Good Wednesday Morning!

1. Question – How do you teach “work hard, be independent, learn the meaning of money” to children who look around themselves and realize they never have to work hard, be independent, or learn the meaning of money?

2. Thought – Wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction.

“A parent has to set limits. But that’s one of the most difficult things for immigrants to wealth, because they don’t know what to say when having the excuse of ‘We can’t afford it’ is gone,” Grubman said. “They don’t want to lie and say, ‘We don’t have the money,’ because if they have a teenager, the teenager says, ‘Excuse me. You have a Porsche, and Mom has a Maserati.’ The parents have to learn to switch from ‘No we can’t’ to ‘No we won’t.’

But “no we won’t,” Grubman said, is much harder. “No we can’t” is simple. Sometimes, as a parent, you have to say it only once or twice. It doesn’t take long for the child of a middle class family to realize that it is pointless to ask for a pony, because a pony simply can’t happen.

“No we won’t” get a pony requires a conversation, and the honesty and skill to explain that what is possible is not always what is right. “I’ll walk wealthy parents through the scenario, and they have no idea what to say,” Grubman said. “I have to teach them: ‘Yes, I can buy that for you. But I choose not to. It’s not consistent with our values.'” But then that, of course, requires that you have a set of values, and you know how to articulate them, and you know how to make them plausible to your child – all of which are really difficult things for anyone to do, under any circumstances, and especially if you have a Ferrari in the driveway, a private jet, and a house in Beverly Hills the size of an airplane hanger. (David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell)

‘”Accept suffering and be redeemed by it” – this was Dostoyevsky’s message to the world hurrying frenziedly in the opposite direction; seeking to abolish suffering and find happiness.”‘ (Malcolm Muggeridge)