The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Melissa Batai. Melissa is a freelance writer who covers topics ranging from personal finance to business to organics to food. She blogs at Mom’s Plans where she shares her family’s journey to healthier living and paying down debt.
My son competed in both the preliminary and then the regional qualifying National History Bee competitions. The preliminary exam was taken for free at home, so no cost to us. The regional Bee was only 1.5 hours from our house, so, besides gas, it cost us next to nothing.
He did well in both exams and has now qualified for the National History Bee in June which is almost 2,000 miles from our house. While he was very excited and we were excited for him, we cautioned him that we might not be able to afford the trip. After all, between the fee to compete, the airfare for two, the hotel for four nights, taxis, and meals, the trip would easily cost us $1,500. That is simply not money we can come up with quickly and easily.
Years ago, when I was in high school studying Spanish, I would have loved to have joined the Spanish Club on their trip to Spain. For years I had wanted to travel to Spain, but I knew that was not a trip our family could afford. I didn’t even ask because I knew it was definitely not in the budget.
So, you can imagine my surprise when my mom heard about my son’s performance in the History Bee and immediately told everyone we knew that he’d be competing even though we hadn’t said yes yet.
Kids Today Get Much More Than We Did As Kids
This is not the first time that my mom has surprised me this way. When I was young, my grandparents always sent me a card for my birthday and one for Christmas. My birthday card always contained a crisp $2 bill, and my Christmas card had a $1 bill. I saved all of those bills because they came from my grandparents, and honestly, even back then there wasn’t a lot I could buy with them. Even now, years after both of my grandparents passed away, I still have those bills.
So, when I had my own kids, I expected my mom to behave as my grandparents did, but she didn’t. Instead, my kids get $20 for birthdays from her and many presents from her for Christmas. In fact, she was going so overboard at Christmas that we had to have a heart-to-heart and ask her not to give them so much.
We Spend on Our Kids at Our Own Financial Detriment
But it’s not just my mom. Kids today get a lot today, and not just from grandparents. I, too, have been guilty of giving my kids too much.
When my son was three, he started attending an immersion Montessori language academy. It was expensive, but it was only a tad more expensive than day care in our area would have been. I was working full-time and my husband was a full-time graduate student, so child care was essential.
But when my son was five, I took maternity leave for a year to care for our newborn child. Without my income, we couldn’t afford to leave him in that pricey school, but we didn’t want to uproot him. We went in debt for a kindergartner. Even now, seven years later, I shake my head at our stupidity.
But we’re not the only parents making these irrational decisions. Neal Gabler recently wrote a controversial article for The Atlantic in which he confessed dumb money decisions over the years that have forced him and his wife into a financial hole as they near retirement. He states that he and his wife “manage to scrape by, though child care and then private schools crimped our finances. No, we didn’t have to send our girls to private schools. We could have sent them to public school in our neighborhood, except that it wasn’t very good, and we resolved to sacrifice our own comforts to give our daughters theirs. Some economists attribute the need for credit and the drive to spend with ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ syndrome’, which is so prevalent in America. I never wanted to keep up with the Joneses. But, like many Americans, I wanted my children to keep up with the Joneses’ children because I knew how easily my girls could be marginalized in a society where nearly all the rewards go to a small, well-educated elite.”
Like Gabler, we lived in an area with a poor public education system. After the Montessori school, we sent our son to a parochial school. We did get financial aid, but to be honest, we couldn’t afford any amount. When we got ready to put our two daughters in the same school, we realized just how insane our tuition bill would be, even after financial aid. Before our daughters could even go, we pulled our son out of school and started homeschooling, which has been a great financial and family decision.
Since then, we’ve been cautious with the way that we spend money, especially on our kids.
Society’s Expectations Have Changed
But here’s the thing—society’s expectations have changed. When I was in school and couldn’t travel to Spain with the Spanish Club, it wasn’t that big of a deal because many kids’ families couldn’t afford the trip. The ones who got to go were usually the kids from rich families.
But now, whether you’re a family with money or not, you’re expected to fork over the cash for every opportunity your child might have. I can’t tell you the amount of pressure we’ve been under to send our son to the National History Bee. In the end, we did decide to send him, but we’re doing extensive fund raising so we don’t have to go in debt for the event.
People just expect that you’ll spend money on your kids for every opportunity that they get, and if you don’t, the implication is that you don’t care and aren’t willing to sacrifice at best, or that you’re a bad parent at worst.
These Assumptions Are Killing Our Finances
Unless you’re making a very healthy income, giving our kids all of these experiences is not realistic. But the better question is, should we still try?
A friend, Kathy, recently sent her second college-aged child on a study abroad to Italy. While there, Kathy’s daughter had the chance to travel on weekends to many other countries and see much of Europe. Kathy’s daughter did get some scholarship money, but Kathy and her husband are footing most of the bill.
Kathy has wanted to go to Europe for years, but she hasn’t been able to because she’s been paying for her children to go. She doesn’t expect to be able to go for some time because while she’s helping her children go to college and study abroad, Kathy and her husband have been neglecting their retirement account. They’ll have some serious catching up to do when their daughter graduates next year.
Kathy’s situation is not unique, just like Neil Gabler’s isn’t. Over and over, in family after family, children are reaping all of the rewards while their parents struggle financially. As Rhonda Stephens of The Huffington Post writes, “At some point in the last 25 years, the tide shifted and the parents started getting the marginal cars and cheap clothes while the kids live like rock stars.”
How about you all? Have you noticed this trend? Should this be happening, or are we causing harm to both ourselves and our kids who are getting so many perks without really working for them?
