<p>I think you should be more open minded and allow your daughter follow her heart.</p>
<p>But not with my sons. We, have standards. (tick, tick, tick)</p>
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<p>So, so sorry to hear this. :(</p>
<p>I hope things are getting to the point where they are at least managable.</p>
<p>I’m sure your vacation was a needed break.</p>
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<p>Just got back from DS’s football banquet. Couple sitting across from us, whom we had not previously met, has four kids (oldest a HS junior), and she’s a stay-at-home mom. Don’t know what the dad does. But he apparently makes enough to keep all four kids in Catholic school.</p>
<p>If your needs include fancy cars, fancy toys, and other non-necessities, yes, then it takes two incomes, unless one of the wage earners has a very lucrative job. But if you’re willing to live economically, then yes, you can make it on one income.</p>
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<p>That’s probably why you picked your boyfriend/husband. OP’s D might marry the dishwasher and be the breadwinner of her family too.</p>
<p>I just wonder, if we let our kids be themselves enough at home, can’t we predict what they’d do while in college?</p>
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<p>If you have a limited income, you choose your luxuries. Three of four in my family have iPhones and I have a Samsung smartphone. We have two kids in fee-based schools, because our local school is so wretched. We “pay” for these luxuries by driving beaters and eating our meals at home.</p>
<p>But I agree with poetgrl on the iPad. I don’t “get” it either.</p>
<p>It all gets down to what we think is normal or average, isn’t it? If what you could afford is Carnival, then people who go on Norwegian cruise is living large. If you could only afford to go to Europe once in a while, which many Americans probably could never afford to, you would think someone going to Europe for a long weekend would be excessive. If you could afford a no name laptop, which many Americans probably couldn’t afford, you would think having a Mac would be wasteful. If you could afford a non-smart phone, which many people probably couldn’t afford, you would think having a BB to be over the top. </p>
<p>So it gets down to, if people are living the same life style as you then it is acceptable, but when they don’t, then they are over the top.</p>
<p>For my H, who disliked the lack of drive and work ethic in D’s old boyfriend, he said, “Even if he wanted to start a rock band, or climb mt. everest, or go to Peru and build housing, or get on a whale wars ship to stop the whaling, I’d get it.” It wasn’t about money. It was about the drive for a meaningful life.</p>
<p>I think we have lost that.</p>
<p>If the dishwasher is a poet? Great. Or if the dishwasher just hasn’t figured out what he wants to do with his/her life and is waiting and plans to go to school, fine</p>
<p>It’s not about money. It’s about life.</p>
<p>And, Anna’s Dad, there is a very famous budhist text called “Spiritual Materialism” which I think you should read. It is quite possible to be just as “proud” of spiritual principles as to be proud of your house. Both are blocks to real growth.</p>
<p>ETA: As for the ipad, I was actually genuinely asking. If I could be the one to figure out how to use it, it would be hysterical around here, since I’m the one who is least tech savvy of all.</p>
<p>iPad use/benefit for me: quick email & internet browsing on a relatively big screen, extremely lightweight which helps keep torn rotator cuff from re-occurring during travel, serves as gps/live map with big screen while in the car, netflix viewer while on the road, etc. My primary use revolves around travel and the iPad does the trick.</p>
<p>oh, and browsing CC!</p>
<p>poetgrl: iPad is perfect for the least tech savvy.</p>
<p>I bought one for my 77 year old mother who speaks broken English and has no internet in her house. I got the 3G version so she could use that instead of having to set up a wireless system in her house. She LOVES it. Reads foreign newspapers, gets photos we send her etc. You can’t crash it. She whips it out when she’s on the airplane and shows it off to her seatmates. Too funny.</p>
<p>She also loves playing Angry Birds on it. I do too.</p>
<p>I have to disagree. There are many things that we can afford, but because we consider them to be baubles, or unnecessary, or sometimes just ostentatious, we do not indulge. That’s just our personal philosophy, and we are happy with it.</p>
<p>So, our lifestyle is no different from what it would be if we had half as much, or twice as much.</p>
<p>I always love to hear from so many posters here about how frugal they are - we drive a car with 100k miles (still have a car, why not just take the public transportation), we have very limited cell phone/cable/Internet service (why not just go without them?), “your best buy” thread (but still buying, nevertheless). It is all relative. People just become judgmental as soon as someone appears to have more. At the end of day, no matter how much you have, there will always be someone who has more.</p>
<p>Every time when someone says his/her kid has a smar phone, car, vacation, study abroad, it is always followed by why it is a necessity,like some how one should be ashamed in just be able to enjoy something for the sake of it.</p>
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<p>It’s not strictly a Buddhist principle. ““Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”” [I Peter 5:5b-7]</p>
<p>Yes, that. But, I’m a big fan of “Spiritual Materialism” which was written by a Tibetan Monk who was forced out of his country and became a teacher in the West. It was one of his main struggles, and so it is a very interesting take.</p>
<p>But, I think you would enjoy the book itself.</p>
<p>ETA: Also, I’m picking up that Ipad tomorrow. I’m going to shock them all and be the one walking around using it. I hate to have it go to waste.</p>
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<p>Some people do. Some of us react when we are told that we need two incomes to survive in today’s economy or that we are morally deficient because we have deliberately chosen paths that do not maximize our income-earning potential, thus putting the welfare of our families at risk.</p>
<p>edit: And, I am very, very aware that compared to a lot of people, I am materially very well off. I live in a poor rural community and I have many good friends who have much less that I do. The people who live right across the street and whose twin boys are DS’s best friends and who are about to lose their house. Or my good friend the disabled police officer and his wife (who cleans houses and works in a convenience store) who a year ago had to walk away from the mobile home they’d been paying off for more than 10 years and move into a government-subsidized apartment. I count my blessings every day that I have a roof over my head, food on my table, and have enough left over to pay for my kids’ education.</p>
<p>On a “I’m more frugal than you” note, I have to brag about one of my most proud moments as a parent:</p>
<p>DS is not a deprived child, albeit an oblivious one. He owns an iPhone and a blinged out MacBook. He got a research job on campus this past summer after freshman year. We did not know if or when he would get paid so I sent him $500 for living expenses to tide him over (room paid for) until we sorted that out. He thought this was to last him the entire summer. So when we next talked on the phone, he launched into his plan of how he was going to live 100 days on $500. He thought it would be tight but doable and involved daily consumption of a 6in sub at Subway which he could get for $2. I was happy to see that he had no great expectations of a fancy lifestyle. </p>
<p>Of course, he then turned around and bought himself a large monitor with his first paycheck :D</p>
<p>Annasdad: Thanks for teaching me a new word “apostasy.” Don’t learn very many new words anymore other than the really weird ones on NPR word shows which are not usable IRL.</p>
<p>Poetgrl: If you don’t want the iPad after your trial, send it my way. I’ll take it off your hand. Also, get the Kindle app for it (free) then you can read on it too.</p>
<p>An Ipad argument? I usually use SUVs to express non-necessity.</p>
<p>Ya know, revisionist history gives Marie Antoinette a little break. Some now say she truly didn’t “get it.”</p>
<p>It’s not the financial ability, it’s the person behind it that counts. It’s not whether I could afford to cater dinner at a luxe venue and have my friends appear in dinnerwear and diamonds. It’s the quality of the friendships, the personal contact and mutual support, mutual inspiration. And, where our kids are concerned, we have to shepherd them to solid skills for young adulthood- that’s not about having all the toys. Whether or not you have the money. Plenty of poor folks make the same mistakes, latching onto tangibles.</p>
<p>Havent checked this thread for sometime now.</p>
<p>Set me straight. Did the dishwasher get an Ipad?</p>
<p>Dishwasher? What dishwasher?</p>
<p>Are you trying to make this thread fun again after all the trouble we went through to make it a downer?</p>