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First Person

Kids and Money

Posted December 23, 2008

During a season when families everywhere are cutting back on their spending and all too many of us are worried about work (losing a job, finding a job, earning enough to pay the bills), one question seems unavoidable: What do we tell the kids?

Talking to children about money matters has always been a complicated issue — but, these days, it’s a much tougher, and infinitely more emotional, challenge. Is it fair, or desirable, or downright necessary to help them understand the larger economic context in which we’re all living, as well as the family’s current financial realities? We don’t want to scare them, of course. But don’t we need them to be informed, if they’re old enough to handle it?

Every family’s situation is different. But we turned to one of our favorite Guest Whiners, Beejay, to ask her how she was dealing with this challenge. After having been through bankruptcy, job-hunting, and a recent epic bout of car-shopping, we figured that this was an issue she’d probably been thinking about. Here’s her story:

If you’ve read any of my earlier posts, then you know that this past summer was the end of a time of terrible upheaval for me and my kids, and that I chose, bravely it seemed at the time, to give up a secure job and a comfortable house I owned to pick up stakes and move across the country in search of a better quality of life.

Besides being brave, it was at least risky and maybe even careless (words like stupid and irresponsible occasionally cross my mind). This assessment gained weight when the economy began to collapse — or, when we could see the economy collapsing, I still had not found full-time work and we were needing to get accustomed to living in a less-nice house. Our quality of life has improved in many ways, but certainly worsened financially. And while I had planned for what happened, the emotional reality of it has been a surprise.

The pressure of being the primary caretaker of two kids has been enormous, and I have had to fight a lot of doubt and fear about my being able to carry the load alone. I haven’t wanted the kids to see this pressure and fear, to feel insecure. But I will say that sometimes I’m tempted to sound doomsdayish, because I’d like them to moderate their demands more, and to summon up their own “let’s all pitch in and weather this together” attitudes.

I wish I could say that the kinds I know, mine and others, were learning something from the deep recession we’ve plunged into. But they seem to be just as cavalier about money as ever.

Gone are the days when a young man of thirteen or fourteen or even ten would go out and shoulder some of the responsibility to keep the family housed and fed — delivering papers early in the morning, or hauling coal. I can get nostalgic for those days I wasn’t alive in, but I have to admit that kids are the way they are because we’ve spoiled them. And why not, we were pretty spoiled, too. It’s a little unrealistic to expect that now they’re going to volunteer to dash out and take up the yoke.

I remember how hard it is to be a teen and have no access to money. I don’t believe I got an allowance. Anything I needed was provided — a roof, clothes (even if they were often hand-me-downs from a variety of sources), food. If I went out with my friends, my mother gave me money for the evening. We would skate, or bowl, sometimes get hot chocolate or fries.

My son, now fifteen is frustrated over money. He wants spending money, but I’m not happy with how he’s squandering, so I don’t want to provide it. He wants to be paid for chores, like mowing the lawn, and usually I do ante up, but I resent it. No one pays me for my housework, or the time I put into making this family cozy. But then, as the children remind me, there is work I am paid for. I have sources of income, and they don’t.

Last summer, when my son was still fourteen, he did look for a job. Arby’s, Hollywood Video, McDonald’s, Subway — but while the labor laws do allow fourteen year olds to work, they also require them to be sixteen to work certain machinery, so none of these places will hire the fourteen year old. My son was not motivated enough to mow lawns, or rake leaves, or walk dogs. He’s big, physically, and could certainly do a great deal more than just those things, but instead, he stays in his basement bedroom hooking up on MySpace and playing his drums. He’s going to be a rock star, he says.

My friend K. suggested to her daughter that she make a call about babysitting over the winter break. The girl replied, “what do you want me to do — homework, or earn money?”

The kids have gotten used to our making a tremendous amount of space for them to be kids, to achieve in school, to get ready for college, which is where they’ll get prepared to make money themselves. We’ve let them live a life which has been very comfortable, getting ready to work. But meanwhile, what they’ve gotten good at is being lazy. Now is the time, I say, to learn some good work habits.

Then I have to examine: What have I modeled in this area? Truth is, I don’t want to work more than 40 hours a week. There’s so much to do other than work, and balance means a great deal to me. When it comes to the current financial crisis, I have to admit that I’ve done little to cut back on my spending in response.

I already live somewhat frugally. I turn the heat down to 62 when we sleep and are out of the house. I buy most of my clothes and household goods at garage sales and thrift shops. (OK, it’s a sport for me too.) I use the library. I’m conscious of how much I drive. However, I haven’t given up the theater and eating out once a week. I’m going with the idea that you have to give in order to get. I’m seeding the economy.

So, it’s been confusing to my kids, I imagine. Still, I get a little frustrated when they waste food, or break a glass, or stain their clothes, and don’t seem to realize that I had to work to buy that thing. They haven’t changed in this area — it just may be that it’s affecting me a little more now. With Christmas coming, they want things, and don’t seem to care about the expense of what they’re asking.

My son demands a bike, my daughter a new Nintendo DS. They keep reminding me of how much money I have in savings, a message they’ve gotten from their father. (I sometimes ask myself, is that message intended to comfort them, or him?)

I am in fact, more or less living on these savings. I’m way underearning as a substitute teacher, temporary secretary, contract library worker. My kids have a distorted picture of economic reality because we have this cushion. When I say that we can’t do something because it’s too expensive, or that we should conserve, they tell me that I have plenty of savings and I should stop worrying. Then, a minute later, my daughter, who is 12, will say, “I’m just kidding mom. We know that you’re not making much money now and we need to be careful about what we spend.”

They know that we’re in a recession, and that there’s high unemployment. I don’t talk about it much, but once in a while I’ll say I’m really worried about finding work now and my girl will tell me not to worry, that I’ll get a job. She reminds me I’m good at what I do and people will see it.

I love her reassurance, and I feel badly about communicating any lack of confidence to her. I also was the child of a single mom, and from a very early age I took on a lot of anxiety about money. I don’t want my kids to worry. On the other hand, I do want them to be responsible, and to handle money soberly. I also want them to eat the pot of bean soup — good on the body, good on the pocket, and not turn up their noses and later go for the bowl of ice cream. I’m on the verge of deciding not to buy the junk food anymore but I want their childhood to be happy. Doesn’t every house need Oreos?

I have friends who I thought were brilliant at teaching their children financial responsibility. They gave each kid $100 a month once they hit middle or high school, and that $100 was supposed to cover everything: clothes, gas, lunches (with which they could save money by packing at home), entertainment. Whatever they wanted beyond that, they had to pay for themselves. It seemed like a great training ground. Why then has their 26 year old daughter just moved back home to avoid bankruptcy from having driven up her credit cards so high?

Is it a problem with what we’ve taught them, or is the situation in our country just out of control? Another friend’s daughter lives in a ski town which three weeks after Thanksgiving still hasn’t opened, and because there’s no work, and no income, my friend is taking money from her father to pay the child’s living expenses. She says, “we have to do what we can do. If you have it, you have to help those you love who need it.”

My friend S. moved to a new state to get married and now finds it may not last. She’s spoken to her kids about saving so that if they have to move again, they have the resources. But is she going to pull one daughter out of the marching band, which costs thousands for travel, or refuse the other one a prom dress? No. We’re mothers. I guess what we do is provide for them first, ourselves second. And these particular daughters? They don’t want to move again, but they’re not worried about how their mom will swing it if they have to.

The kids seem to trust our resourcefulness. They know they will be taken care of.

I think in some way this is the American dream, the promise. I think we all believe we will be taken care of, if necessary. We all have this idea that our survival depends on access to money, but then, somehow it doesn’t. The money goes away, and we’re still chugging.

Maybe we’ll see somehow the money is not really our source, that it’s just a currency. Maybe our survival depends on each other, sharing with each other. I think we’re going to keep on holding each other up, like during the Great Depression, when neighbors gathered together in the evening to move furniture off the sidewalk and back into the house of the family who’d been evicted. My kids are going to get their educations, they’re going to have clothes on their back, they’ll be well fed, and surprise! In the meantime, they even manage to get pretty up-to-date toys at the holidays. At least that’s the way it is now.

The best outcome might be that we all wake up to a new economic reality, and we learn about this new world together. We live as a family, and we make adjustments as a family. Maybe I’ll give my children a little allowance. But like all Americans, they will need to produce goods and service for it. Oh! I think I’m looking at the last week that I wash all the clothes and dirty dishes.

The Whiner wants to know: How do you talk to your kids about money? Are certain subjects taboo? Have you started telling them more, since the EconoMess started worsening?

Reader Comments

  1. larry

    Beejay, I feel for you. It sounds like you’re trying very hard to hold things together during tough times and I wish you the best.

    A couple of things to consider: Don’t tie your kids’ allowances, if you decide to give them one, to chores or “something in return.” This might give them the sense that unless you pay them they don’t have to do the chores. They are part of the household and chores should be an expected part of their contribution — whether it’s something as simple as mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, sorting the recycling, setting the table, washing the dishes. This is stuff that teaches them responsibility. None of these things overburden a child. The allowance, if you give one, should be wholly separate and yours to give at your discretion for them to use however they want (within the parameters you set).

    I also think that while you teach your kids to be responsible, you can’t turn them into the adults or the parents who worry about the same things you have to worry about in terms of job security or paying bills or where you’re next meal is going to come from. This is your job as the parent. And I think you might consider relying on other adults to discuss your anxieties instead of your kids. They can know you’re on a budget and that they have responsibilities around the house without having to have the anxiety of taking care of mom.

    I do wish you well with all of this.

  2. paprikapink

    Don’t let your friend’s experience with the bankrupt 26-year-old put you entirely off the idea of giving them a set amount (say, a hundred bux) and letting them take care of their own needs. That’s exactly what we’ve done with our daughter for the past year and it has worked very well for all of us. Maybe there’s more to the snippet of that story that you told — maybe? okay, clearly there’s more. There are more dots on the line between a 15-year-old with financial responsibility for his own clothes and lunch and a 26-y-o going bankrupt. For one thing, in an economy like this, I don’t think we can cavalierly attribute catastrophic credit card debt to careless spending. In this climate, one could go bankrupt just buying groceries and paying rent.

  3. Karenza

    Our daughters are 11 and 9. They ask questions about the economic news they hear on the kitchen TV in the morning. Basically we tell them that people are worried about losing their jobs and that is why they are spending less money for Christmas this year. I also told them that we do not expect to lose our jobs, but it is wise to cut back and not over spend anyway. For the first time we have an artificial door wreath and Christmas tree this year (borrowed from my mom), etc. small sacrifices given what others are going through. We have donated a lot of food to our local Foodbank. Lastly, if you have small kids like ours, I highly recommend the new film, “Kit: An American Girl”, which illustrates in a non-threatening way that kids can understand, what the Depression was about and what it is like to make sacrifices and do things you don’t like to do in order to keep food on the table and a roof over your head. Lessons applicable for kids today.

  4. morrison

    OMG! This is why we have such a problem here in America. Parents like you! Enough with the guilt already. Give me a break! My kids started working at the age of 13: babysitting, dog walking, etc. I never paid them a dime to do chores, nor was there an allowance. We worked as a team. I was a single mother with 2 kids and only $75 a week in child support. I used to sit and explain each and everything to my daughters.

    My oldest never did an after-school activity because she had to be home to watch the younger one. Until she turned 17 and had her own car (and could pick up the younger) did either of them do anything after school. I was working!

    The oldest would pop a prepared chicken (by me) in the oven at 5pm and by the time I got home at 6PM, we all had a home cooked meal. Saturday was spruce up day. We all cleaned the house together, did laundry and by noon we were either at the library on on the beach!

    Ny 16 both girls had regular jobs: first bussing tables at the local pizza joint, then as cashiers or waitresses. By 17-18 they had enough money saved to buy their own beat up cars (but very safe) AND pay for their own insurance.

    There was no coddling.

    Ice cream and oreos are loaded with junk! Read the labels. I wouldn’t serve that crap to my dogs.

    My daughters went to private high schools (because public school sucks!)and paid half the $4000+ tuition from the money they saved from their summer jobs. I taught them how to balance a check book and about compounding interest. BY the time they went to college, I paid 1/4 of their college tuition ($30,000 per year) and they took out low cost student loans to pay the difference AND they continued to work part time (computer stores, etc.)

    Now, one year after they graduated and landed fantastic careers in their chosen profession, they earned enough in their 1st year bonus to pay off almost 50% of their student loans! hey never call me for money, they never borrow money from me, they are never late with their expenses and I make sure they only use 1 credit card each. The youngest pays her $3000 monthly rent with a breeze. The oldest owns her own co-op and her monthly mortgage (taxes, insurance, co op fees) are no more than $1700 a month.

    How do you think they got this way?

    Coddling? or being truthful with them?

    I only read 1/4 of this woman’s entry before I got disgusted.

    Give me a break.

    You and your kids better grow up fast!

    PS: for years I had to endure my ex showering them with so many Christmas presents I used to cry myself to sleep. Today, he is filing bankruptcy, his million dollar+ home is in foreclosure and he told the girls he can’t buy them a single thing for the holidays this year. Oh! and all those diamonds he bought his new wife?……….they’re selling them to live on. I love it!

    Grow up!!!!!!

  5. amy

    Well, this is one reason why noncustodial parents need to pay custodial parents for doing their share of the childcare, and why we need to send noncustodial parents who “can’t pay much child support” to work farms policed by ex-Marines, with wages sent to the custodial parent. I imagine that would give many of them incentive to figure out how to support their children while retaining their freedom.

    Beej, your kid is old enough for a job. Tell him to go get one if he wants pocket money, but be clear on the # of hours per week he’s allowed to work. I’d encourage him to skip the fast food joint (grownups will need those jobs anyway) and go door-to-door, also to find a local Junior Achievement chapter so that he can start learning about running a business instead of defaulting to being a wage slave.

    As for the original question: We live in a rich area and belong to a synagogue, which means almost all my daughter’s friends’ families are Doing Nicely Thank You, with average household incomes running about 10x ours. Huge houses, trips to other continents, etc. Plenty of tenure action there, lot of doctors, too. I’m very frank with my friends about what kind of money there isn’t here, so they know that if they want my daughter to come along to various sports and amusement things they’ll have to pay for most or all of the cost themselves. They’ve been fine with that so far, and actually a few have told me they’re happy to do it because their kids behave better when she’s around. (Most of them have 3-4 kids, and naturally on their own they fight with each other.)

    I’ve told my daughter that I may have less work, and may have to say no more to things we don’t really have to have to have to buy. However, this is a kid who at age two gave me a crayon, saying, “You have blue — no, too pensive. You have green crayon.” So this is nothing new. I did tell her that she may see other kids getting to do more stuff, but that she happened to know a lot of rich kids, it’s not usual, etc, and she cut me off, telling me she didn’t care about any of that, she just cared about being with me and her father.

    So good. Otherwise, for a 5-year-old, not much changes. There’s more than enough to do. Tonight we’re lighting the menorah, opening a present (I think she gets the craft feathers tonight — $3 for a zillion dyed feathers I’ll be cleaning up all year), and then having popcorn by the fire while we sew those sachets for her grandma. After that is bedtime and story — we’re in the middle of one of the Moomintroll books, though we started reading _A Little Princess_ yesterday. _The Long Winter_ was just too darn long.

    Allowance — yes, she gets an allowance, $1/wk. I want her to understand what money is, what it can buy, what it can’t, how to save it, how to spend it. As she gets older, she’ll also learn how to invest it, and eventually we’ll have the Bank of Mom credit line, so she can learn safely just how fast you can dig yourself a big deep hole. That $1 isn’t ironclad, though — she can lose money for bad behavior and for not doing her chores. She also knows she has some college savings, though she doesn’t know how much. As she gets older we’ll start to talk about it.

    As for Depression stuff — I tell family stories, esp. about my father’s parents, poor kids who made good. There’s also the Little House books, and others from the first half of the century — the Moffats, the Ginny books, the Noel Streatfield books, the All of a Kind books, etc. There’s no houses stuffed full of stuff in those books, and a nickel is a big deal, just as it still is for my daughter.

  6. Suzie

    Hey Beejay, I hear you. I get where you’re coming from. I have a houseful myself and I regular put myself through hell trying to decide what — and what not — to talk about.

    By the way, I’ve read your other articles and I love your writing. Thank you for sharing the experiences you’ve been going through. How brave! And how helpful to the rest of us.

  7. Mark

    Actually, I must agree. My wife and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the appropriate level of discussion is. We talk about current events with our children, but that can seem somewhat removed from reality. And, like many families, we’re certainly making adjustments in various ways. Yet, like you, Beejay, we don’t want to make our children too frightened (or full of guilt). It’s very difficult to find the right path through this.

  8. Pat

    Beejay, thanks for this. I feel like I just had a good talk with a pal in the same boat I’m in. I understand completely your worries and concerns, and they are more than valid. You have a lot to sort through in your life these days, and it is when big changes like this happen that we ask the questions that we would never ask otherwise. The poet Rilke said to “live the questions” and that is what you’re doing. You will, I have no doubt, live your way into the answers. Here’s to you. STay strong. You are doing great. Keep questioning.

  9. zora

    Beejay, Pat, thanks to both of you. I like this post a lot. And, Pat, I love that quote. Live the questions. I feel like I’m doing that every day.

    Econowhiner, thanks for covering subjects like this that seem off-the-beaten path but are really important to the way we live. Appreciate it.

  10. Jane

    I have six grown up children now, but when they were small, here were a number of years that, for different reasons we were VERY short of money and security. My description of the situation for them always involved such comments as “most children in the world share a bedroom” and “at least we have enough food” and we are lucky to be so healthy and to live in a non-third-world country… etc etc etc….
    The best thing that I found though was to encourage them to contribute by growing potatoes or silver beet (swiss chard) and to contribute this to the household. There is an added benefit that seems to remove the feeling of powerlessness and lack of control that I believe leads to sadness or depression…
    Both are easy to grow, produce a significant crop (fairly reliably) and actually save money for the household. The fact that the contribution is tangible is good for kids (and I believe that this is a useful skill to have in the long term…. growing vegetables)
    By now, I have a daughter who lives in CA and grows vegetables for much the same reasons, sons who know how to supplement the family budget with “free’ food, and get exercise in the yard rather than paying to go to the gym.
    I have lived in a number of climates… Canada, western US and desert Australia, but with a little thought this works anywhere. I have grown tomatoes and lettuce inside in Canada, and baby corn (because it couldn’t get any bigger in 6 weeks frost free), potatoes in front yard for the last 40 years and all over the world.. (potato plants are quite beautiful) and watered green leafy veges in pots (styrofoam boxes from the supermarket) in living rooms in winter, verandahs in summer and watered them with dishwashing water daily.
    Some of these decisions have been due to financial and climate constraints, but much has been determined by a need for some control over my own life and I think that this is some of what my children learned as well.
    Young people need to have some control over their lives also, in order to avoid the stress related to the environments that they live in. I have been ridiculed in the past for my encouragement to grow potatoes… but reading this post from a mother of teenagers… I would once again encourage the growing of potatoes and “leafy green stuff” … good for the health, physical and mental and at least it is a contribution that young people (not yet employable) are able to make… it is real and a life lesson in the long run.