I think it is definitely influenced by your childhood, but personality matters a lot too. I have 3 sisters - 2 of us are pretty thrifty, bordering on cheap, and the other 2 are "spend til it's gone" types - total opposites. Interestingly, one of the "spend til it's gone" sisters has a very similar personality to me (isfp) but is quite a bit younger and with more mental issues.
The cracked article [MENTION=4]cafe[/MENTION] mentioned was pretty bang-on for my family growing up (minus the extravagant gift-giving thing, since we were never in a position to do that and still aren't - we went more the other way as we became adults, going for more homemade gifts and other small things). I'm literally the opposite of every one of those habits (sometimes too far, actually), but my mom still has most of them. The "money has to be spent right away" is the one that kills me. Lots of my friends are like that too though - it's not exclusively a growing up poor thing, by any means. It actually seems more like the rule than the exception, at least in my age group.
I'm not sure whether my attitude towards money will change when I finally get a real job, though - I'm still in grad school and make enough to live on but not really enough extra to invest. I have a small safety cushion in savings that I'm slowly adding to, but my spending is pretty variable because I tend to buy things on sale and stock up, and have never tried to follow a budget - I just try not to buy anything unless it's really worth the cost to me, and try to get the best possible price for everything.
edit: I should add that I think a lot of my attitudes about money have come from constantly thinking "don't be like parents don't be like parents". But it's hard to really say what my attitude would have been had my family earned more money. I suspect I would not be as strongly self-preservation oriented, but it's not like you can ever know for sure.