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clown country
- Thread starter bigpoppa
- Start date
Mad Mike
Well-known member
I think a lot of the generation having kids now were raised in relatively good times, and were not as well prepared for the adult world as generations before them.
A lot of kids are bubble wrapped by their parents, the don’t learn how to evaluate risk and safety. They are pampered… driven and picked up from school, household chores like laundry, grass cutting, snow shoveling etc looked after for them. Little discipline or consequences for bad behaviour from teachers, law enforcement. Education and sports clubs teach participation is more important than competition.
The adult world doesn’t favorites risk aversion or helplessness. Same goes for disregarding rules and not knowing how to compete.
How much of what kids learn is helpful in the adult world?
Teach them how to bake cookies and basket weave instead of financial tools. /boggle
I've said it before but at 16 my dad cut off my allowance and told me to go get a part time job and we weren't even living in Canada at the time! The day after I got a job a copy of the Wealthy Barber was on my bed with a note from my Dad (he was on a business trip) "Son, if I could give 16 year old me advice now. I'd start saving sooner."
10% of every paycheck for the last 26 years sits untouched in a separate account.
Thanks Dad.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Sounds like you dad was cut from the same cloth as my dad. He was my greatest mentor.
I didn’t get the Wealthy Barber, on my 12th birthday my dad gave me a hand written spreadsheet that computed how many papers I had to deliver to buy a Rupp Roadster. After reading that not a thousand times, it hit me - you can’t by a motorcycle by delivering newspapers!
I got the Rupp myself before I hit 13.
I wonder about the effect of lotteries as I grew up before they were legal.
If I commented on a nice house or car my mother would say a person had to work hard to get it. Now it’s “ You have to win a lottery “
The ROI average sucks on lotteries but a huge percentage of the population has lottery tickets as their RRSP.
sburns
Well-known member
Pfff rich kid. Never had or got an allowance. I was told to get a job, welcome to the 80's in da Hood.
But I do have a copy of the Wealthy Barber someplace.
Either way it's good advice to have kids learn about building wealth early on.
Whole $1.25 a week son!
bigpoppa
Well-known member
I learned all the lessons on my own the hard way.
My dad’s way of saving money was to spend 20k on a new car every year than the occasional 500$ repair or maintenance.
sburns
Well-known member
Mad Mike
Well-known member
You forgot to mention that was US dollars.
In my case, my upbringing led to me hating being in debt. I went through the 18% interest rate era, in which dad scraped up everything he had and paid off the mortgage with hardly anything to spare. We lived OK but with few luxuries. "Live within your means" - The response now is "tell that to someone when a basic house costs a million dollars" - well, back then, "tell that to someone when a mortgage costs 18% every year".
I knew my parents couldn't (in retrospect, didn't want to) finance my university degree ... hence picking Waterloo co-op and paying my own way. Did that. Only thing I owed at the end, is that my hand-me-down 1978 Civic was worn out or rusted out in every possible way with not a thing left on it that was any good, so dad helped me buy a used Toyota pickup. I paid him back after graduation.
I wish my parents had spent more on themselves. I now know that they could have. But, their upbringing included the depression era and WWII, and they lived accordingly.
When I was 11 I wanted a new RC car, dad said "Go get a job" so I did. I started working summers at Credit Valley Golf Course making $125.00 every two weeks, I saved all summer and bought the RC car, it broke, but I kept the job for a few summers before getting a another job for more money. For many years I spent everything I earned on alcoholism (A terrible hobby btw) I went to rehab, sobered up but for years afterwards I lived paycheque to paycheque just scrapping by, when I lived in Barrie (90's) I had 5 part-time jobs to make ends meet and it still was not enough. Like other I learned the hard way and made many mistakes, I am still learning how to control my spending and balance things out, I feel blessed that I win more times than I lose but I still make mistakes...
Are you a friend of bills?
Pop died from booze when I was 8 yo. Mom worked in a factory and raised 3 kids. Me and my 6 years younger twin sisters.
Got a paper route and really earned my pay during those late 70s winters, towing the papers in a sled behind me.
Learned how to start the lawn mower and cut grass. Neighbour taught me how to clean the filter, change the plug, remove the blade and sharpen with a file.
The local hospital had parking meters on the street. During a warm spell in the winter, the melted snow would reveal dropped change on the ground around the parking meters. My friends and I would also patrol the parking meters in the summer as a game. There was grass at the base of each meter that and would collect dropped change as well. Also during the summer, Mondays was collection day for empties left in the neighbourhood parking lot shared between a legion and a pub. We would be so proud to walk into the beer store with our collection of bottles and get a couple of bucks to blow on the pin ball machine at the local variety store.
Always had a job. Pump gas, mobile wash 53’ trailers, roofing, lawn maintenance, stock clerk, etc. Humble roots with a social circle from all walks of life. I’ve been on the receiving end of cruelty and kindness and try to treat others as I expect to be treated. I’m not always successful but, I am mindful.
Mom’s best friend was a divorced black woman with two kids who drove taxi and bootlegged booze on the weekends. Made good money during the long weekend.
Ahhh the good old days!
Anyways, can appreciate the value of a dollar and social programs and a government trying to manage the needs of its community. However, they sure have some wacky ideas to spend tax payer money and ask for more to keep existing programs going.
Got a paper route and really earned my pay during those late 70s winters, towing the papers in a sled behind me.
Learned how to start the lawn mower and cut grass. Neighbour taught me how to clean the filter, change the plug, remove the blade and sharpen with a file.
The local hospital had parking meters on the street. During a warm spell in the winter, the melted snow would reveal dropped change on the ground around the parking meters. My friends and I would also patrol the parking meters in the summer as a game. There was grass at the base of each meter that and would collect dropped change as well. Also during the summer, Mondays was collection day for empties left in the neighbourhood parking lot shared between a legion and a pub. We would be so proud to walk into the beer store with our collection of bottles and get a couple of bucks to blow on the pin ball machine at the local variety store.
Always had a job. Pump gas, mobile wash 53’ trailers, roofing, lawn maintenance, stock clerk, etc. Humble roots with a social circle from all walks of life. I’ve been on the receiving end of cruelty and kindness and try to treat others as I expect to be treated. I’m not always successful but, I am mindful.
Mom’s best friend was a divorced black woman with two kids who drove taxi and bootlegged booze on the weekends. Made good money during the long weekend.
Ahhh the good old days!
Anyways, can appreciate the value of a dollar and social programs and a government trying to manage the needs of its community. However, they sure have some wacky ideas to spend tax payer money and ask for more to keep existing programs going.
bigpoppa
Well-known member
Is borscht good?
There is a rent strike movement getting a lot of traction. The renters lever the LTB to drag out evictions for non payment of rents, blaming the present home owners for the situation.
While there is some truth to that, I don't see the protesters blaming their parents for not teaching them critical thinking.
My parents split up and my mother raised my brother and me on her own. At some point in the mid 1960's she saw the writing on the wall and pulled what she could out of her profit sharing at work, borrowed from her brother and took on a second mortgage to buy a modest house for about $20K. My brother and I worked and helped out and loans were paid back where due. That house is now worth around $800K but everyone has moved on, largely by levering the equity built up in that house.
Had we thought differently decades ago could house prices be more affordable to the working class?
Probably not but consider...
The richest man in the world is in the fashion business not medicine.
The richest woman in the world is in cosmetics not social welfare and education.
They didn't get there because people had prudent priorities.
I can't find the better version of this graph but this is close enough. US real estate averages about 5.3% return over the pas 30 years or so (higher than I expected honestly as US house prices for a typical house don't seem to change much). It looks like ROR on real estate in canada is slightly higher (up to 6.5% in Toronto). S&P 500 averages over 10% yearly over 30 years. The big difference with real estate returns is almost everybody has highly leveraged real estate investments and zero leverage on market investments.
Now, your mom's place shows that the average ROR is not applicable to every dwelling. Her house averaged 10% ROR. Add leverage to that and net worth changes quickly.
Buy your grandkids $1000 in S&P500 when they are born and that is about 500K when they retire. If you can afford to put $6000 in at birth, you have pretty much done their retirement savings for them at that will be about 3M at 65.
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