Money Confession: Children’s Savings
By Jeffrey Strain, June 27th, 2007 | 6 Comments »
I recently spoke at an event and asked the 100 or so people in attendance to anonymously write down a money confession. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting some of the more powerful of those confessions:
“I took all of my children’s savings to help pay for my face-lift”
Photo by :: The Dots ::
I think this is one of the worst things parents can do to their kids. My parents did a similar thing to me and I’m still bitter about it. And what type of example are they setting for their own kids?
If the money was saved by the parents, their children had no right to be angry. Disappointed? Maybe.
Ditto what Dan said. Guess I’m not the only one this has happened to!
I gave all of the money I earned at my high school part-time job to my parents to put in my savings account because that was how we’d been doing things (with birthday money, etc.) my whole life. I always trusted that they would give me access to the account when I needed it. Then when college came around, they wouldn’t give me any of my money, which I had been saving specifically for that purpose. So I had to work up to three jobs at a time during college, when the whole reason I worked so much during high school and saved almost all of my money was so I could focus on academics in college and not have to work. They wouldn’t even give it to me so I could buy a car (which would have allowed me to get a higher quality or better paying job off campus).
They eventually gave me (most of) the money years later, but I’m still pissed–especially because they just gave a nice newish car to my brother, who has never had a job, because it would be oh so hard for him to get groceries for his apartment now that he lives off campus. Please! Nevermind that I took the bus, got rides from people, biked, or walked a couple miles to get everything I needed for years, regardless of how sweltering hot or freezing cold it was outside or how far I lived from a grocery store.
On the plus side, having learned to rely almost exclusively on myself for everything, I’m much more independent than most people I know, I’m great at finding jobs and managing my time, and I realize that a car is a luxury, not a necessity. Not that my parents were trying to teach me any of those lessons–they were just being jerks.
What makes it even worse is that it was for something as egotistical as a face-lift. If it were to put food on the table, that is one thing, but a face-lift?
Confessions like this help me feel SO much better about myself. Ahhhhh…..