When I was growing up I used to hear my mother talk about her Salary and how much she got. I thought that at the end of the week she just got a bunch of celery to bring home.

codeman

I used to think that the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny was the trolley from Mr. Rogers.

Katie

When I was young, I thought coins were better than bills because they were shiny while paper money was ugly. Whenever I would get money in bills, I would exchange the bills with my cousins for coins. Finally, my parents found out and my cousins got in trouble.

Angela

Back when vending machines sold a cup of soda for a penny, I thought that if you inserted a copper penny, it would always give you Coca-Cola. If you inserted a war-time zinc penny, it always gave you a grape soda. Whenever I wanted a grape soda, I would ask my older sister to put in an "old black penny".

Anon

When I was younger, and the stock market report appeared on the news, I thought "volume" meant how high everyone's television sets were turned up.

Melissa

We visited family in Boston alot. As a kid
I thought the toll booths accepted Candy money at a 15% discount. It was so ingrained in me that it wasn't untill I was about 13 that it finally hit me that is was Canadian Money

D Kenealy

I thought when I was a kid that people just went to the bank to get money, like it was simply a money source. I was always so confused as to why my parents would complain about having no money.

Gina

I used to think they had a box where all your money went in in the bank and they kept the money locked up in a big basement.

Anon

I used to believe that if you had two 5 dollar bills it meant that you had $55. Boy was I in for a wake up check.

Anon

I used to believe that the popular phrase 'the buck stops here' was literally a dollar bill being passed from one person to another-the person who had the notion to place 'the buck stops here' sign was the one who got to keep the money.

Moe

My Mum told me there were 100 pennies in a pound so I thought she meant that you could literally fit 100 pennies into a pound coin, so i sat at the table one day stacking pennies up, when I got to ten I realised that there was no way you could fit them into a pound coin... They must be squashed down to fit.

clair

When I was 6 I truly thought that if something was £50 and you gave them £30 you got the goods AND £20 change

Anon

I have just recently been approached by an investment broker to invest in stocks & shares via HSBC
I have only just found out that HSBC does not stand for High Street Banking Corporation ----------- PS;- i am 68yrs old

kwaziwabbit

when I first heard about insurance, I thought it was a small group of old men in black (clothes, hat, shoes, sunglasses...) that you gave your money to, and when the house burned down - or something like that - they would come and pay for the damage

Mim

i used to think that if i tore a dollar bill in half it would make fifty cents

stacy

I used to believe that money was tasty stuff that people got from their parents. I got quite confused and ill after trying a five quid note

not wealthy (any more)

I used to believe that when you took money to the bank, they had a big box that had your name on it, and they threw your money into the box, and when you took money out, they would find your box and give you the money you wanted.
The stupid part is that I always pictured the boxes as looking like miniature washing machines.
The sad part is that I believed this until I was 10 years old and got my own bank account.

Lizo

When I was little, I used to believe that money was the same everywhere. I used to think the small change I'd find around the house in $1 and $5 could buy expensive things I saw in US catalogues (I'm Jamaican).

Dani

When I was about nine, I heard someone saying that they spent all afternoon balancing their checkbook. I thought that it meant they *literally* balanced their checkbook. I imagined people trying to keep their checkbooks balanced on the tip of their finger, and they kept it up there the entire afternoon. Those people must have been really bored!

Jenny

I think I must have once followed my Mom to the bank while she got something out of a small safe or something when I was young, because I believed that the way banks worked (having never gone with her to the bank before, and not going with her again later) was that everyone with an account had their own locked drawer. You'd go to the bank, then someone would take you to a room where there were walls and walls of little drawers, and you kept your money in that drawer.

When she explained it to me a bit, about how banks will give your money to other people, but they keep track of how much money you have, I figured that they just had a gigantic safe (with a huge combination lock on the front), like in cartoons, that was just piled up with money tossed everywhere. When you deposited money, they opened the door and threw it in. When you withdrew money, they went into the safe and got the money you asked for.

I still thought it was mean that they gave your money away, though.

Kate