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.