Every time we would return home from somewhere when I was growing up – like clockwork – my mom would take up her station in front of the computer in the study.

So many of my childhood memories involve her, straight-backed, referencing receipts and punching them into a spreadsheet, quietly mumbling to herself under her breath.

She called it “the SS,” bearing a hilarious, coincidental likeness to the police in Nazi Germany, where she’d budget our monthly spending down to the penny. There was a column called “Katie,” and I regret never being cognizant enough to see what amount had been allotted for me (in reading this draft before it was published, she insists there was no “Katie” column – but I remember it clearly).

When we came back from the rare dinner out, she’d go straight for the computer. Post-grocery shopping? SS. Mom lived and died by the formulas in that Excel 2000 file.

Much like observing your parents spend frivolously or live beyond their means will likely create a tendency to do the same, growing up observing the two people who teach you how to be a human track every dollar going in and out will almost necessarily produce a child who thinks such close monitoring is normal and necessary.

It’s not even considered financial responsibility at that point – it’s just what happens when you buy something. An extension of the transaction: Choose, purchase, obtain receipt, enter receipt into massive document that goes back 10 years. Normal.

I only found out later in life that her SS habit didn’t start until she quit her job. Like a nail-biting tick that originates after a traumatizing event, mom started tracking every penny when we dropped from two salaries to one.

Originally, the plan was to track everything for a full year to get a sense for what they were spending – to see if they needed to cut back on anything, considering their halved income. But after the first year was up, the habit had stuck – it became a game for my mom. How little could they spend? How much could they save?

This should come as no surprise for anyone who knows the woman – valedictorian in both high school and college, and competitive in everything from basic money management to games of non-regulation tennis in the driveway.

As a kid (and a kid who knew how much her parents made), the subliminal narrative that’s created is this: Dad makes $X per year and mom tracks every dollar we spend and money seems to stress her out, therefore $X is not enough money.

The meticulous budget maintenance and her overall aversion to spending money on anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary sent the message that money is something to save and protect.

In adulthood, as the progeny of this spreadsheet wizard, I have no debt, six figures in savings, and a decent job – but I’ve also become an adult who tracks every dollar in and out and, truthfully, spends too much time thinking about money: how to make more, when I’ll feel comfortable, how to grow wealthy enough to no longer need to track. Turns out “the game” is genetic.

How much of your life and free thought do you have to give up in order to become rich? Can all the money you earn buy back the time you spent figuring out how to get it? What do we really need it for anyway?

My mom finally retired the SS around the same time I was in college. Having finally achieved one of the most expensive perceived Duties of Diligent Parenthood®, it was almost as if she could finally – after 13 years – release the reins.

She had been holding her breath for 18 years and when I crossed the stage at graduation, she exhaled. With that exhale, she willed me across the finish line and out of the checking account. Her job was complete. They had done it.

My parents retired in their mid-fifties. My dad, having never left his company, managed to retire before he turned 55 – and now, they assure me, they’re going to live it up with their life savings. I don’t know who’s going to break it to them that they’re going to have to re-learn how to do such a thing after 20 years of stringently enforcing the opposite.