money

If you didn't have enough money to buy an item in a shop the shop assistanct gave you the shortfall and this was the change.

Martin

I was told when I was young that I could get a new petticoat from the Sears Catalog when our ship came in. I thought our money came twice a year on a ship that also brought our Spring and Fall clothes from Sears Roebuck.

Cheri

as a child,watching the lottery drawings...I didn't realize that you had to buy a ticket...I thought that you just needed to guess each number bofore it was called out ...and then call a phone number if you guessed right. I vividly remember begging my dad to call because I had guessed 5 numbers right!

Hannah

As a kid I always thought every coin and dollar was just called "money", and the denomination didn't matter. So a five dollar bill and two quarters was "three moneys".

Annalisa

Around age 8, I got to help my mom work the concession stand at the recreational soccer fields on Saturdays. She couldn't understand why I was so excited to sit in a hot shack all afternoon. I cried when I was told that I didn't get to keep the money from all the candy and Gatorade I sold.

andrew

I used to think that, since things were so much cheaper when my dad was a kid, and even cheaper when his dad was a kid, then everything must have been free around the early 1800s.

Piper

My friend used to believe that if you put any amount of money in to a vending machine and then pressed any of the buttons, the machine would just choose something to fall. Then it would decide how much change you would get.

Lights on, nobody home.

i used to think if you had more than £100 the police would want to know why and would start investgating you

mark

As a kid, I never understood the concept of "change" at supermarkets. I was always delighted that you could hand a piece of green paper to the cashiers, then get many pieces of green paper and pretty coins in return. I thought that my parents should be rich after going to the supermarket enough times. I never understood how my parents could have financial problems.

anonymous

When I was a kid I looked forward to friends of my dad coming to visit as I knew they would always dig in their pockets and give me an nickle or dime!The annoying part was when they would say "Here go buy yourself an ice cream" and I actually wanted potato chips or something else. It never occured to me that I didn`t have to buy exactly what they told me to.

Janet

When my sister and I were young we would pester our parents for a McDonalds but the only reply we got was: "Sorry, we don't have McDonalds money". For a while I believed that there were coins bearing Ronalds face.

Anon

When I was kid I didn't get what decimal points meant so when I would see (for example) a toy that was $9.99 I thought it meant it was $999 dollars and thought that seemed awfully expensive for a toy...

Kamvrov

When I was very little I had no sense of what was a lot of money. I came to the conclusion that my family had around $300 in savings, and it was a reasonable amount to have.

Anon

When i was little i thought that a credit card had all the money in the world on it. I never understood why my mom didn't use it all the time.

Anon

When I was around 13-14, before I understood where money came from etc etc I thought that when a cashier asked you if you wanted 'cash back' it literally meant, 'would you like some of money you used to purchase this item back' I always used to ask my mum why she never wanted any of her cash back! I have now learned that I should explain shit to my kids to save them all this hassle!

Eve

I used to believe that money literally grew in the bank. Our parents tried to teach us to save money, and they told us that if we put all the change from our change jar in our own little bank account, it would grow. I always pictured the quarters and nickels just growing to larger sizes.

etab

I remember as a kid being totally confused by those "give a penny, take a penny" trays. I thought you were supposed to put a penny in and take another penny out and didn't see the point of it.

Anon

My grandma grew up in Eastern Europe and she gave me some old money from her country from a time of hyperinflation where the values on the bills were in the hundreds-of-thousands, and she said that's how much a loaf of bread cost back then. I was super excited and thought I was rich because of how big the numbers on the bills were! I didn't understand why no one else didn't just hold onto their old money from that time and used it today to buy mansions. My dad had a hard time convincing me that money from that time can't be used anymore!

Anon

I used to think that if you went into a shop, and didn't have enough money for what you wanted, the shopkeeper would give you the rest of the money so you could get it, and that's what "change" was... how much better would life be if that really happened?

Anon

When I was little my older brother told me that if I ever tore money, that the president on the money would come and kill me in my sleep.And until this day I still have never tore money.

Emily