Let's face it, Bush 41 didn't have to pinch pennies.

"He is completely of the New England gentry class, but he wanted to try and make it on his own," said presidency expert Barbara Perry.

After serving in World War II and then finishing Yale, Bush moved his family to Texas with hopes of making it in the oil business. He first took a job as clerk for an oil-drilling company owned by a friend's father, earning $375 monthly ($3,748 in today's dollars).

"He did want to get away from the family establishment, and not to take that away from him, but he could have always gone back to Greenwich," Perry said.

But the clerk job didn't last for long. In 1950, he and a friend started their own oil company. It later merged with Zapata Petroleum, and Bush became president of one of its subsidiaries.