Monday, January 10, 2011

Children need to learn money's value

This is an article I read in the Gulf News Business Section, on the date mentioned below, and felt it worth sharing. The thoughts and views are very similar to the ones that my wife and I have, just better articulated.


Young adults today are less clued-up about money than those before them

By Carol Sarler, Daily Mail

Published: 00:00 January 8, 2011

Jamie Oliver and Jools Oliver with daughters Daisy Boo, Poppy Honey and Petal (Petal being carried by Jools) near their home in London.Image Credit: Daily MailYet again Jamie Oliver opens his big mockney mouth to talk about what's good for children — only this time it's not turkey twizzlers in his sights.

He has announced plans for his own four children, saying that as soon as each reaches the age of ten, Papa will put them to work in the family business. Not in half measures, either. "I'm going to get them working three hours on a Saturday and a Sunday," he says sternly — yes, that's three hours, each day — "to get them realising that you have to put in a few hours of sweat to get a couple of quid".

Say what you will about Jamie Oliver — and there has never been a shortage of people with strong views about him — on this matter he is absolutely right.

Moreover, if other parents were to follow suit, we would all be better off. Children and young adults today are arguably less clued-up about money than any generation before them. "Cost" and "value" are meaningless to the average teenager, in £80 (Dh452) trainers that are as ugly as they're obscenely priced, and paid for, of course, by Mum and Dad. But there's no point in blaming the teenager — not even for his nagging about ‘needing' the damn shoes — when the fault clearly lies elsewhere. We are in the grip of a trend which has parents vying with each other to protect their offspring from financial realities. They'll hock their souls, if need be, to ensure that darling kiddo never goes without.

Matter of pride

The middle classes consider it a matter of pride that they ensure their children are recession-proof. Their homes aren't, of course; nor are their jobs, their bills, their health and certainly not their own dreams of small luxuries.
Heaven forbid, however, that the bubble-wrap should crack open long enough for the children to glimpse the truth of this — and heaven forgive the lengths to which some parents will go to make sure that it does not. This week, more than any other in the year, millions will be calculating the cost of their deception. A family with two children, living on one average salary, will have spent a whole week's net pay on those children's Christmas presents.

Some 40 per cent of them will have thrown credit cards at the problem, which in real numbers translates as four million people getting into debt just to pay for Christmas. What's more — and this is stomach-churning — we can expect three million still to be repaying the bill for this Christmas when the next one comes along.

What matters

But never mind. Even if one in five families will have trouble meeting this month's rent or mortgage as a result, at least Jonny got his new bike. That's what matters. If it were only a seasonal madness, it would be bad enough. But with belts tightening everywhere else, the competitive display of indulgence to children is escalating. People on moderate incomes will have their children's parties privately catered, the entertainment hired and the going-home bags stuffed with expensive goodies.

End-of-term gifts for favoured teachers — theoretically ‘from' a schoolchild, but naturally paid for by the Bank of Mum and Dad — now include jewellery, cashmere and days in spas.

Holidays, toys and technology are a source of infinite parental pride — "only the best for my girl!" — and it doesn't even stop when the growing does; I recently heard a man boast about his 19-year-old son's ‘gap year'. Not a gap year as you or I might know it, mind. He had paid for his little prince to flit from country to country, flying first class on planes and sleeping in five-star hotels, on the proud basis that "no son of mine" would sleep in a hostel. He honestly believed that this proved him to be a better parent than his son's friends'. But what was even worse than spoiling the brat senseless was his reaction to my remark that his son would be better off working the trip; a spot of bar- tending here, putting up a few deckchairs there. He simply wouldn't hear of it. Nothing to do with his son's dignity, either; the message was clear — menial work done by his children would demean him, their father.

Empty pockets

And that, I think, doubles the problem. While parents continue to dip their hands into empty pockets so as not to deprive their children, they actually deprive them of learning the one thing they need to know about money: where it comes from.

You don't know what money is until you've earned some; until you have, as Jamie Oliver bluntly puts it, "put in a few hours of sweat". This is the first generation of parents which seems not to understand that. My grandmother slaved away, my mother earned all she spent, I had pocket money — but if I wanted more, I worked Saturdays, just as my daughter did, in an especially squalid supermarket. Nobody quibbled about doing it; nor did it signify rich or poor. I have a friend made rich as Croesus by life as a rock star, but whose son was still made to earn his allowance, usually by offering to clean the family cars. (Though, I grant you, that ‘cars' plural did make it very lucrative.) It was a rite of passage worth more than just its pay packet. Young people who swap time and energy for hard cash learn the difference between flush and skint which, in turn, means their parents can stop the pretence at home.

My own daughter knew the score exactly: I threw every last penny at her school fees, which meant that when much of her class spent Easter at the Pyramids, and she wanted to join them, a simple ‘no' was understood and accepted.

Same upbringing

Her partner, schooled in the Eighties, had the same kind of upbringing. His school's skiing trip was so evidently unaffordable, he says, that he didn't bother to ask: "In fact, I didn't even take the letter home." A 14-year-old, who has schlepped on a paper-round knows precisely what it takes to put a tenner in your pocket ... and, by extension, how many tenners must come out of that pocket for an iPhone.

And yet modern parents, far from encouraging their children to discover these real values for themselves — as Jamie Oliver plans to do — seem actively to strive against such enterprise. You hear them making up excuses on their children's behalf. Paper-round? Too dangerous. (It's not.) Shop work? There isn't any. (There is.) Sweeping up at the hair salon? Pays peanuts. (So?) Besides, Saturday is when they go to the football, shop for clothes or go clubbing ...

And behind it all, that same, smug message: look at me, the perfect parent, paying for all their extra-curricular fun as well! My children, they want for nothing, I see to that.

Except, of course, they do. They want for learning, by example, that which will stand them in financial stead when their concerns are rather graver than a designer label in their kiddie Christmas stocking.

Jamie Oliver, as we know, could afford to buy his children all the labels under the sun. But by introducing them to the world of hard graft, he's giving them a gift more valuable still. He's making sure that they'll be able to buy their own.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Here to Stay?

On the 1st of April 2010 I completed twenty one years in Dubai. That seems like an infinitely long time, and I came as did most, with the intent of staying for a period of two years. And here I am at the end of ten times that, with no intention of moving out. I have spent the majority of my adult life here with every desire to continue on. I still remember so tangibly, my first days here as being miserable, as I missed my family and friends back home, and it took me almost two years to get warmed up to this place. But after that, there really has been no looking back for me.

There have been lots of comparisons done between the Dubai of old and now, and there are many emails circulating on the internet about the amazing transformation of this place. But as an individual who has lived through that transformation I do not need photographs to remind me of what this place was like. People like me, who have seen these changes in front of our eyes took for granted the fact that buildings cropped up in months and new roads laid almost overnight. What would be deemed impossible in any other place, was a matter of normality in Dubai. This city was a classic example of the result of the amalgamation of resources, both financial and physical, with an indomitable will to achieve things.

However in 2008 the tide turned, and since then Dubai has received a lot of vilification and adverse publicity. It seems to me that the same people who in the past were completed enamored by this place turned around and become its most rabid critics. In the last year or so I have seen so many such “derogatory” articles that I have lost count. Each of them have been written to elucidate to the world how terrible a place it is and how artificial and greedy its people. Some of these articles have been written by ex-residents from a residents perspective, but most by people who had never stayed here. In these articles I have sensed pleasure in the tone of these pieces as they tore through the many faults that they perceived. There was a sense of come-uppance as if to say that Dubai deserved to be pushed down, as a price to be paid for the temerity of having such huge ambitions. How could such a small place dare to have such huge dreams?

It is a fact that a lot of people lost a lot of money in Dubai, when the bets they placed went the other way. But that was not specific to Dubai, as people lost their savings and their property values in the US as well as Europe. Asian markets collapsed too, but bounced back quicker. But I did not come across the sort of scathing articles that seemed to be reserved for Dubai. There have also been lots of negative press in International publications, grossly exaggerated and of course to a Dubaite like myself completely uncalled for. However I take it the way one tolerates a precocious child, with a bit of irritation and some amount of condescension. I have never understood this human desire to take personal credit for all good decisions and blame someone else for the bad ones. I mean, do they really believe what they have written, or are they just venting their frustration?

As I recall the blessings that this city has showered on me I am completely humbled. I earned my first salary here, met my wife here, both my children were born here. Even my fitness regimen started only when I moved here, (as there was no question of affording a club back home). Almost everything that surrounds me has been made possible by this place. I sometime contemplate my own alternate histories, and think of what my life would have been had I never come to Dubai. Even if I had been successful back home and had all the trappings of wealth and success, how much would I have enjoyed the same? Lots of my friends have good cars or a good bike in Bombay, but where are the roads to enjoy the same? How long can you enjoy the trappings of a good home, if the minute you step out you are in the middle of filth? What is the use of having good clothes and perfumes when basic necessities like water are not guaranteed? What is the point of exercising regularly when the very air you breathe is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day?

If I had chosen to emigrate somewhere else, a completely different set of questions hits me. What would I become if I now have a different passport? Would I be any less Indian? What sort of identity would I provide my children? What would be the point of having a big house, if I hardly spent any time in it, and the time I did spend was to clean and mend? What would be the point of being a successful executive in the day, and a cleaner / cook / gardener / launderer at night? What would be the point of moving for the sake of my children, (if that is the excuse I wanted to use) when there is no guarantee that they will not in turn move away for better prospects and leave my wife and I alone in a foreign land? (Can you imagine the irony if our children were to return to our Motherland to rediscover their roots, while we are ekeing out a lonely existence in a foreign land?). What would be the point of paying taxes to a country, if I had no intent to retire there and benefit from their welfare system?

So you cannot blame me for abiding such strong emotions for a place that has provided me with what I have sought in my life. And as this city has grown, I too have grown with it. Even though I feel, like most other residents, that the city has grown away from its roots and the pace has been too much for any man to follow, it has been my own lack of effort that has kept me lagging behind.

The Rulers of Dubai never aspired to build a city at the expense of another, they never said that "a particular city was bad" and that they would do better. They just aspired to build a first of its kind metropolis, a place that would attract people from all over the world, and which would offer something for everyone. They wanted the best and they wanted it now. They were driven only by their dreams and their ambitions, and as the news of their initial success spread, so did the desire of people to flock here. The population exploded and the City tried its best to gear up for it. Civic services, infrastructure, communications, health services all felt the impact and groaned under the weight of expectations of a more and more demanding populace. The city grew in all directions, communities sprang up, new roads were built, networks were spread, and still the people came. There were traffic snarls, inflation was rampant, utility and fuel prices soared, the airport was busting at its seams and still they came. Property developers were mushrooming all over, finance houses and Banks were opening shop by the day, selling (no giving away) credit, construction companies widened their search ever further for cheap(er) labour, and still they came. The dollar was weakening by the day, making all of Europe and Asia salivate at the prospects of the "value" deals that were available, made cheap by the exchange rate, and the prospect of a killing and so they still came. It all started to unravel, when the giant (USA) sneezed. The Ponzi schemes, the unbridled greed that defined the ethos of the part-timers, the grossly overblown sense of entitlement of Bankers, eventually brought the whole world, and along with it Dubai, to its knees.

Is it the perfect place to live in? I cannot truthfully answer for everyone, and maybe not. I have not lived in a variety of places to compare and contrast. I left the shores of my own country to come here - and I have pitched my tent here ever since. I have had though, the opportunity to visit and work in many countries and cities, and have admired them for their natural beauty or their development, their culture or their sophistication, but have yet to come across one that made me so feel at home and plant roots.

But that is just me!!