Back on the topic of "teaching" money. I'm going to ask- seriously- how exactly schools go about doing that. Our HS has a Living Skills course that covers a variety of bases: budgeting, money-management, interest (paid and recieved). If you stand outside of that HS in the morning, you'll see an astounding row of Escalades, BMW's, Navigators, Lexus's, etc dropping off kids at school. Most of those vehicles came out of garages of mid-six to seven figure homes.

Sooooo..... we talk to kids about wise money management, and the evils of debt..... and they go home to homes with 2-3-4 or more thousand dollar/mo mortgages. They live with two parents that hold down two (good) paying jobs so they can pay for the whole dog-and-pony show. Since we all know kids pay more attention to what we do than what we say, I have to question how effective those classes are. And whether it's the schools fault.

I subscribe to the Suzy Orman philosophy on money- to first be able to focus on goals and objectives, we have to ask ourselves the question- what do we expect money to give us? For some, it buys things. Others, security. Some folks want to turn the money into a business venture or investments that generate more income. Even kids can understand this concept- do you control your money, or does it control you? If you're working 40-50 hours/wk to pay off bills you've already incurred, the answer is obvious.

 

oh yea! try owing $200k in medical bills! and that was just over the course of this year! but the good new is (besides me being healthy again) is due to my wife and i NOT WORKING this year at all, the hospitals wrote off the bills so i do not owe anything! now just owe the various medical services around $10k total, but have payments set up for that.

but if it wasn't for my thrifty savings in the past few years before i got out of the Navy, we would have been screwed, but i saved and we lived off of the savings for over a year now, including buying a new truck and taking 2 vacations across the USA. only worked for a bit through a relative but he screwed me anyways over so no real money from that.

but now starting college this spring, using the GI bill while my wife works, and we still have savings but got to hold on to that in case of another "emergency" and still waiting for my GOV job i applied for to come through.

but through all of that, still had food on the table, kept the credit perfect and din't ever have to file bankruptcy (knock on wood)

so everyone, make sure you save your money, you will never know when you will need it! and save alot!

 

bf250- there's more to that story methinks.

 

Not sure of the "thrust" of the 1st paragraph.....(or the 2nd) Schools teaching kids finances vs. being at a school where a fleet of Escalades, Bee-mers, Navigators, and Lexus', etc. coming from mid 6 -and 7-figure homes dropping off the kids.....going home to two parents with good jobs.....Is this a bad thing?......Might the school course be "redundant"...?....Maybe....

It could be that a 2-parent household with all the "goodies" (good cars, etc.), good jobs, etc....is a GOOD environment for a kid to grow up in......and that the parents in this environment might be the best teachers for their kids, and any others, to learn proper "life" skills.....i.e. "to be successful....surround yourself with successful people"..... :

If they are doing the whole "dog and pony show" without incurring crushing debt and just keeping up with the Joneses.....then great. -down

 

cmpd1781- don't forget the business I'm in. I look at financial statements all day, and the amount of debt affluent America is carrying is flat astounding. The thrust of the first two paragraphs is simply that affluent America is not the greatest role model for money management. Worse, the offspring will try to duplicate that lifestyle when they leave the nest- with incomes that are a fraction of what the parents make.

My dad- who was pretty good with a buck- once said that if you ever were fortunate enough to be really successful, live in a normal house, drive normal cars, and never, ever let them know they'll never have to work.

 

huh??? what you mean?

 

how'd you protect the assets with the medical bills in the backround?

 

I started a thread in the club forum you all might be interested in

 

It was meant to be demeaning to the field, not any individual. Government teachers, as a group, have put up with the unions, promoted them, endorsed them, funded them, etc. They've given control to them and this monster has almost single-handedly destroyed the educational system. Bad teachers stay entrenched, control keeps flowing higher to the federal level (where the union has huge power) and the union fights for things that are good for teachers who don't want to compete and its not good for the students. School choice and vouchers are two that immediately come to mind.

 

Send your money not mine if you think government schools are so great. Compare our schools to the rest of the westernized world and we just don't measure up. That's a fact. People inevitably say their school is/was great. Its no different then people pointing at all those other blood-sucking porkers in Washington that need to be voted out and re-electing their own blood-sucking porkers year after year. (Not being political with that, just making an ananlogy)

Dollar for dollar comparisons and it doesn't get any better. Take a look at school budgetary increases over the last 20 years and then take a look at the educational quality during the same period. Better or worse?

 

Active? One of us sits down with the kids each and every night during homework. The wife drove an Escort and I drove a Ranger for years to keep our daughter in private school rather than driving what people would normally say we could afford. Our son, with autism, goes to public school in special ed because there are no private programs here for him. And then he sees a specialist on the weekends so we can personally keep tabs on the job public school does and doesn't do for him. We participate in school programs, all parental meetings (seems the majority of parents don't even bother to show up), the wife volunteers occasionally for field trips, etc. We are actively involved in our children's education - part of the solution. So I have no qualms pointing at the problems.

 

That was MY point....It seemed as though the parents in the Lexus', Escalades, etc. coming form 7-figure homes was being painted with the "bad" brush in-toto.....My point was that if they had the goodies......but got the goodies without incurring that crushing debt (i.e. "keeping up with the Joneses"), then they're fine. But your point on being successful without broadcasting it is a good illustration in the book "The Millionaire Next Door"......i.e. the people you're in close proximity to whom you'd never guess were "rich". Some people might decide to get the goodies and have fun, and some might decide to keep the Ford Taurus (RIP) and not buy the boat. Both might be equally competent in teaching money/finance lessons.

We have a lot of the "keeping up with the Joneses" right here in Charlotte. Lots of them rode the "dot.com" wave......then went right back into the trenches when the bubble burst. Others have pretty good and well-paying jobs, but bought the huge homes in South Charlotte a little out of their means (we've all heard of only carrying mortgages only up to 80% of what we qualified for), went into huge debt, and couldn't even hardly put furniture into the huge houses.

Still....good points.

 

I WILL give you this much, Ken. One of the tragedies of the "Republican Revolution" (1994-on) was their inability (or lack of will) to fulfill the promise of dissolving the Education Department. How many billions would that have saved?....and I'm one who would like to see local control of the school systems, and the dismantling of the huge school districts (i.e. the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System) into smaller, more manageable entities. And if I'm not mistaken, the NEA is THE biggest union in the United States...and the highly politicized union tends to swallow up the individual schools and/or teachers into the "machine". Also, Bush' "No child left behind Act" (co-sponsored by Ted Kennedy) had the effect of placing out-of-control students (criminal behavior, assaulting other students, etc.) into a classification called "BD" for "Behavioral Disorder". We've had students here who've broken other kids jaws, sexually assaulted other students, and still, they're unable to throw the little monsters out on their ear, or into jail because of their "disability". It almost takes an Act of Congress in CMS to actually get a kid expelled....This is NOT conducive to a pleasant learning environment for a "good" kid to be in.

 

well, i had no assets at all except for the money in the bank, of course they wanted to look at my bank statements, so luckily i had opened up a local bank account (i just moved from europe to TN) and had just a few bucks showing in that.

of course if they would have seen my other bank account showing all my savings, they would have wanted it all and left my wife and i starving or up to our ears in medical debt.

when i went to the finacial councselor at the hospital (vanderbuilt) they advised me the best thing for my wife and i to do is not to work if i want a full write off on the medical bills, she said if we show income otherwise, then we would have to pay a certain percentage of the bill, which she said would be a lot!

 

I actually had a response here, but wifey indicated she'd like to take a crack at it herself. We'll have to wait until after school's out though.

I will throw in that, ironically, we both have autistic kids in public schools that drive up the cost by an eye-popping amount. Specials needs, behavioral disorders, non-English speaking, the poor...... it's a pretty long list of programs that public schools are required to address, while private schools can simply pass off the problems (and the expense).