Slumping Role Models

I saw an article in the paper yesterday touting how much we as Americans have curbed our spending on food and beverages. The surprising fact was that while beer at home consumption was down almost 16% over the previous year, hard liquor at home purchases were down less than a percentage point. I guess hard times calls for the more fortified stuff. Of course this shouldn’t be too alarming as we can readily browse any reputable news source and find all sorts of statistics on how we are spending less or find a story on how car lots are void of customers. Perhaps, the over-consumption of the past few years has finally caught up to us.

My question: “Is this what our parents taught us?”

It is a common known fact that we tend to listen less to what our parents say and lean towards emulating more of what they do. My parents had two very different views on money, and just a decade ago I emulated my father by spending too much and not saving enough, as I get older and wiser even, I am becoming more conservative and mimicking my mother and her frugal ways.

What is most disturbing in today’s society is our shift from cash transactions to plastic ones where the concept of money is not clear to an observing child and this is where a parent may want to explain how money works or better yet change behavior and start paying everyday purchases with paper currency. I recall my parents utilizing the checkbook for their purchases during my youth but they never really took the time to explain things (although my mother would tell me to save, it was often my father that clouded that perception by his appetite for filling the garage with every kind of tool imaginable). My wife would say I’ve got a few power tools gathering dust as well. Are you as a parent being a positive financial role model to your kids, or are you as an aunt or uncle showing your nieces or nephews what the value of a dollar is? We were all there once and perhaps this vital piece of information will help prevent a repeat of the economic slump of today.