<p>I think I get it now… you just have a very different life experience than mine. </p>
<p>I work from home at a job I love, and my kids are both employed with nonprofit agencies at jobs that are absolutely perfect for their interests and talents, and they both love their jobs. Both get paid a reasonable but modest amount - but both are getting terrific benefits (medical, dental, various other job perks). My sons work schedule can be quite variable, but its a very relaxed office, the type of place where its fine for him to show up in jeans and hours are fairly flexible – I think my daughter’s job is pretty much a straight 9-5 thing, except on Fridays where she only works until noon. So … I think we’ve all got the “balance” thing figured out.</p>
<p>I think that one reason we do have money worries is that we all prioritize job satisfaction, and the perceived “good works” aspects of our jobs over money. </p>
<p>Of course I don’t know you and maybe your daughter really is stressing out too much with a high work load. But its been hard for me to figure out what you are focused on, because you started out talking about “money woes” … not on workload. Hence my confusion… I feel like the subject keeps shifting. </p>
<p>I know one thing – when you wrote, I’m really feeling sorry for those of you who don’t know how to kick back … you sure weren’t talking about my family.</p>
<p>We are paying our kids’ college. We think it makes them work harder. The one in college right now is keenly aware of the sacrifice on his behalf. Sometimes I wish he’d accepted one of the schools where he was offered substantial merit because he would have probably been a lot less pressured.</p>
<p>I think teriwitt is being very gracious, because a couple of you are being purposely contentious. </p>
<p>She is talking about the mindset her kids have compared to her mindset at the same age. </p>
<p>Let’s say she wasn’t, tho. Let’s say she came right out and said she was jealous of her kids lifestyle. Why shouldn’t she be a little bit , especially if she sacrificed like crazy to make it possible for her kids to have that lifestyle? It would be a natural reaction,and even more so if they didn’t acknowledge her part in getting them there.</p>
<p>I hope that if my kids achieve great financial success, they will “pay me back” by taking more responsibility to pay for their own weddings, or maybe buying me a cruise someday or something. </p>
<p>I will be paying on a couple of their college loans until I am 58 or so, and a couple more Parent Plus loans for almost that long. I pay their car payments and car insurance for 2 more years.</p>
<p>If they want to help me out financially when I am older, I’m fine with it and not going to apologize for it.</p>
<p>Vderon- I agree. I “get” what Teriwtt is saying, but these kind of threads always turn into “what do you expect when you raised your kid to be a spoiled brat while mine feeds the poor every weekend.”</p>
<p>If kids have it too easy they don’t learn how to be hungry for money. I stopped giving my kids money once they had college jobs. I will still purchase work attire but beyond that they are are on their own. My recent college grad is at home now with a great job at a major company. He will pay off his loans,save his money and head off to grad school in a year. The same goes for our other kids. There will be no job too small to take if if means the difference of being employed or living off of us. We will support them all in terms of temporary housing in the home but it is not a permanent or long lasting situation.</p>
<p>I think by saying that Teri is “jealous” is being harsh. Being accused of being jealous of one’s own kids is insulting. It implies a certain unhappiness over one’s child’s successes. </p>
<p>I don’t think Teri is jealous. I think she’s just going over the various scenarios (of yesteryear and today) in her head and on this forum.</p>
<p>She’s just scratching her head and sharing thoughts.</p>
<p>teriwtt’s daughter does not sound pampered at all to me. She clearly has worked hard in school and worked hard to transition into a good job. That just doesn’t happen to slackers, not anymore. </p>
<p>I get teriwtt’s puzzlement. Our son isn’t out of college yet but we are astonished sometimes by his expectations - not so much from us but what he expects from life in general.</p>
<p>H has busted his butt off over the years at a corporate job in the pharmaceutical industry, research specifically. You don’t think there aren’t people out there who don’t perceive his job as good works? Just because he makes a nice salary that has allowed us move up the ladder (there was only way for us to go, and that was up) doesn’t mean his job isn’t about good works. He loves what he does and has drilled this into our daughter’s heads. Over time, I ended up in the health care industry, at a non-profit; heck, I care for people when they’re dying. It doesn’t make my job any more good works than his job. </p>
<p>Like I said, it doesn’t matter whether your kid is making $20,000 out of college or $50,000. If you can’t sit down and figure out an appropriate budget, taking into consideration the geographical area you live in and live within your means, then something is wrong. But if you’re doing this, and are successful at it, why add the unnecessary burden of becoming obsessed about every little penny… enjoy the fruits of your labor and have faith your journey will take you where it’s supposed to be.</p>
<p>And yes, saying I was jealous was harsh, but I wasn’t going to state the obvious because it was an argument I wasn’t going to engage in.</p>
<p>I’ve been through some really hard times, not just financially. But it’s made me what I am today, for which I’m grateful. As I enter a new phase of my life (empty nester) I will continue to be faced with new challenges that I’d wish were not there. However, every challenge provides us with the opportunity to learn and grow. Those who don’t take advantage of that often end up sad and lonely later in life. My challenges are what have made me into what I am today, and without them, I’d be a different person. Had H and I come from generously wealthy families who lavished us with money, we’d be different than we are today, but we’d still have challenges that we’d be faced to deal with, and would hopefully be open and aware enough to learn from. </p>
<p>Calmom - don’t you ever just vent? Without expectation of someone fixing it or telling you to stop complaining? That’s what D does when she calls me up. She’s venting on the reality of launching herself into the world and launching looks different for each of us depending on the context we come from. For some reason, there’s a group of kids in our social network who are venting about something that we, as parents, can’t relate to. And that’s what I’m pondering here.</p>
<p>You guys should read the Ehrenreich thread. Or write a book. That’s what Ehrenreich did when she went to a support site and was told to seek counseling. We should invent a new term: empathetic reading and responding. :)</p>
<p>LOL at post #45. I usually have a very different “take” on life than MOWC, but I do think that’s what this thread has turned into. Teri just asked in anyone else shared her experience. If you don’t, there’s no reason to “bash” her for having a different experience than you’ve had or suggest how she can modify her D so she more closely resembles what someone else thinks she should be like.</p>
<p>Thank you for your kind remarks, although it’s certainly not what motivated me to begin this thread. </p>
<p>In my job (when I’m working… as of lately I have not been given any hours, but it’s summer, so I’m OK with it) when I’m visiting with people who need to vent, I strongly encourage it. I often refer them to the lament Psalms as an example of sacred scripture that models what we are to do when things seem out of control in our lives. For those with a Pollyanna attitude, I might as well be speaking gibberish to them. Luckily, some of them also speak gibberish and are open to exploring new ways of being validated and supported. </p>
<p>The point of my thread is that D’s ‘worry’, while valid to her, is just not something I can relate to.</p>
<p>^^^ Teri, just curious did your daughter stress or worry quite a bit about grades, previous jobs, and just in general a someone who worries a lot ?</p>
<p>Oh yes, she was always her own worse critic. </p>
<p>We finally ended up joking about grades… there seemed to be a correlation between the more she worried and fretted, the better the grade ended up being. Whenever she was ‘sure’ she was going to ‘fail something’ (never made a C in her life, and I can probably count the number of Bs on one hand), it almost always guaranteed an A. </p>
<p>Which is why, initially, I attributed her comments to just D being D. But when we were at this party and I started hearing similar stories from other parents, I began to wonder if it wasn’t just my D.</p>
<p>Lately I’ve noticed D and others her age “complaining” about money woes(both real and imaginary). I think it’s partially due to the current business climate and general uneasiness about the economy. My D who is currently in grad school and is off the parental money stream, still has more “disposable” income than H or I had at that age, but frequently vents about money fears. Me telling her to work hard and everything will be OK, is generally responded to with a classic eye roll.</p>
<p>“WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE…I crawled to grad school 6 miles in snow storms on my knees over shards of glass (on less money) and we had more fun then you will ever have. And we liked it that way.” (remember Dana Carvey’s “grumpy old man”?)</p>
<p>This is always a helpful response to any current complaints the kids have. Now, why she rolls her eyes, I will never know</p>
<p>I think D1 worries about not able to continue to live the kind of life style she has grown accustomed to. Growing up she never had to worry about money much, so some people may say she’s had it easy. She is a smart girl, so by now she has figured out how much it would take for her to afford a nice apartment, clothes, travel…My husband and I have been very adament about not supplmenting her life style. I almost feel indirectly it is pushing her to work harder at her job. </p>
<p>It’s like cocaine, once you are hooked, it’s hard to quite. My gut tells me that the reason a lot of kids are worried (or complaining) about money is the money they are making now is not enough to support the kind of life style their parents have provided for them.</p>
My point is that in my family – everyone has chosen to take lower paying jobs for reasons of personal satisfaction or a sense of the job serving the greater good (such as working for a charity or a nonprofit). We tend to earn enough to make ends meet, but not to have much in the way of discretionary income – so as soon as something unexpected and costly come up, it creates a money worry. </p>
<p>By the sense of “serving the greater good” – I mean OUR OWN sense. I’m not judging someone else – I’m saying that WE have looked for what WE are comfortable. </p>
<p>When I was changing careers years ago I worked with a career counselor. I found out that some people are money motivated, and some not. Everyone in my family turns out to be in the not-money-oriented category. That is, we don’t want to work for pay, but rather we try to find ways to get paid for the things we want to do. We also happen to be heavily motivated by social justice type concerns, so the things that we want to do tend to be the same sort of thing that nonprofit and charitable agencies do. I mean – a few years ago my son was between jobs and looked for part time work. He ended up with a job, for pay, to help the Muscular Dystrophy Association set up fund raising activities. He didn’t get that job by accident – that is, it wasn’t that MDA was the only outfit in town hiring or that they paid more than other part-time work (obviously not). He got that job because when my kids look for work, they look under the “nonprofit” category for job listings at Craigslist. It’s not that we can’t or won’t do other kind of work, or that we disapprove of, say, working in investment banking… its just that none of us can figure out what the appeal of that would be. Again… money doesn’t motivate us… so if we aren’t interested in doing a particular type of work, an offer of greater pay wouldn’t entice us. (If anything, its a disincentive - I find myself procrastinating endlessly whenever I have taken on work that doesn’t interest me simply because of the money). </p>
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<p>??? If you aren’t making quite enough to make ends meet, then you can’t live “within your means” – you have to juggle. Or you have to give up on something. And if you have given up on something, then you are going to naturally want to try to plan financially to make that something happen for the future, and that typically involves scrimping and saving. </p>
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<p>Just keep in mind that I never said that or anything like that - that was another poster. </p>
<p>You seem to have taken great umbrage at everything I have said… but I can’t read your mind. I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t get what you are talking about.</p>
<p>I mean – it seems that you have a daughter who is working hard, earning good money, but stressed out about her finances. And you don’t like that… but I’m not clear on what it is that you find so upsetting. I understand that moms don’t like to see their kids under stress… but around cc we were all quite happy to allow these kids to be stressed out about taking a bunch of AP classes in high school, and stressed out about their SAT scores, and stressed out about what college was going to accept them. So most of us managed to raise highly goal oriented kids. So why would we expect these kids undergo some sort of personality change once they finished college and started their careers? </p>
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<p>OK, but the part I don’t get is why it would be difficult to relating to the stuff your d. is venting about. I misunderstood your OP to be expressing a concern about d wanting too much for herself --that is, that you thought that she didn’t appreciate the good things she had – hence I mistakenly suggested that perhaps focusing on the needs of people less fortunate would help put things in perspective. But obviously I was mistaken about what was bothering you. </p>
<p>But from there I still haven’t figured out what it is you expect to hear from other posters.</p>