Quote:
Originally Posted by jewels
Not all, but many of the Baby Boomer's offspring have been raised this way. The parents wanting to be their kids' best friend. The parents allowing their kids to ask for and require everything they see. Allowing their kids to feed off of their parents when they're well into adulthood. These kids grow into adults who haven't been taught a thing about personal responsibility.
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I must say, I think it really did help to have an immigrant as a parent (especially a Thai mother--talk about looking for bargains EVERYWHERE, she was the queen of bartering), as well an American stepdad who has always been incredibly self-reliant, do-everything-himself (including building our entire house), buy-everything-used type of guy. I spent so many Saturdays cruising garage sales with my dad, I just thought it was a blast!... didn't know that people generally bought "new" things until I was well into teenhood. Granted, I'm an only child, so I probably got more stuff than I would have with a brother or sister to share things with. But most things I got were used, or if new, only VERY special items for VERY special occasions.
I think it's important to teach a sense of "specialness" for material items when kids are young, so they don't start to believe that they can get anything, anytime (even if the parents can afford it, which mine did--but they never let that on, nor did they spend vast amounts of money on themselves, either). The rule is to save as much as possible, and spend on special occasions, not the other way around. The biggest "splurge" expenses in our family were for travel experiences, not buying things--and that has remained one of my strongest values, incidentally. But by god, hell no I would not be traveling ANYWHERE if I were in debt... that debt has got to be the priority, if one is in it.