September 13, 2022

Money and class

This link from Nicole and Maggie resonated: Rob Beckett: It’s weird to be a working-class man breeding middle-class children.

It IS weird raising kids in a higher social class than we grew up in. I grew up with no money, working the family business whenever needed and whatever it was, starting at the same age JB is now.

The summer I turned seven, I spent late nights packing crabs for/with my parents. It was so long ago I don’t even know what we were packing them for but I learned to pay attention to grabby claws pretty quickly. When I was nine, I was cashiering after school and weekends at their business. I loved the actual act of cashiering but was more ambivalent about the business that took every ounce of my parents’ time and attention. My accomplishments, such as they were in middle school, were just expected, not celebrated. They didn’t have the time or energy for me or them.

I met kids in middle and high school, whose parents were successful entrepreneurs, doctors, pharmacists, or stay at home parents. Their parents were either too busy for them (but wealthy) or they were always around and comfortable financially. I never fit in with anyone on that basis. I worked for my spending money in high school, and then had to work to pay our bills after high school graduation. None of them had to work a day if they didn’t want the spending money. Their expenses were always paid. It was awkward being the only one who always worked every weekend, every holiday, every chance we had to hang out.

I am still mildly mortified at misunderstanding references to “white coats”, not making the connection that it was a doctor thing, in my mid-20s. It’s funny though, I don’t think I understood why I felt like a fish out of water for so long.

Now as we’re raising our kids, we’re conscious of all the luxuries we have that are just normal for them and discuss this openly with JB. We want them to know that this wasn’t easy to come by and that we have to be good stewards of our money. That latter bit is the poverty background talking, I bet. I always worry it’ll all go away with one severe illness. My family of origin lost everything just before mom got seriously sick. I wasn’t privy to all the details so I just assume it was a combination of bad luck and Dad’s bad money management. I know it wasn’t because of her illness, but she was in despair that she could never get back on her feet financially because she was too sick to work much at all. Ugh that brought back a lot of feelings.

We discussed the fact that we don’t know what other people have and are comfortable spending, but when we do see them making choices, we should respect their decisions just as we expect people to respect our decisions.

I’m trying to shift my mindset so we can model developing our own sense of balance and choices. To do that, we need to learn to understand ourselves: what feels right or good or wrong or bad and understand how that impacts our relationship with money.

We let them learn what felt good and what didn’t about spending at Comic Con, and talked to them about how that should inform their decisions about how to approach spending situations.

They had a gift budget from their aunties and uncles and they discovered that they really liked spending ALL of it. That’s the polar opposite of me: whatever my budget is, I always want to reserve half of it. So for JB, that means they should pick their dollar amount to spend before going into a spending situation that makes sense with their bigger picture, and then they can spend that set budget without worrying or guilt. Don’t be that guy, we said, who was fighting with his wife at the Convention saying “A $1000 Skeletor bust is what savings is FOR!”

Related: college plans for the kids

I don’t know what they’ll want to do or where they’ll want to go for college but we’ll have to start having those conversations soon to lay groundwork too. We have been saving for JB since they were born, and now that Smol Acrobat is here, my plan is to split that one account down the middle. I’m also planning to split their gift money that’s cash in half too. I sort of wonder how fair or unfair that is.

JB’s had 6 years more of gifts than Smol Acrobat. We don’t know how long the cash gifts will continue, and we certainly don’t expect them to continue for predictable periods of time. Given that, I am collecting all of it into a single pot and split that down the middle when the time comes to disburse as well. It has the benefit of being mostly simple and it gives both kids an equal amount no matter who the gifts came from and when. My premise is that they shouldn’t get vastly different amounts solely because JB came first and accumulated more. Some people who loved and cared for JB aren’t around for Smol. I wouldn’t want Smol to only get 10% of the total gift money for their future, due simple to timing, just like I wouldn’t want it to be lopsided the other way around if people happened to be more present and generous during Smol’s time instead of JB’s.

However, I will set up a savings account for each kid to save for themselves. JB is earning an allowance and has to put away half for long term savings. It doesn’t make sense to commingle THOSE savings.

How would you handle savings, big and small, for your dependents?