I used to believe that if I poked my grandfather in the belly-button he would spit out quarters.

Justin

At about age 3, I thought that the tip money my parents left on the table was actually for Me as some sort of reward for finishing my meal. I'd stash the $$ in a hole in my mattress, so my mom finally found it one day while re-arranging my room. She spent the next week driving to area restaurants trying to compensate the wait staffs that had been stiffed!

Anon

I used to believe that my pennies would get lonely if I left one or two out by themselves on my dresser. Before going to bed I had to put them with the rest of my change. And I gave a great deal of thought to whether I should put them next to the other pennies I'd found them with, for familiarity, or if they'd like a change of company

Elizabeth M

When I was a kid, I thought that libraries got all their funding from overdue fines. We had a pretty lousy branch library, so I would hold onto books long after I'd read them so I'd have to pay an extra nickel or dime and maybe they'd be able to buy more books.

queeneve

I wnted to get money out of a savingts account my great grand mother had set up for me, my mom told me if I took the money out it would stop growing meaning growing in intrest. I thought my money was actually growing. I would hold dollar bills up next to each other to see if it had been in a bank to "grow". One day I asked if I could go to the bank to see how much my money had grown she showed me my bank statment, and explaned it to me. To say the lest I was disappointed.

Alyson

I used to believe the Bank was where poor people went to get money, I didn't know you had to actually have money IN there.....I would be so humiliated to go into the bank I would cry and hide behind my mom.

Sharon

The first time that I went to Spain on holiday when I was 7, I thought everyone purchased things with potatoes. Then dad told me they were pesatas.

Helen

I used to believe that tiny men lived in shop tills and decided how much each item should cost. I thought that bar codes were their own special language.

Sophie

My grandpa was a barber, and usually when we visited them, the first thing we did was stop at his shop. Usually he had a toy for me. On this day, he gave me a dollar, then told my dad to take me to the toy shop across the street. My dad, trying to instill the value of money into a 5 year old, told me I could only spend half of it! No PROBLEM!....I ripped the dollar in half, gave one to him, and said "Let's go shopping!"

Lisa

Some older kids showed us how to file pennies (USA) down to the size of dimes. At this time a bottle of coke from a machine was ten cents. We’d pound nails into a board, around a dime, remove the dime and then use the nails as a guide. We’d keep filing until the penny fit between the nails and under the nail head. As you can imagine, it would take much of an afternoon to come up with five or six dimes. We did this in a shed in back of one of our houses. Knowing this was a federal offense, both in counterfeiting and in defacing a US coin (the penny), we actually stationed lookouts, one at each corner of the front yard, fully expecting a big black car full of Federal Treasury agents to come barreling down the dirt road at any moment.

Allen W.

My sister was about six or seven when my mother took up both out to Seaport Village in San Diego. It has some lovely wishing fountains. My sister and I both wanted to throw a penny in the fountain but my mother only had one. My sister every so quietly opened my mother's purse and pulled out her check book.

"That's okay mom," she said, "You can just write a check."

Katie from California

I thought that a fruit machine (gambling machine) was where you actually bought fruit and the money you won was the change.

Anon

When I was very young, I thought that when someone mentioned piggy banks that they ment keeping money in real pigs. I thought, "No way I'll keep my money in some pig!" I decided the safest place was myself, and one day I stuffed my cheeks with all the pennies I could find. My mother soon enlightened me after finding me with a mouthful of pennies.

hydramine

For the longest time, whenever I heard about anything being "liquidated" (ie. homes, businesses, etc.), I imagined someone melting them into a liquid. It's only recently that I've realized that I thought that because of that scene from "The Wizard of Oz." ("You liquidated her, eh?")

Miss Mustard

When I was young, I thought Monopoly money was real money so I'd sneak into the game closet and steal it out of the Monopoly box and hide it in my dresser. My mom found the stash after a few weeks and asked me what the heck I was doing with half the Monopoly money in my room. I nervously told her I was saving up for a pony.

She laughed at me until I cried.

Sarah

When I first learned that gold was very soft and that pirates used to bite their coins to ensure that the loot was composed of real gold, I ran around the house biting every metal object I could find. If the item bent when I bit into it, I made sure to inform my mother of its enormous monetary value. I am sure she was delighted to find me gnawing on bracelets and spoons.

Kitty

Once I asked my mum what she would do if she won the lottery... she said she would faint. I didn't want her to faint and every week i wished and hoped like crazy we wouldn't win.

Anon

i used to think the definition of being rich was having a room full of money that reached up to your knees. i didn't take into account if the room was really big of the money was pennies or hundred dollar bills. This was shortly after i learned that having four dollars did not make me rich.

timmy

i was always fascinated by the receipts given by ATM machines. one day, my brother told me that if you could get the receipts out of the tiny containers people put them in, and took them to the bank, then the bank would give you the amount of money shown on the docket. i was excited for 15 mins, thinking i would make our family rich, until i jammed my fingers in the container.

Anon

My father was a little worried by my obsession with dimes when I was a toddler. He thought I was avaricious, but couldn't understand why, as I was too young to know about how to spend money. What he didn't know was that I was fascinated by the shiny silver with the perfect pictures on it. And I was convinced that the profile was a portrait of God.

Jennifer Avenell