The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today
I remember my dad encouraging me to save my dollars and not spend them on choc-99 double ice-creams ($2.13).  These were soft whip ice-creams with 2 cadbury's flake chocolates stuck in the side and they seemed like the closest thing to heaven on earth to me.  What my dad said seemed logical though and I saved. When I was 16 I had a holiday job that earned me many ice-cream-worths but I kept it - didn't buy a bicycle or anything. "Save your money."<p>These were Zimbabwe dollars, however, and in the late 1990s it all inflated away to nothing.  So much for conscientious saving.