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  • 25 Jul 09
    mattkramer
    Matt Kramer

    Teaching the Entitled Young the Financial Facts of Life
    By PAUL SULLIVAN

    This is the summer of reviling the rich. The financiers at Goldman Sachs got a populist drubbing after the bank reported record quarterly earnings and analysts began predicting average bonuses of $700,000 an employee at the firm this year. Now, Congress is debating whether high earners should be hit with a surtax to pay for health care reform. In states like New York and California, that could mean that top earners are paying more than 50 percent of their income in taxes.

    But the rich and the not-so-rich do have something in common this summer: worrying about their children’s financial future. This may come as a shock to those middle-class Americans who imagine wealthy parents sunning themselves by their infinity pools, confident that their children, having been given every opportunity, are on their way to productive lives.

    In truth, the image is fairly rare at this point. What is more common among the wealthy is their fear that the lives their children have known, and the futures they expected, may be gone.

    “The notion that you’re entitled to goodies has to be dispelled,” said Fredda Herz Brown, a partner at Relative Solutions, a consultant who works with family businesses. “They really do think life is going to continue as it has. But most of them are not getting jobs, no matter what their parents do.”

    While the wealthy are in a better position to help their children financially, having money doesn’t guarantee that their child will be responsible and productive.

    So that leads to the question: How can parents help children with a healthy sense of entitlement adjust to the new economic reality?

    EMOTIONAL REASSURANCE The first thought that pops into many parents’ heads when they worry about their children is bailing them out. But the best thing many parents can do, particularly those with children who are not asking for money, is to set the right example.

    While children may be idle this summer, many parents are out of work, too, and c

    parenting economics

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