Unfortunately, it's all too easy to raise financially irresponsible children. Many teenagers learn nothing about personal finance in school, and they learn all the wrong lessons from their free-spending friends.
Free-spending friends? What about free-spending parents? With personal indebtedness at an all time high, I don’t understand why we need an article about teaching children to be financially responsible. We need to teach adults to be financially responsible!
Furthermore, because children have a very short-term perspective on life, they are psychologically incapable of making what adults would consider to be responsible financial decisions. If given the choice between a new car or a college education, a lot of young people would unwisely choose the new car.
It seems to me that raising children is a catch-22 when it comes to finances. I’m not convinced that denying your children things that all of their friends have will teach them anything at all about responsibility. Just the opposite, they may very well develop an irresponsible fixation on short term acquisition of material goods, the lack of them causing the desire to be all the greater.
"It seems to me that raising children is a catch-22 when it comes to finances. I’m not convinced that denying your children things that all of their friends have will teach them anything at all about responsibility. Just the opposite, they may very well develop an irresponsible fixation on short term acquisition of material goods, the lack of them causing the desire to be all the greater. "
Been there done that. I think one of the greatest thanks that a parent can get is to have a thirty-something son admit over a quiet beer that it has taken him almost twenty years to realise that when we said "No" to him over something it was for a reason, not just plain spite. There was also an admission that it had taken him another 15 years to 'fess up to the realisation which came as the result of a pair of jeans. Mum and Dad were quite prepared to buy "the basic jeans", perhaps $20 worth. If he wanted the labels and all then HE had to pay the other $50 or $60 out of his own pocket. What upset him was that dad's $20 pair were still going strong long after his $70 pair had gone way past being wearable art.
Was it here or somewhere else there is a discussion on teaching "financial responsibility"? That Catch-22 that you refer to - that is where you start teaching...
Posted by: probligo | June 01, 2005 at 05:10 PM