My parents referred to the old days as a vague period of imposed privation followed by a time of economic self-restraint.

They lived through the Great Depression and knew the value of everything that came into their hands. Even when times improved, they parted with dollars not grudgingly but at least with an eye toward the money’s greatest efficiency.

Life taught them to waste nothing. They were savers.

Their children assumed some of these lessons but grew up in a changing time. They formulated their own “old days.”

Money seemed a little slicker to the grasp, more apt to fall toward material goods.

The look of cars mattered. The appropriate neighborhood beckoned. Technology provided doodads that needed to be had.

We were spenders, at least comparatively.

Our children took some of these lessons and gave currency a Teflon coating, incapable of sticking. Advancing this art put a lot of dollars into circulation. The consumer culture fostered a changing array of brand names and a thriving market of cheaper imports.

“Black” became the adjective of choice for the Depression’s onset 80 years ago next month, Black Thursday through Black Tuesday. The funereal hue left no doubt about the direness.

The new old days ended, some would argue, when the word “bailout” came into popular usage. Bailout actually has a more beneficent ring, hinting at assisted salvation, but Americans turned cautious anyway.

The Government Accountability Office released a report last week that spoke to the nation’s willingness to save for retirement. Seems the working-class of my generation embraced the 401(k) concept, growing the participation from 8 million people in the mid-1980s to more than 70 million in 2006.

This amount in retirement reserve totaled $3 trillion.

Government may not hold the answers to all of America’s questions, but it has ample resources to describe problems. Some folks, about 15 percent through 2006, make early withdrawals from their 401(k) accounts for assorted employment or hardship reasons.

Federal officials call this “leakage.” This sounds more like the grim side effect of some TV-advertised pharmaceutical, but the GAO illustrated the situation in its report with a bucket losing liquid out of small holes.

The agency determined that retirement fund leakage happened at a consistent pace, in good and lesser times. Of course, the research ended before the most recent downturn, the freshly unemployed perhaps not having the luxury of looking forward.

A story in this newspaper over the weekend indicated a cumulative decrease in St. Joseph home values of 12 percent over the last three years.

Put this another way. Government figures released last week indicated that 13,996 houses in St. Joseph, 75 percent of the owner-occupied units in the city, have values between $50,000 and $200,000.

Split the difference and assume an average $125,000 value. Given that a home stands as the most significant investment for individuals, a 12 percent decrease means this portion of St. Joseph residents lost almost $210 million of housing value.

It’s a paper loss, naturally, since not all people sell their houses at the same moment. Still, leakage barely describes such a flood. And spending with little regard to value will never again have an appeal.

Ken Newton’s column runs on Tuesday and Sunday.