![]() On top of the free rent, he gets occasional cash gifts from relatives and a salary from me that consists of 10 cents for every mile walked or biked as part of family life. So ever since he has been old enough to have a use for money himself (age six or so), I have tried to give him a chance to learn for himself how it works.īeing a kid is quite a lucrative proposition these days. ![]() He sees this by comparing the daily routine of his own parents, to what other parents do each day. Since we retired just before he was born, he has grown up with the idea of financial independence – if you own assets like rental houses or shares of businesses, they provide income which means you don’t have to leave home for 9 hours every day and commute to an office unless this is your idea of fun. Our 9-year old knows exactly how money is earned, what happens when you spend it (it’s gone), and what happens if you invest it instead (it works for you, for life). In our household, money is an open subject without any attached baggage or taboos. It seems to me that if we bring the financial values of a small working-class 1980s town forward to today, life gets a lot simpler for kids. It was three decades ago in a small town in a different country that I approached my own teenage years, and we followed a much simpler model of family finance back then. Much like the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, I found myself wondering “What the hell are these modern people fussing about? Do they really worry about this stuff?” What do you do when the other kids have nicer stuff than your kids, or vice versa? How do you say no to your kids when they want things that you can’t afford for them? How do you handle allowances, jobs, paying for education, mobile phones, cars, and giving to others?Īll of these perceived social pressures of the Wealthy New York style of childraising were unfamiliar to me. While the book was thoughtful and thoroughly researched, I was still fascinated by how much things have changed since I was a kid. There were chapters on how to handle the social pressures of a high-income neighborhood. I just read a book called The Opposite of Spoiled, by Ron Lieber. While any one of these pieces of advice might work fine for a family with infinite money, they have trickled deep down into the middle classes where they become unhelpful for those wanting to truly get ahead. I get emails from high school and university students telling me, “Dad advised me to finance a reliable NEW car with 4WD, so I can be safe in the winter and spend less on repairs.” Other people rack up $200,000 in student loans for a elite degree with few job prospects, because their parents cautioned “You can’t get a good job without a degree these days.” Still other families stress over how much to spend on olympic-caliber toddler birthday parties, how to afford ivy league preschools and how to fit in with the other high-income families in their private schools. In a country where Ridiculous is Ubiquitous, most people’s best attempts at getting ahead are in fact recipes for financial disaster. Unfortunately, the results are not always good. ![]() So they do their best to dish out financial advice, and to model good behavior for their offspring to emulate. Surely every parent wants the same thing – to pass on their happiness if life is good, or if not, to give their kids a better life than they had. If my boy eventually ends up as happy with his lot in life as his parents are, we will be more than satisfied. After all, as parents we are really in the business of producing the happiest and most capable adults we can, given the constraints of the real world. I want to pass this gift along to my son if at all possible, because it is truly a great way to live. It hits you like a pack of wild butterflies every morning when you wake up. True wealth is more of a big picture thing – freedom from negative stress and a higher confidence about how great life is. I’m not going to lie to you – being wealthy is a lot of fun.Īnd I’m not just talking about novelty fun that you get from driving around in a fancy car.
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