The Great Depression: What Saved Them Then Ruins You Now

In the early thirties, flour manufacturers began printing floral patterns on their sacks. Not for the sake of pretty packaging — but because women were sewing children's clothes out of those sacks, and a patterned sack sold better. The manufacturer simply adapted to how his customers actually lived. That is a fairly precise portrait of the era: these people did not economise in our sense of the word, they used everything to the end, and an entire generation came out of those years with a set of habits that stayed with them for life. This video first looks at how they really lived — with concrete details instead of vague talk about hard times. Then three facts about the economy of those years, without which none of the rest makes sense: falling prices, nine thousand collapsed banks, and the complete absence of any state safety net. Then we sort the habits into three groups: the ones that still work today; the ones that now work in reverse, because the economy of the thirties was built the opposite way round; and the single one that became the most expensive mistake of an entire generation — a mistake economists have actually measured. At the end, a two-minute check, and it is not about the thirties but about you: which habit did you inherit, what danger does it protect you from, and does that danger still exist? #PersonalFinance #GreatDepression #FrugalLiving