I once heard someone say “don’t worry about keeping up with the Jones’, they’re broke and unhappy!” Isn’t that the truth! We try so hard to live up to what others are doing and yet we come to find out, they’re not doing so great. (Apologies to all of my friends whose last names end in Jones 🙂 you know it’s just a saying).
It seems like as parents it is our job to hide any stress we can from our children. We don’t want them to worry. So we try to keep our financial stress a secret. We stretch the budget to get them the latest greatest “toy”…as they get older, the toys get more expensive and budget goes out the window. We work extra hard to make sure they can be in dance, sports, music, theatre. Today’s family is not only over scheduled but it is over budget…living pay check to pay check so that they can have it all and give their kids all of this “stuff”.
A study in the Wall Street Journal states that 70 percent of the American public lives from pay check to pay check. SEVENTY PERCENT! That means 7 out of 10 of your neighbors are one pay check away from crisis. But in the meantime the kids have ipods, laptops, psp’s and more.
This week in class we talked about marriage & money and kids & money. We have people in our group who are grandparents, parents, new parents and yet to be parents. There was a lot of regret from those who had grown children and a lot of pressure for those who had kids just starting out. This subject struck a lot of nerves. It’s a hum dinger for sure.
As we continue on this journey to financial peace, one huge motivating factor towards changing the way we handle money is that we want the buck to stop here..haha no pun intended. We want to raise our kids with the knowledge and the power of knowing what financial freedom means.
I remember when my kids were a little younger they would say “are we rich?” and I would answer yes! We are rich in love, rich in friendship. We have all we need. They never really like that answer. Then another time we were saying we couldn’t afford something and they said “oh no! Are we poor?!” I don’t want to scare my kids, but I also don’t want to lie to them or keep secrets about our finances. I think those secrets create shame and stress.
I want them to know about money. I want them to understand it. To understand that when you work you get paid. When you don’t work, you don’t get paid. When you get paid you have money to save, give, and spend. With a daughter starting high school next year, I’m sure she’ll start wanting to “spend” a little more. I want her to be able to spend. But I want her to be able to spend HER own money that she works for. I want her to understand this now so as she gets to be an adult, she’ll already be ahead of the game.
One woman in our class said that her son, who is in college, gets 2-3 credit card applications daily! DAILY! No wonder our kids are graduating collegte with thousands of dollars in credit card debt. NO NO NO! Change starts here and it starts today…well actually yesterday. We sat down with our kids and explained our new system. No more “allowance”, now it’s all about commission. Certain things will earn you more commission than others. Also, these items are in addition to your regular expected chore participation. With this new system we hope to teach them that they can create their own financial success. They will learn that if they want more they can do more, they can save more and then when needed, they can spend more. Yes! Things are going to be different in the McCracken household.
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