Meanest Parents in the World!

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about our effort to teach our children good financial practices in an effort to keep them from repeating some of the mistakes that my wife and I made early in our marriage. The idea of living on less than you make and saving are very basic and should be common sense, but the number of families that don’t do either is staggering. Another thing we are teaching our kids is that they don’t need the newest or latest thing they see in magazines or hear their friends talking about.

I came across an article over at Kiplinger.com that describe’s how some parents are making tough decisions with regards to the way they are raising their children. Not giving your kids everything they want, is difficult at the time, but allowing them to ‘want’ a few things or helping them save for things they want will pay huge dividends later on. Two passages from the book of Proverbs helps me better understand the importance of this concept. The first is Proverbs 13:12:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.

When we stop hoping for things, our heart becomes sick, but by hoping and saving for the things we desire, we are successful and feel alive. The second passage is more familiar and comes from Proverbs 22:6-7:

Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
⁷ The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is servant to the lender.

By teaching our children sound financial principles, I know that I am providing them with an inheritance that will be more important than any amount of money that we leave them. How about you? Are you one of those mean, mean parents?