A Rare "No Easy Answers" Column On Raising Kids Who Have Financial Privilege
I read the column and then later saw @VeryJackie's tweet about it with "no easy answers":
I admire @karol even more for admitting there are no easy answers to this dilemma. When you know the shame of being poor, you never want any child to experience that denial. https://t.co/senSaK6YhX
— Jackie Danicki (@veryjackie) January 2, 2018
And here's a bit of that @Karol Markowicz column in the New York Post on "How to raise rich kids after growing up poor."
Karol and her family emigrated from the Soviet Union, and by rich, she means the upper middle-class life where you can, say, go to summer camp -- though not be transported there in a jet.
I realized recently that my own children don't have flannel sheets and, in fact, their bedding, complete with heavy comforter, is the same whether it's July or January. During last week's cold snap, they slept in shorts. The home they live in is always 73 degrees.There's a lot of want they don't know in their lives. I try not to wring my hands over it -- every poor person hopes their kids won't be -- but it's hard to miss. It's one of the awkward things about growing up poor but raising rich children.
When they're tired of walking and my 4-year-old says "let's get an Uber," I do it because, well, I'm tired of walking, too, and the cost of the Uber is negligible.
But there's a nagging worry that I'm spoiling my kids by making their lives so comfortable. Then again, wasn't that the point? Isn't that exactly why we struggle for our children?
The main thing I want my kids to be prepared for is that being rich isn't necessarily a permanent state. Sure, studies say that those born rich will die rich. But they mostly study the 1 percent, not the people who debate providing that $8 Uber to their tired kids. My own life has been a rollercoaster of various financial situations. I've been poor, then rich, and poor and rich again.
Some wise thinking here:
There's also the fact that so much parenting advice to keep from spoiling your kids is unrelatable to anyone who's been poor. Such as: "Give your kids experiences instead of gifts." But experiences are expensive, often far more so than the toy of the moment. If the idea is not to throw money at your kids, or treat them the way people less fortunate treat their kids, this fails.The hottest toy for girls this holiday season was the impossible-to-find L.O.L. Surprise! Big Surprise (don't ask), which rang in at $79. Taking a family of five to the Brooklyn Children's Museum for one day is $55, the Bronx Zoo is $138 -- and that's not including lunch or transportation. The point is ostensibly to spend time with your kids, yet you'll never hear quality-time gurus advise you to "watch TV together."
Other advice, like taking your kids to a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, feels like poverty tourism. My kids already know people who have much less than they have. They don't need to gawk at poor people and then go home to their perfectly warm house to get that.
I worry about my kids becoming entitled, but the bigger concern is that they become too comfortable, too sure that their good times can never end.
The challenge is to teach them to enjoy what they have but not expect it, and the goal is to teach perspective while providing comforts.
Love how she challenges the assumption so many make (including me) about the affordability of "experiences." Oops.
Read the whole thing at the link, as Glenn would say.
And another note from Karol:
I grew up with stories like these which informed me how good I had it in America:https://t.co/HahF4LpfGl
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) January 2, 2018
Want to teach you kids financial lessons?
This requires you to follow thru and not give in.
Sit down with your kids and go over some bills, not all the bills, but the things they use like internet and phones.
Tell them how much their share is and how much they have to pay you by the end of the month.
Give them all the cash you would spend on them throughout the month up front.
Let them fail and once they do let them live with that failure by turning off their phones and denying them access to the internet
Repeat ad nauseum until they stop failing
lujlp at January 1, 2018 11:13 PM
Luj, I think this is great advice. My parents never did this with us, and I would have been better for it, though they did teach us to not spend money we didn't have and other values.
Kids leave the lights on because they are kids and not very responsible (lack self-regulation of adults) but also because they don't pay the electric bills and don't understand that there is not a magical well of electricity, made by fairies.
Amy Alkon at January 2, 2018 5:56 AM
The other thing that needs to be done is to teach kids history. A lot of young people today seem to have an assumption that things have always been more or less like they are now. Oh, they're aware of black-and-white television, and corded phones attached to the wall, but those are just things to laugh at. They're not aware of polio, dysentery, yellow fever, smallpox, or bubonic plague. They're not aware of the soup lines of the Great Depression, or sleeping in the London Underground during the Blitz, or people dying of famine in Ukraine while Stalin looked on. They're not aware of travel by horse, or foraging for food, or a time (which describes most of human history) when 30 miles was a long day's journey. They're not aware of keeping track of loved ones solely by exchange of letters, which took weeks to arrive.
They're not aware that, for the vast majority of human existence, life meant misery. The current day is very much an exception, created and held together by an extraordinary set of circumstances and heroic actions. What were the circumstances? Who were the heroes and what did they do? We need to teach them.
Cousin Dave at January 2, 2018 7:22 AM
My parents gave me a very small allowance growing up. When most of my classmates were getting $5/week I got $1/month. In the end I learned to save simply because I never had enough money to buy anything so the allowance went into a box and got forgotten.
Not complaining or bragging. Just what happened. And I'm not sure how intentional any of it was. When my parents were growing up that was a lot of money for a kid. But inflation is a bitch.
More important, don't buy your kids lots of toys. Yes your kids will whine. But remember you didn't have the latest and greatest fad toy growing up and you turned out fine. A lot of kids stuff is more inter-parent competition than anything kids want. Especially for little kids it is pretty common for them to ignore the toy and play with the box it came in.
I keep saying kids aren't that expensive. And I'm right. But people keep acting like I'm crazy. So let me put things in a more depressing form. You will never be rich enough to make a difference. Spend all the money you want. It doesn't matter. And in fact it probably hurts the kid a bit. Piling that money up in the back yard and setting it on fire is just as useful. What kids need is your time. And since most of us have to work 8+hrs/day it doesn't matter how much you are paid, you are still working those 8+hrs/day. Until you are rich enough to quit your job it just doesn't matter.
As for the light thing, have you actually looked at how much money you are talking about? I don't know how things are in LA (though I do know they are substantially different). But for most of the country lighting is an insignificant portion of their monthly electrical costs. A percent or two, or essentially a rounding error. Leave the lights on 24/7 and most of us won't notice a cost difference. Especially with LEDs and CFLs. Originally the issue was the cost of the light bulb and not the electricity that went into it. Back in the day bulbs cost an inflation adjusted $50-$100/bulb. And they didn't last that long. So using them as little as possible and maintaining that lifespan was a big deal. But technology and inflation kicked in so the price of bulbs never rose over the years while their longevity kept increasing. Now bulbs are cheap and people find an excuse to keep the habit. Hence the nonsensical lights off to save on the bill stuff. Yes it is a waste. But it is a small enough one to be irrelevant.
Ben at January 2, 2018 7:46 AM
This is something that both parents should agree upon. It's pointless if one is being a tough cookie while the other one spoils the child behind the spouse's back.
Sixclaws at January 2, 2018 8:17 AM
I'd tweak Lujlp's advice to they earn it, by good grades or by (age appropriate) working/chores. teach them money comes from your effort extra effort = extra $ no effort no $.
Also the best history they can be taught is to properly associate poverty with the Soviet Union socialism/communism. Give them some defense vs the professors in the overpriced schools.
Joe j at January 2, 2018 8:47 AM
Chelsea got a wonderful entry-level low-paid ($400k annual) work experience in the media, and now she's ready for the White House.
Didn't cost her folks a dime.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 2, 2018 11:34 AM
In the old days, people traveling (merchants, fishermen) could vanish for months, being stranded by boats breaking down or running out of money etc. The law was often that after a year they could be declared dead and a wife could remarry. Sometimes still they would reappear after 2 years. Kids today freak if the boyfriend doesn't respond to a text in 10 minutes.
Growing up, birthday money went into the bank, never to be seen again. I am so glad for this lesson because my response was to go out and earn my own money starting at 13 or so. I covered all my own entertainment (movies, books, fireworks, etc) from then on. It made me an entrepreneur. I also understood that while we were pretty comfortable that my parents would never buy me a car nor would they help me after college (which they barely paid for). I think those kids given too much do indeed suffer for it later.
cc at January 2, 2018 12:13 PM
I wonder if exposure to the indigent would help them understand that a life of luxury is just that: a luxury.
What if she took the kids to volunteer at a soup kitchen once a week? I doubt that it would make them realize "there, but for the grace of God, go I."
Patrick at January 2, 2018 1:06 PM
happiness consist of competence and gratitude. children have to learn by doing, as in chores. Yale longitudinal study showed that of 1,000 items in childhood, ONLY chores at 10 leads to happiness at 40. Children in 3rd word countries have to do many chores, including child care of younger siblings, shopping, cooking, cleaning, minding the store, etc. They are very confident by the time they are 10. The learned helplessness of our children is because someone else is taking care of everything FOR them. They don't learn how to care for themselves nor others. It isn't actually money per se. I know this from the extreme fluctuations of my parents life and my own - from dead broke to mucho dinero, several times up and down again. My 3 brothers and sister and I were basically quite happy and competent. My mother did not believe in criticism, but she did have very high expectations. We all went to Ivy League colleges on full scholarships. Subsequent set backs did not make us unhappy, at least me.
vicki at January 2, 2018 1:36 PM
But experiences are expensive,
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Um, EXCUSE me? Sounds to me as though she didn't really grow up poor. Just because there's no end of tempting, expensive experiences available doesn't mean one can't teach kids to enjoy all those unadvertised experiences that also help to build one's skills and imagination (I mentioned this in a prior thread in September), much in the same way that kids can learn to appreciate Thanksgiving and the family reunion on that day even though it's never been successfully commercialized in the way that Valentine's Day, Halloween and Christmas are. A few library books on cheap, indoor crafts should suffice for any rainy day.
Besides, who says that doing chores together doesn't count as "quality time"? If the kids are still young enough to whine and moan over having to do chores at all, they don't deserve any passive entertainment or anything that costs money. (Not that anyone does who's not paying the bills.)
I searched just now on +frugal +family +fun and I found 59 ideas on one list! Examples:
1. Take a bike ride, but remember bicycle safety...
3. Play catch or Frisbee...
5. Visit a local museum. Some museums have special discounts or even free admission on a specific day of the month. In our city, the second Friday of each month is free admission to several area museums.
11. Attend a church, school or community softball game (or basketball, volleyball, soccer, etc.). You can cheer on your favorite team often at no cost to you.
12. Plant a flower and/or vegetable garden. Gardening is a fun, healthy, and educational activity for you and your family. Children learn responsibility, and your family saves money on fresh and healthy produce.
14. Play board games or card games at home. Even better, make up your own fun games.
15. Invite a family for popcorn. They may even enjoy playing a board game with you.
17. Surprise the family. Go on a mystery walk. Only you know the destination. Have something special waiting at the end of the walk.
18. Have a scavenger hunt either inside or outside. Children will have fun finding the items listed.
23. If you cannot get to the park, have a picnic in your backyard.
28. Swim in a creek or pond (Practice water safety, of course!)
29. When it snows, find a hill to toboggan or sled down.
31. Visit the library. Many libraries have activities planned for the children, such as story time, craft activities, movies.
32. Read a book together as a family. Even older children can enjoy a younger child’s book, and you may be surprised at how much younger children comprehend reading materials beyond their reading level.
37. Make homemade finger paints, edible play dough, invisible ink...
43. Brush up on constellations and go for a star-gazing walk.
45. Clean out the garage, basement, or attic.
58. Do a helping project for a church or needy family.
(snip)
Also, see "2735 best Frugal Family Fun images on Pinterest."
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My parents gave me a very small allowance growing up. When most of my classmates were getting $5/week I got $1/month.
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Wow.
Btw, if a certain Judy Blume novel is reliable in this regard (I suspect it is), it was quite normal for suburban kids, in 1974, to get a 50 cent allowance. Even kids in families that had housekeepers.
So what would that be in 2017? $2.50. Clearly, inflation wasn't the only factor in the change - that probably isn't even enough to buy a new comic magazine or a hand-prepared ice cream cone anymore, whereas back then, 50 cents might have bought both. I'd be surprised if ANY family gives only $2.50 nowadays - really poor parents might just say "you'll only get money for doing MY chores in addition to YOUR chores, so I can get eight hours of sleep instead of five."
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A lot of kids stuff is more inter-parent competition than anything kids want. Especially for little kids it is pretty common for them to ignore the toy and play with the box it came in.
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That's precisely what the youngest daughter (she had five siblings) from the Tightwad Gazette family said. See here:
http://thefrugalshrink.blogspot.com/2013/05/dacyczyn-interviews-laura.html
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I keep saying kids aren't that expensive. And I'm right. But people keep acting like I'm crazy.
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Again, that's what the TG family said - the author, Amy Dacyczyn, said she started the newsletter in part so as to give her fans something to wave in other people's faces and say "see! I'm not crazy! Someone else agrees with me!"
Saving money, she said, is often good for the environment, too, if you do it right. (It's certainly been true for me.)
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I also understood that while we were pretty comfortable that my parents would never buy me a car
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Reminds me of Iowa's Jane Hambleton, who, in early 2008, when her son was 19, wrote the following car ad:
"OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet."
She got a ton of approval from the public and was invited to appear on Oprah, Today, etc.
But...obviously, the family didn't really need the extra car in the first place, or she would have come up with another punishment. As I wrote elsewhere:
While what she did was very admirable, I thought the whole situation was a bit bewildering - and avoidable. Granted, I don't know the circumstances, but what ever happened to saying "you can have your own car when you move out and pay for it yourself"? I mean...the man is NINETEEN, for crying out loud! Why risk the chance of having to damage your relationship?
lenona at January 2, 2018 2:23 PM
#29 Summer version- grassy hill and a block of ice
lujlp at January 2, 2018 4:09 PM
Have your kids join the military or the Peace Corps. The biggest part of becoming appreciative is learning the difference between a want and a need.
Takes a few nights in the rain and the cold, with no electricity, or the local fast food drive through, to really grock that concept.
Isab at January 2, 2018 4:15 PM
"I wonder if exposure to the indigent would help them understand that a life of luxury is just that: a luxury."
Depends on the kid Patrick. Many of them take that as evidence just how much better they are than other people. So you are just feeding a narcissistic ego. Usually by the time they are old enough to actually help at a food bank it is too late to change things.
"Clearly, inflation wasn't the only factor in the change - that probably isn't even enough to buy a new comic magazine or a hand-prepared ice cream cone anymore, whereas back then, 50 cents might have bought both."
That is what inflation is Lenona. But inflation is not uniform. Some areas inflate faster than others. Which is why over the last decade economists talked about how inflation was near zero and no one believed them. The economists based inflation on the price of xboxes and other electronics where technology has a strong deflationary influence while most people worried more about staples like housing, food, and gas costs, which are excluded from government inflation statistics for political reasons.
Ben at January 2, 2018 6:17 PM
We do NOT have a large family. Yes, the quantity of toys and games is ridiculous. Why? Gifts. People like to give kids stiff. Lots of it is crap, but there it is.
Now that my kids arent little, I wish people would give gift certificates for special outings. Its fun to go play minigolf or go to the zoo. They'd be thrilled to get a pass for the trampoline park or a gift certificate toward art or music classes... So experiences can be a good instead-of-an-object gift... But they aren't necessarily cheap.
Also...Where we live, there are TONs of free places to go... But you'll pay a fortune in transit or parking... So those aren't always cheap in the long run.
Shannon at January 2, 2018 9:55 PM
As for the rest of it... There are good points there. It is a struggle. It is one thing to know there are people who are worse off... And another to never have experienced it.
Even when belts tighten, I think most people try and insulate their kids. They say they forgot to sign up for dance class or "we are taking a break," or something. This doesnt make it easier, but who wants to burden their 8 year old with that stuff?
Shannon at January 2, 2018 10:00 PM
> (#16. Etc.)
At some point, part of the problem becomes I am tired of doing things with Mom & Dad and wonder what it would be like to knock over a Laundromat on a motorbike with a one-eyed transgender prostitute from overseas while stoned to the gills on Mad Dog 20/20.
> ONLY chores at 10 leads
> to happiness at 40.
Totally believe that, but couldn't dream of proving it.
I was lousy with chores: The 1968 allowance in one family of very, very modest resources was 25¢/week, which usually vanished into two comic books and three pieces of gum. At thirty-four I was deservedly miserable. At forty-one I bought the townhouse, the sports car, and dated a bunch of really, really great women. Our family grew to be tremendously blessed, but that was a pattern for whitefolk lead by sober, stoic Christians in postwar America. You saw it in innumerable business ventures, and you saw it in the personal (and interpersonal) development of generations.
As noted the other day, life continues to get better in global terms, and in many important national perspectives.
But in consideration of these remarkable contingencies, I think it's important for people of our generation to look to the prospects of postgrad millenials, crippled with debt for useless degrees in an economy choking with regulation, insolvent public finance, and corrupt, untenable social strictures to assure them that
Crid at January 3, 2018 4:28 AM
Ben, you do know there ARE other factors, right? In a well-known 1952 book, each kid gets 70 cents for the county fair and is told to make the money last All Day and not eat to the point of getting sick. In 2017, that would be...$6.52!
Very likely, one big reason for the discrepancy between $6.52 and REAL prices today is that amusement park owners have to worry a lot more about liability insurance than they used to.
lenona at January 3, 2018 7:39 AM
That is what inflation is Lenona. But inflation isn't uniform. You are using what is touted as an average of inflation. But just because the average is one place that doesn't mean everything is at that place. The sea level has an average height of 0ft above sea level (imagine that). But the actual height of the sea can be much higher or lower than 'sea level'. Tides can be as high as 50ft. That average sea height may not mean much in your local area.
What makes matters worse is since we started indexing government benefits to inflation there has been a strong incentive for the government to underestimate it. Look into how inflation is measured. I wasn't joking about the xboxes. Which is why you are seeing such a difference between inflation and real prices.
This is the same reason why Obama kept talking about all the great economic measures during his presidency and no one cared. People could look around in their own lives and see what was happening. The statistics Obama kept quoting didn't change the reality they were living. Instead the disinformation just made Obama angry and frustrated.
Ben at January 3, 2018 10:33 AM
"... knock over a Laundromat on a motorbike with a one-eyed transgender prostitute ..."
You joke Crid but that stuff actually happens. True story, my dad was at a geology conference in Vegas. As he and coworkers are walking down the strip this very obvious man in a sparkly sequined dress comes running at him screaming his name. Freaked him out. Eventually he found out this was a guy he knew in college. Apparently this guy was a genius. Always knew the answer. Everything was easy for him to understand. . . and then he got into religion. A few decades later he was a coked up transvestite hooker in Vegas.
Ben at January 3, 2018 10:43 AM
Which is why you are seeing such a difference between inflation and real prices.
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Except that one DOESN'T always see that. When you look at books from the 1950s and 1960s, prices at certain restaurants have stayed constant - and so have at least the cost of some public transportation lines and the cost of laundromats.
lenona at January 3, 2018 3:15 PM
"then he got into religion. A few decades later he was a coked up transvestite hooker in Vegas."
Man, if I had a dollar for every time THAT happened.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 3, 2018 11:04 PM
Lenona,
Averages don't mean the exact same thing happens to everything. Did you read the bit about inflation not being uniform?
Ben at January 4, 2018 7:12 AM
I'm just saying there are factors other than some things becoming a rarity/luxury when they didn't used to be (such as how oysters used to be so common and cheap, they were fed to pigs) and some things becoming so fashionable that it's just a matter of "what the market will bear." Such as liability insurance. I don't see that as a part of inflation.
lenona at January 5, 2018 1:53 PM
Yeah, experiences can be expensive.
But they can also not be... when it snows, grab the sled (one time investment starting at around twenty bucks) and hit a nearby hill. When the weather is nice, pack a picnic and go for a walk in a forest or park.
I dunno. I feel like it's easy to spend money on stuff and also easy to not spend it, depending what you decide.
NicoleK at January 14, 2018 11:51 AM
Good list up there, but planting a garden is NOT cheap. I swear the amount of money I spend at the garden center...
Gardening is an example of one of those enriching experiences for kids that costs a fortune.
NicoleK at January 14, 2018 11:54 AM
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