[Koir]

Originally Posted by YuriTokoro

Koir, hi. Thanks as always!
I don’t understand why you said you were old-fashioned.
Until about 50 years ago, women didn’t control the money in Japan. Isn’t it the same in your country? Controlling the money of women is new.
Or, you meant you will control the money because you are studying accounting?

*involuntary twitch at the mention of "accounting"*

Ahem.

I was basing my statements on how my parents handled money and finances. My mother was (and is) the person who controls the money in the family. As I grew older, I helped her with the finances and monthly bill payments which is what eventually convinced me to study accounting in college.

Of course, when I get into my career, it will be only me to start with controlling my own finances. It's more due to personal experiences and not training that taught me exactly how I manage money.

Many Japanese don’t know about finances and some of them hate to know it because they believe that having or thinking much money is bad, somehow. They believe that rich people must have done some evil.

That could have come out of the belief that for one person to have so much money, it had to come from somewhere. That 'somewhere' being a large amount of other people paying their hard-earned money. That could be considered 'evil'.

Japanese schools never taught about money except in economics schools, while I’ve heard that western schools teach basic finances to their students. Is this right?

Pretty much. When I was in high school (compulsory education for children between 14-16 years old) Accounting was taught. Compared to the advanced training I just finished, it was *very* basic.

“So I asked many friends who controlled their purse strings.”
My original sentence was wrong. I wanted to say “I asked them, “Who control the purse string in your family?” What should I have said? I don’t know what to say.
So I’d like to change this sentence to “So I asked many friends.” Because some of them were men and they didn’t control their purse strings.

In that case, some of your friends would consider it a purely intellectual question. The most natural way to express that (in my opinion) would be:

"So I asked many friends who should control the purse strings in a family. Some of them do not handle money matters in their family, so the question was more theoretical. The others had a more experienced, practical view."

The bolded sentences are an additional explanation of the individuals that were questioned, and clarify that not all of them are in the same situation, so they would have different opinions.

Most of the confusion comes from using the colloquilism (or saying) of "purse strings". It would be more natural to use the accurate description of "handling money" (specific) or "handling finances" (general). Less writing, and it gets the central idea across more efficiently.