The Opposite of Spoiled

The Opposite of Spoiled Plot Summary

Introduction

It was a chilly autumn evening when Sarah, a mother of two, found herself frozen in the cereal aisle of her local grocery store. Her six-year-old son had just loudly asked, "Mom, are we poor? Jimmy at school said we must be poor because I wear the same shoes every day." Other shoppers glanced their way, and Sarah felt her face flush with embarrassment and confusion. She mumbled something about loving his shoes and quickly steered the cart to another aisle, but the question lingered in her mind long after they returned home. Money conversations with children can catch us off guard, leaving us speechless or defaulting to vague responses. Yet these moments represent golden opportunities to impart lasting values that transcend mere financial literacy. When we engage honestly with our children's curiosity about money, we're not just teaching them about dollars and cents—we're shaping their understanding of work ethic, gratitude, generosity, and their place in the world. This profound connection between money talks and character development forms the heart of our journey together. Through practical strategies, thoughtful conversations, and everyday teachable moments, we'll discover how financial discussions can become one of our most powerful parenting tools, helping us raise children who are not only financially savvy but also kind, responsible, and emotionally intelligent.

Chapter 1: The Questions Children Ask: Embracing Money Curiosity

When Kaden was 13 years old, he used his precious weekend screen time not for video games or YouTube tutorials, but to search salary.com. His mission? To find out exactly how much his father, Brent, earned as a financial planner. After a few strategic clicks, Kaden triumphantly approached his father with his discovery: $700,000 per year. The figure wasn't precisely accurate, but the encounter left Brent speechless. Despite spending his professional life discussing personal finances with clients—many of whom broke into tears during their first meeting—Brent couldn't bring himself to have this honest money conversation with his own son. This story illuminates a universal truth about children: they are naturally curious about money. It's part of their mission to understand how the world works, and money is woven into the fabric of everyday life. When we dodge their financial questions or offer vague responses, we miss critical teaching moments. Children will find information elsewhere—whether from friends, television, or internet searches—and that information may be inaccurate or lacking important context. Many parents avoid these conversations for understandable reasons. Some feel intimidated by the enormity of the topic or fear their children will reveal family financial details to others. Others worry that discussing money might somehow taint their children's innocence or foster materialism. There's also the discomfort that comes from examining our own relationship with money, which might be complicated by shame, anxiety, or unexamined habits. The most effective response to a child's money question isn't an immediate answer but another question: "Why do you ask?" This approach serves multiple purposes. It gives parents precious seconds to gather their thoughts while also revealing the motivation behind the child's curiosity. Is the question stemming from a playground comparison, a misunderstood conversation, or genuine curiosity? Understanding the root helps us tailor our response appropriately. Children's questions about money—from "Are we rich?" to "Why can't I have what my friend has?"—aren't just about finances. They're explorations of fairness, security, identity, and their place in the world. By treating these inquiries with respect rather than dismissal, we validate their curiosity and begin building their financial intelligence alongside their emotional intelligence. Answering honestly doesn't mean sharing every financial detail before children are ready. It means providing age-appropriate information that acknowledges the reality of money in our lives while emphasizing the values that guide our financial decisions. When we approach these conversations with openness rather than avoidance, we transform potentially awkward moments into foundations for lifelong learning.

Chapter 2: Allowance Strategies: Teaching Through Experience

In the summer of 2012, the Clarke family in San Jose, California, embarked on an unusual family activity. Julie and Gary Clarke, along with their daughters Katherine (11) and Lauren (7), loaded their minivan with bags of aluminum cans and glass bottles they had collected over several months. After a twenty-minute drive to Ranch Town Recycling Center, the girls enthusiastically sorted their collection while workers weighed the materials. On the return journey, they stopped at Merriwest Credit Union where the girls proudly deposited their earnings into their accounts. What began as a church fundraiser for the homeless had evolved into a personal financial education project. When the church campaign ended, the Clarke daughters asked if they could continue collecting recyclables, but keep the money for themselves. Their parents agreed, with the condition that some proceeds would still go to charity. This simple activity—collecting, sorting, redeeming, and saving—became a powerful hands-on lesson in work, patience, and financial responsibility. For the Smiths, a Mormon family in Lewiston, Utah, financial education is woven into their dairy farm operations. Their seven sons, ranging from ages 6 to 19, all participate in running their 1,800-cow farm. Six-year-old Zeb started working at age 5, washing bottle nipples for calves and helping steer the tractor at slow speeds. His older brothers handle feeding, moving hay bales, and the early morning cleaning of corrals. Unlike many families who pay children for household chores, the Smiths don't compensate their sons for keeping their rooms clean or clearing the dinner table. But they do pay them for farm work because collectively, the boys do the job of one full-time employee. The allowance debate often centers on whether money should be tied to chores. Many experts suggest separating the two, arguing that household responsibilities should be expected of family members without payment, while allowance serves as a teaching tool for financial management. When children receive regular money of their own—divided perhaps into spending, saving, and giving portions—they gain valuable practice in making financial decisions while the stakes are relatively low. Brent Kessel and his wife took an innovative approach to encourage saving. They offered their children interest on saved money, starting with generous rates—50% monthly interest on balances under $50—with decreasing rates for larger amounts. "I found they over-saved even with this schedule," Brent explained. "Which is why I dropped the interest amount at higher levels. They would have bankrupted me otherwise!" The key to effective allowance systems isn't the specific amount or structure but the consistent opportunities they provide for learning through experience. When children make purchasing decisions, they experience both the satisfaction of well-chosen purchases and the regret of wasted money. These emotional lessons—impossible to learn through lectures alone—build the foundation for thoughtful financial decisions in adulthood. By giving children room to experiment with money in childhood, we prepare them for the much larger financial responsibilities they'll face as adults.

Chapter 3: Smart Spending: Building Financial Decision Skills

Annie Leonard grew up as the odd one out in her high school—the kid without Vuarnet sunglasses or a car wrapped in pink ribbons for her 16th birthday. Raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse, Annie had enough for necessities but little for luxury items that her classmates took for granted. Years later, she created "The Story of Stuff," a short film about pollution and overconsumption that went viral with over 25 million views. Though she never intended it for children, the film found its way into classrooms, helping young viewers question their own relationship with material possessions. Today, as a mother herself, Annie navigates the challenging terrain of raising a child in a consumer culture very different from her own upbringing. She owns a car and shares a trampoline and swimming pool with neighbors. Her daughter Dewi plays sports and goes to a local rock-climbing gym. Annie and Dewi negotiate over skinny jeans and appropriate clothing just like most families. But underneath these normal parent-child dynamics lies a thoughtful approach to consumption that emphasizes balance rather than deprivation. Mary Matthiesen, a scientist by training, developed a brilliant calculation to help her children make smarter spending decisions: the hours-of-fun-per-dollar ratio. When her children begged for toys or souvenirs, she asked them to estimate how many hours of enjoyment they would get from the item divided by its cost. This simple equation transformed impulsive desires into thoughtful evaluations. Her son Jimmy eventually used this logic to convince his parents to purchase video games—thousands of hours of entertainment for $60 represented an excellent value proposition. Her daughter Sarah applied similar thinking to her reading habits, borrowing books from the library instead of buying them, since a $10 book might provide just 0.5 hours of fun per dollar for a fast reader. Another powerful approach comes from Zoe Weil of the Institute for Humane Education. She teaches children to ask a single question when making purchasing decisions: Which choice does the most good and the least harm? This flexible framework encourages kids to consider the impact of their spending on themselves, others, animals, and the environment. It acknowledges that every dollar spent is an endorsement of something, without requiring perfect information or imposing guilt for every choice. In the Clarke household, family buying rituals reinforce values while making spending fun. Every year on the birthdays of her three grandchildren, Dana Treister gives each child one dollar for every year they've been alive, then takes them to a dollar store to pick out their own gifts. With no time limit, the children carefully weigh their options, learning to evaluate choices within constraints. Another family makes a point of stopping at independent record stores whenever they find one, teaching their children about supporting musicians directly and valuing local businesses. The goal isn't to raise children who never spend money or enjoy material possessions. Rather, it's to cultivate discernment—the ability to distinguish between purchases that bring lasting satisfaction and those that quickly lose their appeal. By providing frameworks for decision-making rather than rigid rules, we help children develop the inner compass they'll need to navigate an increasingly complex consumer landscape with confidence and purpose.

Chapter 4: Gratitude and Generosity: The Joy of Giving

When Jewish teenagers turn 13, their congregations traditionally call them forward as a bar or bat mitzvah to mark their entry into adulthood. In 2012, a Dallas boy named Sam Horowitz celebrated his bar mitzvah with an elaborate performance that went viral online. Descending from the ceiling in what looked like a giant lampshade, he danced surrounded by professional female dancers while his name glowed in 15-foot-high letters. The spectacle drew criticism from some rabbis, but Sam owned the moment proudly, even appearing on Ellen DeGeneres's television show to perform again. For Michael Kesselman, a parent at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco who had worked in philanthropy for much of his career, such celebrations represented an opportunity for reinvention. When he asked his eldest daughter what gifts she remembered receiving at her bat mitzvah a few years earlier, she could recall only one or two. This revelation sparked an idea. Kesselman calculated that with 33 seventh-graders all inviting each other to their celebrations, parents were collectively spending at least $21,780 on gifts throughout the year—gifts that made minimal lasting impact. Kesselman and like-minded parents proposed an alternative: pool all that money, give each child a small gift, and place the rest in a fund that the students themselves would manage and donate to charities of their choosing. The seventh-graders would essentially run their own foundation, listening to pitches from nonprofit executives seeking grants. The project would transform the bar and bat mitzvah experience from one centered on receiving to one focused on thoughtful giving. When one visitor to their student foundation, Justin Grosso, sought sponsorship for his participation in the California AIDS bicycle ride, Kesselman taught the students about challenge grants. They promised Grosso $500 if he could raise an additional $1,000 on his own—a goal he exceeded. The students took their responsibility seriously, asking sophisticated questions and feeling the weight of making consequential decisions. "When my class allotted $3,000 to the local Boys and Girls club, the woman who took our call wanted to know if it was a joke," recalled Batshir Torchio, a teacher at the school. "She got the director of the program on the phone to speak to our students. The director burst into tears." Research consistently shows that children are hardwired for generosity from an astonishingly early age. In one study, researchers observed that 20-month-old toddlers showed more happiness when giving treats to puppet characters than when receiving treats themselves. Even more remarkably, they displayed greater joy when giving away their own treats than when giving away treats that had just been given to them—suggesting that meaningful generosity, which involves some personal cost, creates deeper satisfaction. For parents seeking to nurture this natural tendency, simple practices work best. Storing allowance money in separate "spend," "save," and "give" containers creates visual reminders of different financial purposes. Having children give money in person to local organizations makes the impact tangible. Regular family conversations about giving—perhaps around a dining table with beans representing different charitable allocations—help children understand their power to effect positive change in the world. These practices build not just generosity but also perspective, helping children understand their place in a wider community where resources are unevenly distributed but everyone has something valuable to contribute.

Chapter 5: Jobs and Responsibility: Building Work Ethic Early

In the summer of 2012, comedian Chris Rock appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where both fathers launched into a candid discussion about raising children. "My kids are rich, I have nothing in common with them," Rock lamented, while Stewart confessed his struggle to explain the concept of work to children who had never experienced financial necessity. Half-jokingly, they proposed creating "Camp Kick-Ass"—a place where privileged kids could experience what it means to have less. Their comedy routine resonated with parents nationwide who worry about raising children who understand the value of work in a world where they may never truly need to work. This parental anxiety comes amid alarming statistics about youth employment. In 1998, about 45% of American teenagers aged 16-19 had jobs, consistent with levels for the previous half-century. By 2013, that number had plummeted to just 20%, an all-time low since record-keeping began in 1948. This decline stems from multiple factors: adults taking jobs traditionally held by teens, stricter driving laws limiting transportation options, and a widespread belief among affluent parents that jobs might harm college admission prospects. However, research contradicts this last concern. Part-time work correlates with high college expectations and good grades as long as teenagers don't exceed about 15 hours weekly. One thorough study noted that working doesn't necessarily reduce studying time, as teens have plenty of discretionary hours spent watching television or socializing. In fact, work experience may actually enhance college applications, providing evidence of responsibility, time management, and real-world experience that increasingly sets applicants apart. For Jackson and Oralie Smith's seven sons on their Utah dairy farm, work is simply a fact of life. Six-year-old Zeb began at age 5, washing bottle nipples for calves and steering the tractor at slow speeds. His older brothers handle feeding, moving hay bales, and the 4:00 a.m. cleaning of corrals. "It sucks," Zeb admits, yet he participates willingly in the family's six-day work week. Each boy receives a proper paycheck, which increases as they get older. By sixth grade, they earn about $500 monthly, making their own purchasing decisions after a 10% tithe to their Mormon church. This responsibility extends to buying their own clothes, vehicles, and eventually horses to train and resell. Not every family has a business where children can work, but parents can still create opportunities. Len Scarpinato bought a fixer-upper lake house outside Milwaukee and hired his teenage son Mark to renovate it. Len would start larger projects alongside Mark to demonstrate the techniques, then leave him to complete the work independently. The payment came in "Lake Dollars" that Mark could redeem for lake toys like Jet Skis. This arrangement not only taught construction skills but also instilled discipline that transferred to Mark's football training, eventually helping him earn an athletic scholarship to Michigan State. The lesson from these families is clear: children derive immense value from meaningful work, regardless of their economic circumstances. Work builds competence, confidence, and connection to the wider world. It teaches delayed gratification and provides the satisfaction of earned rewards. By finding age-appropriate ways for children to work—whether through household responsibilities, entrepreneurial ventures, or traditional employment—we prepare them for a world where success depends not just on intelligence or talent, but on persistence, reliability, and the willingness to tackle difficult tasks with both hands.

Chapter 6: Perspective and Privilege: Understanding What's Enough

When Ruth Mendoza landed at Boston's Logan International Airport in January 1987, she was a young woman from Bolivia whose mother had recently died. Speaking almost no English, she arrived to work as a babysitter for a family in suburban Needham, unaware that the arrangement was technically illegal. Through kind neighbors, she eventually found better employment and obtained a green card after marrying. Her new employers sent their daughter to Meadowbrook School, an exclusive private junior-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade institution in wealthy Weston, Massachusetts. Each day, Ruth would go there to pick up the girl in her care. When it came time to enroll her own daughter Melissa in school, her employers suggested something that hadn't occurred to Ruth: applying to Meadowbrook. "My first impression was no, I could never belong there as a parent," she recalled. She remembers the mixer for candidate families vividly: "Very fancy ladies, all dressed up, talking about things I couldn't quite relate to." Against expectations, Melissa was accepted with generous financial aid, paying just $600 annually. Years later, after working as an after-school teacher while completing her college degree, Ruth herself was hired as a kindergarten teacher at the school. The transition from nanny to teacher brought challenges, but Ruth's journey reflected her remarkable perseverance. Her own daughters remained on scholarship throughout their time at Meadowbrook, acutely aware of the economic differences between themselves and many classmates. One daughter came home after a school vacation asking, "Didn't you know we were supposed to go to Florida for a week?" When Ruth explained they couldn't afford it, her daughter replied, "Everyone went to Florida for a week." Even more painful were the subtle exclusions that occurred around activities like off-campus lunch. Once, Ruth's daughter was invited out with friends but explained she couldn't afford to pay. The friend offered to cover her, but when they arrived at the restaurant, clarified that Ruth's daughter should repay her the next day. When Ruth's daughter explained she wouldn't have money tomorrow either, her friends bought lunch only for themselves. School rules prohibited walking alone outside school property, so Ruth's daughter had to watch her friends eat and then walk back to school with them, arriving too late for the cafeteria lunch. This story illustrates why conversations about privilege matter for all children, regardless of their economic circumstances. For children with more resources, understanding their relative advantage helps develop gratitude and responsibility. For children with fewer resources, honest discussions provide context for situations they'll inevitably encounter. For all children, these conversations build empathy and a nuanced understanding of the world they inhabit. Heather Johnson, a sociology professor at Lehigh University, emphasizes the importance of honesty in these discussions. When her third-grade son asked if their family was rich, she initially wanted to deny it. "My knee-jerk reaction was to be like 'No-o-o-o, we're not rich. Where did you hear that?!'" she recalled. "I had to stop and remind myself that I'm out here giving lectures and that I can't do that. It was one of the hardest things I've had to do as a parent, but I looked him in the eye and said yes." The most effective approach combines candid acknowledgment of privilege with concrete experiences that broaden perspective. This might mean volunteering together, forming relationships across socioeconomic lines, or simply having regular conversations about the difference between wants and needs. The goal isn't to induce guilt but to foster awareness—helping children develop a healthy definition of "enough" that isn't based solely on comparisons with others. When children understand both their fortune and their responsibilities, they're equipped to navigate the world with both confidence and compassion.

Summary

Through the stories and strategies shared in these chapters, we've seen how money conversations can serve as gateways to deeper values. When Kaden searched online for his father's salary, when the Clarke girls collected recyclables, when Ruth's daughter watched her friends eat lunch without her—these moments weren't just about dollars and cents. They were opportunities to develop character traits that will serve children throughout their lives: curiosity, patience, thrift, generosity, work ethic, and perspective. The thread connecting all these approaches is intentionality—the willingness to engage with money topics openly rather than avoiding them out of discomfort or fear. By answering children's questions honestly, creating hands-on experiences with earning and spending, involving them in giving decisions, and helping them understand their place in a world of uneven resources, we transform money from a taboo subject into a powerful teaching tool. The most successful parents don't lecture about financial values; they create environments where children can discover those values through guided experience. Whether through allowance systems that encourage saving, spending frameworks that promote thoughtful decisions, or work opportunities that build competence, these experiences speak louder than any words could. The ultimate goal isn't perfect financial literacy but something far more valuable: raising children who approach money with wisdom, generosity, and a clear understanding of what truly matters in life.

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Ron Lieber

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