Spending Time and Money Consistent With Your Values – Part III

In our last column, we began sharing some ideas when it comes to helping your kids connect money and values. Here are some more.

• Help your children understand the difference between using money for self worth and using money for self fulfillment. Over the years, we have worked with literally thousands of families with different amounts of money and we’ve discovered something that we think is truly important. We’ve never seen money ruin anyone, child or adult. On the other hand, we’ve seen money without values ruin lots of people. When it comes to values, money is a tool you have, not part of what you are. Parents who haven’t learned to think of money as a tool don’t see the difference between using money for self worth and using money for self fulfillment. We don’t want to teach our kids to confuse their self worth with their net worth. Money becomes a scorecard: “I am my money; therefore, the more money I have, the better I am.” Unless you happen to be Bill Gates, there will always be someone who has more money than you. You always need more. Kids who grow up confusing their self worth with their net worth don’t learn to have enough as part of their money vocabulary. We think of such people as not having an Off Switch when it comes to money. As parents they often model such negative money values as being workaholics or spending money to impress other people. Marie and Walter had been married for fifteen years and had two pre-teens when Walter got interested in golf and decided to sign up for lessons at the local golf course. For the first few lessons, Walter used clubs provided by the golf pro. But his brother-in-law who loved golf had really expensive golf clubs and within a month Walter needed better clubs. Soon he had spent thousands on custom made titanium and graphite clubs and the finest possible bag. But within ninety days, Walter decided that golf was boring! Walter was one of those folks who tended to confuse net worth with self worth. What money messages was his behavior sending his kids? He was teaching them to buy things spontaneously without thinking it through in order to impress other people and not to ask “Will I use _____ if I buy it?”
• Kids who learn to view money as a tool have a money Off Switch. They learn that money can be used to promote self fulfillment but that it can’t be used to create self worth. Enough becomes part of their money values vocabulary. Had Walter not confused using money for self worth with using money for self fulfillment, he would have waited until he decided whether or not he liked golf. Then he might have asked himself how often he thought he might play and what quality of clubs should he buy. In fact, had he shared this thought process with his children, he would have been a positive role model for his kids.
• Let your kids catch you living your values. If you don’t, you become a role model for “do as I say, not as I do” and teaching your children hypocrisy is not one of the values we recommend. If you are looking for a role model of a parent living his values, try Steven Spielberg. Spielberg strongly believes in the importance of education and wanted his kids to go to college. But in 1968 he dropped out of California State University Long Beach to become a film maker and eventually, along with David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the founders of Dreamworks. Thirty-four years after dropping out, he quietly went back to college and accumulated enough credits to graduate from the College of the Arts with a bachelor’s degree in 2002. (Like many people who go back to college in their 40s and 50s, Spielberg was given credit for some life experience. The advanced film making class required students to produce a 12 minute film. Sharyn Blumenthal, director of the Film and Electronic Arts Department, told the Los Angeles Times that the professors felt that Schindler’s List, which earned Spielberg Oscars for best director and best film, satisfied that requirement even though it exceeded the 12 minute limit! ) Upon graduating, Spielberg described his decision to complete his studies as “a personal note for my own family,” and as a message to young people everywhere about the importance of education. He added: “How could I tell my kids to go to college when I had not graduated?”
• Deconstructing commercials is an important aspect of teaching kids money values. A study by the American Psychological Association found that kids under 8 have a tough time distinguishing commercials from entertainment. Don’t let young children watch TV on their own. Sit with them and, when a commercial comes on, explain that the purpose of the program they’ve been watching is to entertain them and the purpose of the commercial is to make them want to buy something. Ask them if they think the product being sold really works that way in real life. Will the action figure really fly around the room by itself and does the cereal really sing when you pour it in the bowl? And discuss with your child the message the commercial is sending about how to act. Ann Bracken teaches a college-level course on media literacy. Writing in the March, 2002 issue of the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel (www.baltimorechronicle.com) Professor Bracken discussed her students’ experience in deconstructing the “Barbie and Kelly go shopping” commercial. The class identified three messages about shopping that the commercial sends young children: “It’s lots of fun; it’s not finished until the cart is full; and sneaking things into the cart when mom isn’t looking is a cool thing to get away with.”
• Larry Mantle, the host AirTalk, a daily interview/call-in program on radio station KPCC in Southern California, and the winner of numerous Golden Mike and Associated Press awards, shared a great deconstructing story with us during one of our appearances on his program. When he was growing up, Larry desperately wanted a genuine James Bond 007 Super Spy Briefcase that was being advertised daily on several local TV channels. His parents did not want to buy it but Larry’s father recognized that the commercial made it look much better than it would in real life and took Larry to the local toy shop. To this day Larry recalls his feelings when the briefcase that was so wonderful on TV turned out in real life to be small, plastic and poorly constructed.
• Every day events are opportunities to model money values, especially when shopping for items that are the most heavily advertised to kids. Demonstrating to your kids how you go about deciding among competing brands of microwave ovens is important but it has less immediate impact than your behavior in buying athletic shoes that are heavily advertised and showing how you evaluate the shoes, versus what the commercials try to tell us. The next time you take the kids to a market or drug store, explain the difference between generic and brand name drugs. The FDA makes certain that the ingredients are identical; you often pay double just for the brand name. When you get to the cash registers, point out how the store strategically places all of the “impulse items” right there for you to grab while waiting to get checked out. Take the kids to one of the club stores like Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or Costco and explain how you save by buying some items in bulk while it makes no sense to buy others in quantity. For a family of five, it might be a good idea to buy napkins, toilet paper and paper towels by the case, but how likely is it that you will barbecue enough hot dogs to use up a two gallon jar of pickle relish before it spoils? And will it fit in the refrigerator if I do buy it? This provides the opportunity to illustrate a vitally important question kids need to learn to ask themselves before spending money: Will I use it if I buy it?
• If you feel guilty about not spending enough time with your kids, figure out a way to spend more time with them. Don’t use money and things to make you feel better about being gone. We’ve already talked about the dangers of overindulgence. Some busy parents give their kids things to make up for the lack of time they spend with them. It may make the parents feel better, but look at the messages you are sending your kids: “You can use money to make yourself feel better.” And “Giving things to members of your family can replace giving them your time and attention.” Do you really want your kids to grow up with those values?
• Be careful of rationalizations when it comes to money and values. Sometimes it is hard to figure out whether money decisions really demonstrate money values or whether they are simply rationalizations intended to justify what we want to do. For example, remember fourteen year old Brian who wanted his parents, Janet and Eric, to get an $8,000 giant screen TV just like the one his cousin Larry’s family had bought? Although they eventually said no, Janet and Eric didn’t dismiss Brian’s request out of hand. They really wanted to spend more time with Brian and that big screen, hang on the wall TV was really impressive! Eric said that maybe Brian had a good idea; if they bought a big screen TV they could rent DVDs and watch them with Brian. Janet pointed out that they could rent DVDs right now, watch them on their 32 inch TV and share time with Brian without spending $8,000! Beware of rationalizations when it comes to money and values: Eric’s initial suggestion demonstrated how to rationalize spending money on the latest technology more than how to connect with your child.

Our most poignant example of money rationalizations and the messages they send children is a story told us by a mother at one of our workshops. About a week before spring break, she was in the beauty parlor and struck up a conversation with the woman seated in the next chair. She knew her through the local PTA because they both had 6th graders at the same school. The woman confided that she was going to have to send her kids to camp over spring break. She wasn’t going to have enough time to take care of them because she was heading up a charity event that was raising money for neglected children! Just imagine the money values message her children received!

Eileen Gallo, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles, where she works with individuals and families on issues related to money. Jon Gallo heads the Family Wealth Practice Group of Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP in Los Angeles. They are the authors of two books on families and money: Silver Spoon Kids: How Successful Families Raise Responsible Children (McGraw Hill, 2001) and The Financially Intelligent Parent: 8 Steps To Raising Successful, Generous, Responsible Children (Penguin, 2005). Their website is www.galloconsulting.com.