Walt34:

A free public education is offered to every child in the country (The quality may vary but that's another topic.) and all of this household budgeting stuff is grade-school arithmetic.

Walt34, Not to be unkind, but I beg to differ with you on the free public education.  Between the taxes, the monthly notes for extra supplies and fees the cost is not free.   And the quality may vary statement is exactly the problem.  You would be shocked at what most schools teach as consumer math and how long it gets taught to our students.   You might also be surprised at how few parents may be able to teach these things to their kids.  If these families came from impoverished homes they may not have the knowleged to teach that information.  There are many families who know they are paying to much but think they have no other way.  After doing some work for a government run job training center.  I had to quit.  They paid these young people and the adults to come to the class to learn office work, but after less than a year I realized that in no way were they trying to get these people off of gov. assistance.  They paid child care, bus cards or gas reimbursments they were paid a daily fee, most were on food stamps, gov. paid health care, eye care, dental care, most rec. free food baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas and rec. shoe vouchers for school in Sept. and checks to help pay for school clothes in the fall.  Unfortunately in this program if the student got a job and kept it three weeks, it was considered a success.  Most of my students were 2nd and 3d generation welfare children.  I would say most of them, approx. 90 % were single parent homes.    Many homes today are run by single moms who try as hard as they can to raise their children the best they can.  All it takes in a home in todays economic times is one big bad situation   ( illness or death or car breakdown, washer going out or an icebox not working) to send parents into the offices of these sharks.  I don't know about you, but even with what we have in savings, it would not take much for our family to be in trouble.  We don't have family or friends to borrow from in fact most would be looking to borrow from us.  We have spent the last 19 years taking care of our parents, three have passed away and their is one left.  We have used all we have to care for these and there is not much left to care for us with.  We are not sure where the money for our old age will come from.  Thats why we spend time in prayer for ourselves and others.

To respond to mary w's post above, I agree about people in many walks of life not learning life skills when young, sometimes b/c they never saw them modeled by their parents (or whomever they lived with). I didn't see anything connected to managing money where I grew up, and I had educated parents (formally). There were a lot of "rent parties" when I was a kid! It's hard to acquire money management skills as an adult, b/c it seems like a hidden/closed world, if you've never experienced it before. As Mary noted above, I too have spent much of the $ I've earned as an adult taking care of my elderly parents, godparents and 2 aunts who helped raise me. I don't regret it, but don't know how/what I'll be able to do for myself when I'm aged. In our society and culture, often there aren't perfect solutions. Of course, if the economy were different...lol! Best wishes to all trying to do the right thing, for others and ourselves! ldc 

You can use Google Shopping to set up alerts on such sites as Amazon, eBay, and others, for the merchandise you are looking for, and you can specify "free shipping" on eBay.  I know that Firefox has an add-on for eBay and I believe they have one for Craigslist. Since the  WalMart ten miles away discontinued that nice cheap turkey ham, I have pretty much discontinued shopping there.

WOW!!!! what a turn out on this topic,I'm just glad we all can talk freely about things like this, thanks for bringing this up better late then never from the email thanks the e-mail topic..

mary w.:

Walt34, Not to be unkind, but I beg to differ with you on the free public education.  Between the taxes, the monthly notes for extra supplies and fees the cost is not free.   And the quality may vary statement is exactly the problem.  You would be shocked at what most schools teach as consumer math and how long it gets taught to our students.   You might also be surprised at how few parents may be able to teach these things to their kids.  If these families came from impoverished homes they may not have the knowleged to teach that information.

You raise some valid points, but I still believe it is up to the individual. Education is only part of it, the main part is individual responsibility. "Exhibit A" is a couple I've posted about here before. Every "I wanna..." for the last 20+ years has been funded by credit cards and loans to the point that they are now $700k in debt.

These are not uneducated people. He's a carpenter whose skills are highly sought and well paid, far above the average. She's a recently retired math teacher, which means she has at least a masters degree in mathematics. At one point she obtained a car title loan to go on some trip that she just "had to have". Dramatic proof to me that education does not equal intelligence or good judgment and that there are a lot of "educated idiots" running around out there!

And my parents didn't give me much information on personal financial management either. For the most part I had to figure it out by myself when I got my first apartment. But they did teach me about individual responsibility and living within my means. Growing up, I heard "We can't afford that" a lot. And I knew about the dangers of taking on too much credit card debt.

But everyone sees life through the lens of their own experiences and what works for one may work fine for another.

Its unfortunate when problems in society can become a booming business for others. Swap out the word "Poverty" with "Crime" and see how many people are employed by the state ... Police, Parole Officers, Corrections Officer, Prison staff, Counselors, Attorneys etc. We used to depend on law enforcement but now we enhance our safety by using companies who sell "Identity Theft Protection", "Home Security Systems", "Computer Firewalls" and weapons for personal protection. Throw into that companies that POSE as safety experts who exploit the fearful and take advantage of the vulnerable. ......... Now Swap out the word "Poverty" and change it to the "Medical" business. Healing the sick is a noble occupation but it has morphed into a cash cow. Doctors and others should be should be well compensated but look how much money insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are making. And the spin off Disease Societies (Cancer, Heart, Diabetes) take in money. AARP Newspaper just profiled 10 people on the cover who are wanted for Medicare fraud, and told about "Storefront Medical Offices" where people file claims with Medicare for bogus services ......... Now swap the word "Poverty" with "Education". There are wonderful institutions and instructors who put students on a better path but its lucrative if you're in the student loan business or the online degree program business or selling essays and assignment papers. Ads for "training schools" are popping up everywhere and they really want former military members so they can get a piece of the new GI education bill. There are companies who will "fill out" a FASFA form for a fee and charged to a credit card and get access to all kinds of personal information. They pose under legitimate college banners on the internet.

dolly77:

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Poverty and the other areas I mentioned all have one thing in common and that is the potential for FRAUD and EXPLOITATION. Even in legitimate circumstances, there are individuals who turn good jobs into crimes of opportunity. There are CEO's who got big bonus' but ran their insurance companies into the ground. There are legitimate organizations that started out helping people but somewhere the mission has changed. People in poverty are often the easiest victims because they are forced to deal with the unscrupulous but it doesn't end there. You don't have to be "poor" to be a victim of someone trying to make a quick buck.

As a teacher, I would like to point out that teachers are not parents.  The amount of child-rearing expected of teachers today is insane; the biggest issue that the administrators at my school deal with is the parents calling on Monday morning about what the neighbor child did to their darling baby over the weekend, asking what the school is going to do about it.  And while I would love to see a good consumer math class taught, that class, like many others, has been dropped in the drive to meet federal standards for education under NCLB - and even in those places where consumer math still exists, many students just aren't interested in being told that immediate gratification through credit cards, payday loans, and purchases bought with bounced checks is a bad thing; after all, their parents do it, and the kids get what they want - so what could possibly be wrong about it? 

And it's not just kids in poverty - I went to school with a boy who thought he was being mistreated because, while his father had a butler and his mother had a maid, he and his sister had to share a maid; it took the rest of us a long time to convince him that we'd love to trade with him, that we were the maid, butler, yard service, etc.  Frugality was not a concept he understood; when we didn't have money to do something, he looked at us with incomprehension - it was outside his experience.

In addition, while my mother used coupons when I was a kid, that was the only thing I learned about budgeting, saving, or frugality as a child.  My parents just didn't share that information with me or my sister - yes, there were times when we were told that we couldn't have "X" becase the money wasn't available, but I learned how to budget on my own in high school when I got my first job and realized that I couldn't spend more than I had without paying nasty overdraft fees, and learned even more when I got to college and my student aid paid my tuition and dorm fees first, and whatever (if anything) was left over then came to me to buy books, and, rarely, have some left over for anything else.  Then the student loans came due... and I learned even more.  Had I been introduced to the concepts in middle or high school, it's possible I would have understood and applied them sooner - but it's unlikely.  Only with experience did the concepts have any meaning... and experiences differ; my older sister neglected to pay her student loans until they were 5 months overdue, and she was bailed out, somewhat reluctantly, by a family member - and even that didn't change her habits; she was habitually behind on repaying the family member who paid off her loans for years, and didn't see it as a problem; he had the money available to help her and could therefore afford it, so she saw no need to pay him off in a timely fashion - and she was 35 when he bailed her out.

"Many of these poor have their nose stuck in that TV for eighteen hours a day and think, despite the evidence, that they know more than the newscasters and are more qualified to make the decision, based on a special factor called "instant gratification".  Usually they will acknowledge, with little questioning, that this one factor motivates most of their financial decisions.  The same factor motivates the defaults which give these lenders the rationale to charge these enormous interest rates and service fees. "

 

I have to agree with this statement.  I worked last year for a national tax preparer that shall remain nameless, and people would often pay the higher fees for cash back because 'they need the money now'  rather than wait two weeks for the direct deposit from the government.  For regular returns the base fee was about $85 and if you were on social assistance it was only $40.  But the fees had to be paid up front, which is why so many would choose the cashback option where the fees are taken out of the refund that the customer signs over to the company.  So the company is assuming the risk that the client is honest and providing us with the correct information and that the company will get their money.  If a client would balk at paying fees, I would point out that tax preparation software is about $30 and can do multiple returns, so you can split the cost with a friend.

But then you have to do it yourself, and lots of people just can't be bothered to educate themselves about the basics of how income tax is calculated or any deductions they coud be entitled to.  And you still have to wait for the money.  I also worked at a branch that was in the worst area of town and most of our clients were low income, and seemed to have an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement.  Before I get blasted for my callous attitude, I need to point out that most of our our clients were getting more money back than they paid out in income tax.  So that 'refund' they're so anxious to get is someone else's tax dollars.

Anyways, the point is this is another example of instant gratification trumping common sense.

 I surely do agree with the information writen here.  I also think that the Credit Card companies have a lot to answer for in that they have pushed cc use so strongly.

The advertising bisness also, in that they target children to beg for food that is bad for them, toys that are way too expensive, and computer and TV games that keep them inside mostly immobile,  instead of outside.  No wonder so many children are overweight!

Update on the co-worker that I posted in regards to this topic:  She came to me a little while ago upset because her request for a payroll advance was denied.  She was upset because now she can't make her housepayment and she doesn't want to have to get a payday loan...I asked her what happened?  She said she bought her 22 month old granddaughter a $340.00 Barbie Jeep last weekend.  I'm sorry but I can't feel bad for someone that spends like this.