#188： Raising Children Who Are the Opposite of Spoiled
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Summary
Ron Lieber is the author of the book, The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money. In this episode, Ron talks about why it s so difficult for parents to talk about money with their kids.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So as a parent
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myself, one of my goals is to raise a child that's not a spoiled brat, that's grounded when
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it comes to money, that's generous with it and is savvy and sees it as a tool and makes the most
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of it while not letting money control them. It's an issue that a lot of parents struggle with on
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how to teach their children about personal finance. But my guest today on the podcast has written a
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book with research-backed tips on how to teach your children about personal finance. His name
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is Ron Lieber. He is the money columnist at the New York Times, and he's the author of the book,
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The Opposite of Spoiled, Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money.
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And today on the podcast, Ron and I get high-level first kind of talking about the philosophy
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we as parents should use when teaching our children about money. But then we get
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really brass tacks and get into specific questions that a lot of parents have about money, such as,
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you know, should you pay your child allowance? And if you do, when do you start and how much
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should it be? How do you teach your kids about being generous with their money? How do you teach
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budgeting, setting limits on spending? So a lot of great practical information. When you're done
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with the podcast, make sure to check out the show notes at aom.s slash Lieber. That's spelled L-I-E-B-E-R.
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You can find show highlights as well as resources we mentioned in the podcast as well.
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So without further ado, Ron Lieber and The Opposite of Spoiled.
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It is great to be here. Thank you for having me.
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So you're the money columnist of the New York Times. And during your writing, I'm sure you've
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gotten a lot of questions from readers about different money topics. And I'm sure the people
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you've interviewed through the years have raised the same issues about money and kids. And it seems
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like teaching your kids about money is a, or can be a really touchy, sensitive topic for a lot of
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folks. Why are parents so uncomfortable talking about money with their children?
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I think some of this is bred into us, right? If we grew up, people who are parents now grew up,
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you know, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, whatever it is, quite often when we tried to ask questions about
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money, we were met with some version of the following response, right? That young man is
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none of your business. And so we got used to the idea that there was something wrong with being
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curious about this. Maybe it was because we were presumed not to know enough to be able to handle
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the answers to the questions. Or maybe we were supposed to think that it was rude to ask about money or to
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talk about money or to even think about money. Maybe it was assumed that, you know, if we asked and if
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we got the answers, that we would blab and that would embarrass our families or embarrass our parents.
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And so for, you know, all of those reasons and more, so many of us have talked ourselves into or
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been talked into assuming that this was a topic of conversation that was utterly off limits.
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Yeah. And what's interesting is we think we're protecting our children when we don't talk about
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money. But in the end, the irony is by trying to protect them, we actually fragilize them in a way
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I think that's exactly right. I've actually heard it said to me and put it to me directly in those
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terms. One of the very first times I was ever out in public talking about this topic, a dad raised
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his hand and said to me, you know, I just want to protect my kids from all of this money stuff just
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a little bit longer. Why is that not a good idea? And, you know, my response to him was, you have to
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think about, you know, what the end game is here, right? We're all in the adult making business here.
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And money is a big part of how the adult world works when we don't have all that long to make an
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impact or an imprint on our kids' brains. And if you want to put this off until they're teenagers,
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the problem is that you then will only have a couple of years left to sort of get their head
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screwed on straight until they are faced with a six-figure minimum decision about college, right?
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Well, nobody was really paying much attention. All of a sudden, these college decisions became
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enormous financially. And, you know, part, one of the many things we're getting them ready for is to
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make a mature and appropriate decision along with us about, you know, what they're going to spend and
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how they're going to pay for it to go to college. So, you know, if you haven't started that conversation,
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if you haven't started giving them practice with money until they're 13 or 15 or 17, you're not
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going to be able to teach them enough in time so that they'll be ready to contemplate those super
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big numbers when they're applying to college. What's funny, too, you talk about this in your book,
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The Opposite of Spoiled, is that while parents don't want to talk to their kids about money, they
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really, really, really don't want their kids to grow up to be spoiled little brats.
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My question is, what makes a spoiled child? Is it part of not talking about money? Is that an issue?
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And also, I'm curious, what are the traits of an opposite of spoiled child?
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Sure. You know, it took me a long time to find the answer to that question because the word spoiled
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itself was something that came to me, you know, almost instinctively, right? The original thought
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exercise I was trying to go through was that, you know, trying to figure out what all these parents
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who were confused about money had in common, you know, whether it was the people who had more than
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average or the people who had less than average, you know, what did they all want to accomplish or
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at least want to avoid? And so, you know, I asked myself what the single worst word might be that
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somebody would use to describe my daughter, now my older daughter, that would be the worst indictment of
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me as a parent, right? The thing that somebody might use to describe my kid that would make me
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feel like a failure. And right away, the first thing that popped in my head was the word spoiled,
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you know, it made the hairs rise up on my arm, it gave me goosebumps, not in a good way.
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And as I tried to figure out why that was so instinctive, you know, I asked other people the
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same question. And, you know, more than half of them said the word spoiled, you know, some of them did
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say racist, some of them did say mean, but spoiled was the one I heard most often. And I think the
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reason why that's the case is that, you know, spoiled kids are not born, they are made spoiled
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as a verb, not just an adjective, right? Spoiled by whom? Well, probably spoiled by us. And so it
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literally is an indictment of our parenting when somebody uses that word. So I knew that that was
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we were all trying to solve for. So, you know, I had to figure out what the opposite of spoiled
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actually was. And you have to start by defining your terms, right? So, you know, I looked at a lot
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of what the, you know, academic researchers had found in this area. And, you know, they had attempted
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to come up with clinical definitions of spoiled. And, you know, the thing that was surprising to me
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about is that money is really only a small part of it. Spoiled kids, you know, I think of four
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a definition is only one of which has anything to do with money. Spoiled kids have no rules,
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no standards that they have to abide by. So that's sort of number one. Number two,
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is that if there are any rules, there are no consequences for breaking them. So, you know,
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the rules might as well not exist in the first place because the kids feel emboldened to blow them
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off at will. Number three is that spoiled children are never allowed to fail. Their
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parent or parents are constantly kind of out in front of them, smoothing the path to make sure that
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they're not challenged or pushed too hard or they're coming up behind them to clean up their
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messes. They are literally never allowed to fail. And if they fall over, their parents are there
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to pick them up and dust them off and intervene with their teachers and their coaches and, you know,
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treat them like fragile little teacups. And it's only with the fourth part of the definition of
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spoiled that you start to get into money. I mean, spoiled children believe that they have it all
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coming and they are, you know, lavished with goods or with privileges way above and beyond what most
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other kids get. And they are not grateful for them at all. They feel entitled. Turns out that
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while it's easier to spoil a child, if you happen to be affluent in a family of means,
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it's certainly not limited. I ran into all sorts of stories of families who were not doing very well
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at all financially, but the kids were nevertheless spoiled because their parents felt so badly about
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the situation that they were in, that they lavished all of their limited resources on the kids because
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they did not want them to suffer. This happened to with, you know, extended family, especially with
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extended family who were, you know, trying to do things for the kids as much as they possibly could.
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And the kids began to feel like they had it all coming. So those are the four ways in which I would
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define the term. So, you know, you have to start there before you begin figuring out what the
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opposite of spoiled adds up to. I guess even with those first three traits, they'll influence the
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personal finances in a way later on down the road, right? It is. But, you know, for kids who have no
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rules and have no boundaries, and if there are no consequences for breaking the rules, and if the
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kids are, you know, not allowed to run their own lives, you know, if those are the sort of standards
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you're setting or the baseline you're establishing, that means that, you know, there are no limits on
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what they can have or what they can spend, or if there are rules and they break them or they spend
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too much or they don't save up anything, that they're constantly bailed out. Or their parents feel
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like, well, this money stuff is all very complicated and stressful, and I'm going to shield my child from
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all of that as much as I can because what's most important is that they're happy and well-adjusted
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and, you know, doing well in school and spending time thinking about that and certainly not working
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for money, and so I'm just going to, you know, keep all of that away from them for as long as possible.
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Okay, that's what we don't want. What are the things we want to try to develop in our children
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so that they're the opposite of spoiled? Well, the challenge here, and it was one that I faced
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directly was that, you know, there isn't a great antidem for spoiled in the English language. If you look
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in the thesaurus, the first thing you find is the word fresh. But, you know, we're not talking about
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meat or produce here. You know, we're talking about children. We're talking about, you know, sort of the
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secondary definition of spoiled. So I found myself scribbling, you know, for months the list of the
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values and virtues and character traits that add up to the kinds of grounded, decent kids that we all
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want to push out into the world someday. Things like modesty and thrift and prudence, patience and
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perseverance and grit, certainly generosity and graciousness, a sense of gratitude for what you
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have. Perspective on your place in the world and curiosity about how it came to be, you know,
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an understanding of your social class and who has more and who has less and how that came to pass and
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whether it's fair. And so when you look at all of those things together on the sheet of paper,
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you know, if you're use your imagination, you can immediately see how conversations about
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money and, you know, family practice and ritual around saving and spending and giving can actually
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lead directly to each and every one of those values and virtues. And so, you know, rather than
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shutting down money conversations, if we actually do the inverse and embrace them,
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those conversations can lead directly to all of these things that add up to the opposite of spoil.
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Yeah, that's really interesting take because I think most people, particularly in our Judeo-Christian
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westernized world, think of money as sort of this evil thing that it can corrupt virtue. But what
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you're making the case that money can be a tool to teach important virtues that have bigger
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lifelong impact on our well-being and happiness and groundedness. Is that correct?
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Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you tip your cap to our sort of generalized
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kind of majority religious traditions in this country, because, you know, I went looking for the
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money is the root of all evil, the sort of source of the text for that. And I couldn't find it. I'm
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not actually sure it exists. And while there's certainly all sorts of parts of, you know, any and
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every holy book that you could find that, you know, sort of talk about the dangers of materialism.
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What I found as I researched the book, and especially after I wrote it, that the message was being
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embraced by people of all faith. I mean, I've been on the Debt-Free Muslims podcast. The book has been,
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you know, embraced by all sorts of Mormons. I've gotten great write-ups on progressive Christian blogs.
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You know, I'm Jewish myself. People in the Jewish community totally got it, right? And, you know,
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all of these traditions, you know, much of the root of what they're trying to teach is, you know,
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how to be a good person, how to have good values. And because money is such an important part of
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how we move through the world, it stands to reason that there is a connection between, you know,
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how we spend and how we save and certainly how we give and what we stand for as humans. So,
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in fact, the connections are direct and they are deep. And, you know, I've spent more time than I
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expected to talking about them. All right, this is great. We've talked high level. What I love about
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your book is that you do high level, and I love that, but then you get really brass tacks. You get
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down to the nitty gritty and the questions that a lot of parents have about money and their children.
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So I guess the first question we start off with is how do you start the conversation
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with your kids about money or when do you start them? Because, yeah, money is this really abstract
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concept. You exchange pieces of paper or digital numbers out there in cyberspace and you get stuff.
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So how do you have that conversation with your children at different stages in their life?
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Well, quite often, you don't even have to worry about starting the conversation yourself,
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because kids are going to want things, and it is going to be your job to not get them for them,
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you know, the point at which, you know, you're ready to start teaching them the difference between
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things that they need and things that they merely want. And so it can be hard to have
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that kind of conversation with younger children. But you should sort of be prepared for it, you know,
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for people who are listening who are just about to have kids or contemplating them at some point in the
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future. You know, you don't often get to decide when these conversations begin. And the, you know,
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the conversation, the questions will come fast and furious starting as early as the age of two.
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I thought I had it tough at the age of three when my kid wanted to know why we didn't have a summer
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house. And it wasn't an accusation. She was just sort of curious, right? But I was speaking several
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months ago and a woman raised her hand and said, my two-year-old came to me the other day and wanted
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to know why it was that I went to work every day when a lot of the other mommies didn't go to work.
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What are you supposed to say to a two-year-old about that, right? And again, you know, you don't get to
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choose when these questions come up. And I'm not a big believer in blowing them off or even brushing
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them off. You know, you want to get to the root of why the kid is asking and help them feel good about
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kind of who they are and where they are. So it turns out the mom of that two-year-old, you know, we sort of
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drilled down on that. And I said, well, you know, why do you think she was asking? And she said, well,
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it's because, you know, when she goes on play dates, a lot of the time she's at, you know, houses where
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the moms are home. And I said, okay, well, where do you go during the day? And she said, well, I'm an
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attorney. And I said, okay, well, what kind of attorney are you? She said, I'm a prosecutor. And I said, oh, I
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said, that's easy. I said, you put the superhero cape on each day and you go and you make the city
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safe. And she said, oh, she said, so I should say that. I said, yes. I said, you're a hero. And
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that's what you go to do every day. So, you know, it might be more complicated, you know, for somebody
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who is, you know, an investment banker or a, you know, name your sort of, you know, high concept
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job, right, an accountant or, you know, something else that a child might have trouble really
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understanding. But, you know, they are trying to make sense of how the world works when they ask
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these questions. And we're not really going to get to choose when they come, but it is our job
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to answer them, to answer them truthfully and to answer them, you know, at a level that in some
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cases a two-year-old can understand. So you say in your book, oftentimes they just ask these money
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questions. They're just curious. They're not being accusatory, even though it might come off as that.
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They're just sort of curious. They're just being kids. They're wanting to know. Right. And it's
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tempting to feel defensive because quite often they're, they may be asking about something that
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they don't have that they want or something that other people get to do, or they're sort of sizing
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you up and sizing their family up and trying to sort of place the family against some other family
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that might have a bigger house or get to do more things than your family does. And, you know, you'll
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feel a little bit like you're being judged, but more often than not, what they're really trying to
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figure out is, am I okay? How are we doing here? And if we're not like everybody else because we
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have less or because we have more, is that okay? And what am I supposed to say to people about that
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if they ask me about the fact that our house is bigger or smaller? And so, you know, your job as a
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parent is to sort of think about what the best way is to explain, you know, where you are and why that
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is and to make them feel like it's okay because more often than not, it is okay. Yeah, that naturally
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leads to a great question. These issues of social class, it can be really sensitive and touchy.
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Even when kids are really young, they start to get this sense. They're like, well, some people have
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more than me and some people have less than me. And it's become, I think, really more acute,
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especially for teenagers with social media, when you can see the rich kids of Instagram showing their
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lavish lifestyles off, or you have these YouTube channels where people just show off what they buy.
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I don't get this. People just watch other people unbox things or see the stuff that they got at the
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store. So how do you help your kids navigate this sensitive, touchy topic of social class?
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How do you let them know, well, it's okay that some people have more than us, or if you happen to
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be wealthy, that sort of sensitivity about being envied and people scorning you because you have
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wealth. Any practical tips on dealing with that? Sure. So, I mean, let's start with the first
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principle, which is don't lie. The second principle is you should explain to your kids that we can't
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always know for sure how much other people have. You know, we may see physical evidence of it or know
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what they do, but we can always be sure. And the people who, you know, have a big house and a fancy
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boat and, you know, go on, you know, nice fishing and hunting trips all the time may be really far in
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debt and we just don't know it. And the people who live in a modest home without a pool and, you know,
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don't take fancy vacations or get in the car and, you know, drive and go to national parks,
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they may be millionaires and they're using that money to, you know, fund things later, you know,
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charity or college expenses or something like that. So, you know, there's a lot that we can't know
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by looking at people. And then, you know, I think the third principle is that, you know,
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we try not to judge other people's choices, but that we ought to explain our own. And so,
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you know, quite often the question that we'll really rank old kids is like, well, you know,
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why did you decide to, you know, be a teacher or a social worker or, you know, construction laborer,
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a carpenter when you could have been, you know, an oiled field services executive or a banker or
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run a startup. And, you know, then we would have nicer vacations and a bigger house.
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And, you know, it can be difficult to answer those questions if you feel some regret about,
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you know, where your life has taken you in terms of your career. I'm not sure I would be completely
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honest with that about that, you know, with six or eight or 10 year olds. But one perfectly good
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response to that question is I chose a career that would make me happiest because I knew that if I was
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happy and felt proud of the work that I was doing each day, that that would make me a good person
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and a good parent because the most important job that I have is keeping track of you. And if I'm not
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happy with what I'm doing to make money, then I'm not going to do a very good job of being nice to you
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and giving you all the things that you need emotionally. So that is not always going to be
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a satisfactory answer for a kid who feels like, you know, their nose is being rubbed and everybody
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else's affluence because you've decided to buy the cheapest house in the nicest suburb with the great
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schools because you wanted your kid to get a great education without thinking about what it'd be
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like to be the only 16 year old without a car. Right. But our job is not to make them like the
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answers as much as we would like them to like the answers and to like us. Our job is to tell them the
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truth and to explain our decisions so they can learn how to make decisions themselves.
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So again, you're using money to explain values and virtues.
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Exactly right. And for better or for worse, and I would hope for better, many of us have made
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decisions about what sort of careers to pursue, not because we wanted to maximize our income in any
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way we possibly could, but because we wanted to do good in the world or feel good about what we were
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doing or have more time as opposed to less time to spend with our families. And those are totally
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defensible choices and we need not be defensive in explaining them.
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Okay, that's great. Great advice. Let's go to the next question that you tackle in your book. It's the
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question that I think causes so much acrimony amongst in mommy blogs, parent blogs, discussions on
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Facebook. It's about allowance. Because I wrote an article using research and resources you look to
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in your book about when to start paying your kid allowance and how to pay them allowance, how much,
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and it caused a lot of intense debate. People are really, really passionate about this topic. So let's
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go there. Should you even pay your child an allowance? And if so, do you connect it to chores or not to
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chores? There's probably some other questions I have too along the way, but let's start there.
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Sure. Well, I think the most important thing to do is to step back and ask yourself,
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you know, why allowance in the first place? What is the point of the exercise?
00:25:05.440
And, you know, I would encourage people to think about it like this. Money, when you're talking about
00:25:12.560
kids, is for practice. It's like books. It's like musical instruments. It's like art supplies. These are
00:25:20.980
things that we want them to get good at. And in that way, you know, allowance allows kids to practice
00:25:30.980
being good at money. It's not compensation for work done. There will be plenty of opportunities to
00:25:37.780
send them off into the world as teenagers and let them get practice, you know, earning money.
00:25:42.840
I don't think we should treat it like a wage and set up our households to be, you know, little mini
00:25:50.240
enterprises or whatever. Money is something that we want kids to practice and get good at. Chores are
00:25:57.540
something that they should do for free because they live in the household and everybody's expected to
00:26:02.120
contribute to the household. I would certainly not reward kids for biological functions, for brushing
00:26:08.580
their teeth or keeping things clean for hygienic goals, right? If nothing else, you want to avoid
00:26:16.060
paying for chores for a practical reason, which is that the moment you start doing that, you know,
00:26:23.740
the smarter or older kids start scheming and planning for a point when they will have enough money saved
00:26:29.080
up that they'll be able to come to you and say, I've got enough money for the next three months now and
00:26:34.500
I am not going to do any more chores until I need more money. And that's a perfectly fair response
00:26:39.540
because you were the one who set up the wage system and packs yourself into that corner. So
00:26:43.680
rather than ending up in that situation, I would just assume keep the chores and the allowance
00:26:49.040
separate from one another in the first place. At what age should you start doing this? As soon as
00:26:53.400
they're cognizant of buying things or how much things cost and when's a good time to do that?
00:26:59.200
Yeah, I think pretty much the moment they start asking for things that you don't necessarily want to buy
00:27:03.960
them and that you want them to think about a little harder and not just, you know, try and
00:27:07.620
acquire impulsively. You know, as long as they're at the point where they understand that money is
00:27:13.480
not an art project. I mean, I've heard about, you know, three and four and even five-year-olds taking
00:27:18.080
paper money and ripping it up and, you know, sort of pasting it and gluing it places. So you want to
00:27:23.360
make sure that they have that, they've been able to make that mentally. Or, you know, a natural time to start
00:27:29.400
is the first time that Tooth Fairy shows up at your house. That may well end up being the first
00:27:34.880
time your kid ever has money that belongs to them. And, you know, as soon as they have some of it,
00:27:41.220
they're going to want more of it because no matter how much the Tooth Fairy brings for that first tooth,
00:27:45.440
it probably won't be enough to buy a lot of the things that the kids will want. And then they will,
00:27:51.180
you know, be looking for more money to reach their goals. And that's probably the moment that you start,
00:27:56.320
that you start, you know, handing it over to them regularly in the form of an allowance.
00:28:01.720
Yeah, we started paying my son an allowance when he was four. And it's been interesting to
00:28:06.880
see his progression because when he first got it, he had a hard time holding off buying things he
00:28:12.140
really, really wanted, like a cool Lego set or something like that. And he just wanted to buy
00:28:16.220
the stuff that just cost a dollar, like a, you know, pack of stickers or a candy bar.
00:28:20.660
And it'd be funny to see him have buyer's remorse when he got home. He's like, I don't have enough
00:28:26.720
money for my Lego set. And I was like, well, then you made a choice. You have to live with
00:28:31.660
the consequences. But now he's gotten a little more savvy about holding off and delaying gratification
00:28:40.180
Yeah, I mean, we want them to make mistakes and to feel regret. You know, this is part of the process.
00:28:45.940
And the more practice you have with mistakes and regret, I think the less likely you are
00:28:50.680
to make those kinds of mistakes in your 20s and 30s when it starts to matter more, because
00:28:56.020
you'll have this memory, memories, a whole memory bank filled with mistakes that you made. And,
00:29:02.360
you know, hopefully, as you make them, you sort of rewire your brain to think about money a little
00:29:09.420
So related to allowance a bit, it's about spending money. So I think this could be a challenge for
00:29:15.680
some parents, you know, there's some parents out there who when their kid wants something,
00:29:19.860
they can honestly say, tell them, well, we can't afford that. Right? And so the question,
00:29:24.200
the problem solved, right? Parents not in the budget, so they can't buy that thing. But there
00:29:28.900
are parents out there who they have enough money, or the kid has enough money to buy really fancy
00:29:33.900
things, luxury items, really expensive things. But at the same time, as a parent, even though you
00:29:39.040
could afford it, you still want to set limits for your children. So how do you manage that? How do you
00:29:43.980
tell your child no, not because you can't, not because you can't afford it, but because you
00:29:52.260
Sure. So, you know, these aren't always easy conversations to have, because sometimes they
00:29:57.700
can feel a little random. So you want to do whatever you can to make sure that they are not
00:30:03.420
random, right? So you start first and foremost, kind of, kind of like a top line list of banned
00:30:10.980
items, of things that are not allowed in your household. And, you know, you make those lists,
00:30:16.740
right? And maybe it's violent video games, or actual weapons. Maybe it's clothing that, you know,
00:30:23.900
bears the midriff, or skirts that are too short. Or maybe you've become so overwhelmed by the number
00:30:32.440
of Legos or dolls in your house that you simply cannot abide by a single additional one path, you know,
00:30:39.980
the threshold of your home, right? Whatever it is, make that list, make it clear to the kids and sort
00:30:45.480
of start there, right? And then, you know, when it comes to allowance, and, you know, setting the
00:30:50.920
amounts of allowance, you want to give the kids just enough money so that they can buy some of what
00:30:59.040
they want or save up for it, but not so much that they don't have to make a lot of really hard choices.
00:31:04.740
So rather than having the parents be the deciders all of the time, as soon as possible, I think you
00:31:11.960
want to get to the point where, you know, the kids are making the decisions. And, you know,
00:31:16.760
some parents as early as seven or eight or nine, they'll say to their kids, okay, you know, we've
00:31:21.320
been at this allowance thing for a couple of years now. So from this point forward, anytime you want
00:31:26.140
something, if it's not your birthday or the holidays, you're going to have to buy it yourself,
00:31:31.740
right? And then it's all on the kid, you know, to make the decision and to sort of, you know,
00:31:37.640
do self limits. Now, when it comes to things that kids need, there's obviously like a whole
00:31:43.520
continuum of, you know, what you might spend in any given category. So, you know, I encourage
00:31:48.800
parents to sit down and literally put the continuum to paper, right? So if you think about, I mean,
00:31:54.880
I think about like underwear and outerwear, right? Many parents, most actually, I think, you know,
00:32:01.220
probably no matter how much money they have, they don't see any real good reason to spend
00:32:05.760
a lot of money on kids' underwear, right? I mean, they're going to outgrow them and, you
00:32:10.620
know, they're going to get all ratty and whatever, you know, it doesn't make any sense. It's not
00:32:14.080
something that the family prioritizes. And so, you know, maybe your family is an Old Navy
00:32:19.800
or a Walmart underwear family, because why should you spend more than, you know, $2 for a pair
00:32:24.820
of briefs. But on the outerwear side, maybe your family goes fishing and hunting all of the time,
00:32:32.160
or maybe your family likes to ski, or maybe your family are a bunch of hikers, right? And if the
00:32:38.240
gear is not really, really good, everybody's going to be miserable. And so when it comes to outerwear,
00:32:43.480
you're actually going to spend a lot of money. You know, you're an Orvis family or a Patagonia
00:32:47.660
family or an REI family. You're really willing to spend on that gear. And so you set your budgets
00:32:53.580
in your spending accordingly. Now, at a certain point, you know, 9, 10, or 11, you may be ready
00:32:59.180
to turn the entire annual budget for needs over to your kid. And you'll say, okay, you know,
00:33:06.040
you're only going to get, you know, $20 for 10 pairs of underwear this year, you know, or 10 pairs
00:33:12.900
of bottoms if you're a girl. But for outerwear, we're willing to set aside, you know, $150 for,
00:33:19.900
you know, your coat for the coldest season of the year for your raincoat, right? And then you hand
00:33:25.520
that over in a lump sum and allow them to make their own decisions. You've explained what you
00:33:30.720
stand for. But, you know, if your teenage daughter, you know, wants to buy Victoria's Secret bras,
00:33:36.600
and that's not on your banned item list, she should go through it. But, you know, she's only got $20
00:33:41.100
left for her coat. She's still going to have to buy that because that's part of the stuff that was on
00:33:46.080
your need list. And, you know, at that point, she's going to be shopping at Goodwill. And,
00:33:50.740
you know, if the Victoria's Secret bras are more important to her than the coat,
00:33:54.920
she's not worried about, you know, being miserable when you go out hunting or skiing. Well,
00:34:03.980
Yeah, let them fail, let them make decisions, and let them be in charge of the limits, right? I mean,
00:34:11.380
you're setting overarching limits by letting them know, you know, what the budget is for needs and
00:34:16.800
by setting their allowance. But, you know, on a day-to-day basis, if they feel like they're the
00:34:24.100
ones making the decisions, and they're the ones with the power, you'll have fewer conversations
00:34:28.840
and upset moments about, you know, what it is that's available to them.
00:34:33.600
Another aspect that I think a kid being spoiled that a lot of parents associate with is that they're
00:34:38.480
greedy, they don't share, they're not generous. Are there things we can do as parents to nudge
00:34:43.040
our children to be generous, not just with money, but with their time as well, so that they're
00:34:46.720
just generous adults when they head out into the real world?
00:34:51.060
Sure. So, I mean, I think it starts with having a, you know, one of the jars where they store
00:34:57.000
allowance being a gift jar so that you're establishing both with like a visual cue and,
00:35:03.120
you know, sort of the weekly dumping of money into that jar, and then the occasional
00:35:07.460
handle, you know, handing out of said money to a worthy cause that, you know, this is something
00:35:12.200
you expect them to do and to think about all the time. But even so, some families find that
00:35:19.260
their kids find the whole giving conversation to be somewhat abstract. You know, maybe you live in
00:35:25.780
an area where there are not a lot of obvious visual signs of people being in need. Maybe you restrict
00:35:32.980
your kids, you know, media consumption such that, you know, they don't see a lot of sort of haunting
00:35:37.700
pictures or videos of people who are in trouble. And so it can be a little abstract. In that instance,
00:35:43.720
and really in every instance, I encourage families to talk about their own history of having been helped
00:35:51.560
themselves because, you know, almost every family has one and quite often it affects the way that they
00:35:57.320
give. So, you know, for me, my wife is from a family of Holocaust survivors. And, you know, I got
00:36:03.340
financial aid, I got scholarship money from, you know, sixth grade all the way through college. And,
00:36:07.460
you know, my mother had premenopausal breast cancer when I was eight or nine, you know, back in the day
00:36:13.620
when that killed people more often than not. But, you know, she was treated at a really great
00:36:17.620
university teaching hospital where there were a lot of research funds available and super smart
00:36:24.960
clinicians and they saved her life. And so, you know, those stories and, you know, we tell all sorts
00:36:33.020
of stories about all three of those kind of major impactful occasions in our family's history. You know,
00:36:39.380
those stories are really meaningful to kids. It helps them really have a kind of a visceral sense of,
00:36:45.320
you know, where their roots lie and where the struggles have been and who and all of the
00:36:51.180
entities and individuals who have reached out to hand to help. And those stories, they stick with
00:36:57.640
kids. It's part of how kids learn. And, you know, once they kind of adopt those stories as their own,
00:37:04.200
I think they understand almost intrinsically why it's important to help other people.
00:37:08.900
Fantastic. Well, Ron, there's a lot more we could dig into, but I'm going to let you go now.
00:37:12.560
Where can people learn more about your book and your work?
00:37:15.320
Sure. So my personal homepage is oppositeofspoiled.com. And that's, you know, where sort of the basic
00:37:24.380
outlines of all of this is. But, you know, for people who want to participate in an ongoing
00:37:28.940
conversation about these issues, as different ones and nuances come up, my Facebook page is where I'm
00:37:36.220
particularly active. It's facebook.com slash Ron Lieber author. And, you know, several times a week,
00:37:44.500
we've got new stuff up there that we're sort of chewing over in the community. It's about 8,000
00:37:49.800
people now who follow along. And, you know, I'm going to have much more to say about these topics
00:37:56.360
going forward and, you know, definite lines of reporting that I'm pursuing both at my day job and
00:38:01.840
what I think will be another book someday. So I encourage anybody who's interested to come and hit
00:38:08.860
Awesome. Well, Ron Lieber, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:38:13.680
My guest is Ron Lieber. He's the author of the book, The Opposite of Spoiled,
00:38:16.660
Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money. You can find that on amazon.com
00:38:21.440
and bookstores everywhere. Also, be sure to check out the show notes for this podcast at
00:38:25.420
aom.is slash Lieber. That's spelled L-I-E-B-E-R. You can find the highlights as well as resources
00:38:32.580
we mentioned in the podcast as well. So go there.
00:38:37.840
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:38:42.200
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:38:46.280
this podcast, I'd really appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Really help us out
00:38:50.700
by getting the word out about the show. As always, appreciate your support. And until next time,