Once her kids were old enough, during summers she’d send them for a couple of months to some friend’s farm to help out with physical work in exchange for (fresh and plenty of) food and lodgings for them.

She was excellent at bartering and had genuine connections with people. Yet she never negotiated.

She never spent more than she had

I get it, this is probably different during a war when everything is different. But after that, she always saved some money and invested it in bonds, probably the most common investment during her time.

They never had a credit card nor owned a car, and lived most of their lives in a rent-controlled flat.

Of course it helps that, because women of her generation were not expected to work for a living and therefore not to have a pension of their own, according to German law she “inherited” her late husband’s pension after his death, despite having a pension of her own.

He passed – she kept receiving both their pensions for over 20 years!

She followed the rules. And the Jonses

She always followed the rules and did what was “proper”. Her daily routine was heavily timed even as a pensioner, her home and garden were always picture perfect, and you definitely did not “wash your dirty laundry” outside of your family. I stopped spending my summers with her when I got fed up for not being allowed to wear jeans on Sundays.

Despite the resourcefulness of looking after her five children almost on her own for many years, she was conservative and conformist.

Today’s FIRE seekers look beyond given boundaries

We are not taught at school to strive for Financial Independence – we go out and seek it on our own. In other words, we are a curious bunch who strives to learn, improve things, experiment with doing things differently, and share the passion and knowledge with who is interested in it.

We are not conformists. We strive to change things that we don’t like. And we love the journey!

Spread the word and share this post with your friends

If you enjoyed reading this post, please share it with your friends. You can received any new post into your inbox by subscribing here.