Hard Work and Saving is the Key to Success

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

My dad, Jim Cannon, was raised in Livingston County during the Great Depression. His dad was a plumber, and they lived a very modest lifestyle. Like everyone, my dad was a product of his upbringing, and he was greatly influenced by the tough economic times in which he grew up. You didn’t waste, period, which meant turning off the lights when you left the room, wearing clothes twice (and more of them in the winter if you got cold), and not buying something unless you had the cash to do so. While some of the stories he told about his childhood may have been exaggerated (like using pages from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue as toilet paper), the bottom line was true- you worked very hard for your money, and lived within your means.
Not so today. Aside from the crushing financial problems we are creating for our children’s generation by reckless spending at all levels of government, an equally startling trend is what we are teaching future generations……………”Just buy/spend now, and worry about paying for it later, if ever………… Live the high life today, and don’t trouble yourself with reckoning tomorrow……….I am entitled to riches and the good life, whether or not I have earned it.”
If my dad were around now, I know he would be shaking his head and cursing under his breath (well, maybe not under his breath).
What should we be teaching our children? How about the following:
• Want money? Work. Want more? Work harder. More? Get a second job.
• No one is going to knock on your front door and offer you a job. If you want to find a job, get your butt off the sofa and go pound the pavement and look for one.
• Working for minimum wage is not beneath your dignity. Until you prove otherwise, that is what you are worth, on a good day. An entry level job, like “flipping burgers”, is what your grandparents called opportunity.
• Want to buy something? Wait until you have all of the cash to pay for it. After all your bills are paid.
• Financial success in life is all about being on the correct side of the interest equation. Save your money and earn interest, rather than borrowing money and paying it.
• The world owes you nothing, and the sooner you realize it, the better off you will be. Get over it.
And remember, in tough times the Sears catalogue is only an arm’s length away.
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