A、They thought to buy things before the prices went up. B、They bought things because they remembered the Great Depression. C、The

(26) I was born just after the end of the World War H, so I have lived in interesting economic times. My parents’ experiences in the Great Depression of the 1930s gave them a worrisome attitude towards money. On the one hand, they were very grateful for better times and were determined that my sisters and I would have everything they had been denied--that we would never suffer as they had. On the other hand, (27) they were very careful with money, restrained by their ear that bad times might return.
    As children and young adults, my. friends and I knew good economic times, and we didn’t understand  our parents’ fear about going back to the "bad old days". Parents used to scold their children by saying," You don’t know the value of the dollar." They meant that we didn’t really appreciate money or understand how difficult it was to earn and save; neither did we understand how bad life could be without enough to buy the necessities. By the time we had become adults, however, dramatic changes in the inflation rate made the statement true in another way.
    Our parents had learned to save, to be frugal, and to put money away "for a rainy day". (28) We learned to spend impulsively in order to purchase items before they became more expensive. Interest rates on most savings accounts were less than the rate of inflation, so it made some economic sense to spend now, save later. Unfortunately, our response to inflation actually fueled it, and government wage and price controls were required to bring the situation under control.