Is Your Family Budget Taboo?

                     By: Jackie De Haan, Guardian Finance and Advocacy Services

 They want, you give.   

 That is how many parents perceive their financial relationship with their children.  On the other hand, kids typically have little understanding of the family budget because parents avoid discussing it.   

 Apparently, sex and drugs are easier to talk about than family finances.  Why are details of the family budget taboo? 

 Maybe parents don’t want their kids to worry, think less of them or they simply think it is none of their business.  

 Quick fact: teens are more likely to have a cell phone than a savings account.

 No one speaks more plainly about money than Michelle Singletary.  She is the author of several books and is an award-winning columnist for the Washington Post.   In her book “The Power to Prosper – 21 Days to Financial Freedom” she spends a chapter teaching parents to teach their kids.  “Your children will have a better chance to live within their means as adults if you spend time showing them how to handle money when they’re young.”  

 Before They Leave Home 

 Singletary says that before children leave home every budding adult should know:

• How to live below their meansHow to budgetHow to save
• How to avoid debt

 She doesn’t let grandparents off the hook, either.  “I had a grandmother tell me once, ‘it’s my job to spoil my grandson.’”  She notes that the definition of “spoil” is to damage seriously or impair the character of someone by overindulgence.   

 At Guardian we teach classes on financial skills to adults, titled “Invest in You.”  We know that a lack of knowledge (plus poor habits) can be dangerous. Many of the fine people we teach are stuck in a cycle of high interest payments and need someone to show them how to budget and reduce their expenses. 

 Too bad they didn’t learn this from their parents and grandparents.     

 And, just look at the havoc money problems create for adults.  Financial woes increase the likelihood of divorce.  A bad credit rating can impact an adult’s employability, interest rates and insurance costs. Of course, financial messes also are a cause of personal depression. 

 Singletary may be right: “spoiling kids” can mean actually spoiling them.

 “Safeguarding At-Risk Adults,” Guardian Finance and Advocacy Services is a nonprofit organization with forty-three years of trusted service to the people of Kalamazoo and Calhoun Counties.  Their services range from helping people balance their checkbook to serving in court appointed roles. Jackie can be reached atJdehaan@yourguardian.org More information is available at www.yourguardian.org or tel. (866) 344-0688 ext. 434.  Guardian is a United Way organization.