It’s not my fault… my parents weren’t good with money either. The other day when I was coming home on the subway I found that line in an advertisement for some not for profit debt elimination company. It’s funny because I see ads for this company all the time and they are usually fairly catchy. You may ask why this particular ad caught my eye? The reason is because it filled me with two polarized view points on the situation. It reminded me of many friends that I have that have made similar statements that truly bothered me. I will discuss both view points and then have the readers provide their input on what side they stand on.
View Point #1: You should take responsibility for your actions and not blame anyone else. How could you possibly blame anyone but yourself for living pay check to pay check or racking up $20,000 worth of debt? This thought fills me with anger because I can not stand it when someone in debt or with financial weaknesses tries to place the blame on someone else. No one forced you to rack up all of that credit card debt by going on a shopping spree every weekend. I never understood how someone can have the nerve to make a horrible financial decision and then turn around to blame their parents.
I just hate it when someone can’t take responsibility in order to improve the situation. Blaming others for everything just hinders your ability to solve the issue before it gets too out of hand. Apparently this debt elimination company is “not for profit” but I’m sure there are many companies out there earning a steady profit by helping people in debt consolidate their debt.
View Point #2: Your parents should teach you about money and the true value of a dollar. After the anger left my system it hit me that if your parents don’t teach you about money and set an example then who else will? Your parents’ influence on your life is so powerful that it could have implications on your actions for the rest of your life. Some of us are lucky enough to have our parents tell us that the basics about managing your finances; spend less than you earn, increase your earning potential, plan for retirement as early as possible, and never ever get into useless consumer debt.
Some of us have to learn from our parents’ mistakes to ensure that we don’t travel down the same road. Jeff Rose wrote an interesting post the other day about his close relationship with bankruptcy and about how he dealt with bankruptcy growing up. The point for this argument is that whether you learn from the mistakes of your parents or from their achievements, the attitude towards money that your parents have will shape the way you manage your finances in the future.
What do you guys think about both view points? While you ponder that thought please look over some of the carnivals I have participated in:
Festival of Frugality: Single Awareness Edition
Carnival of Personal Finance: Wizard of Oz Edition
Photo: Lemonjenny
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it’s a little bit of both. Ultimately, you (and only you) are responsible for your finances. Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to build up a huge debt. Nobody stopped you from investing a portion of your income, to help secure a more financially stable future. And you are only one ultimately responsible for any trouble in your job or investments.
That said, our parents have a big influence on how we view the world; if your mother or father doesn’t encourage investing (or, like my mother, actively discourages it), you’ll have a harder time getting control of your finances and securing your future. That’s not enough to absolve you of all responsibility, though; we all have our own problems, and you have to shoulder yours and keep on moving along.
I learned by example… BECAUSE my parents were bad with money. It taught me what’s at stake, and what the dangers of being bad about money and credit were. When I got to college, I was determined to have good credit and to be smart about money. I made some bad choices along the way, but I live with that, because they were my choices… not anyone else’s. I’m self-taught, and proud of my mistakes, because at least I know I’m trying and learning.
Thanks guys for the great comments! I totally agree with both of your points. Parents will influence your decisions but at the end of the day you are responsible for your own choices in life. I am curious to see if any readers agree with the other side to this argument that your parents should teach you and help you manage your finances.
I’m going to go with viewpoint number 3: Schools should teach you about money. I personally think it should be required to pass a personal finance class that discusses investing, saving, credit cards, mortgages, etc. prior to graduating high school. It’s just as important as health class and that’s mandatory. It’s more important than learning a foreign language. I wish I had learned about personal finances earlier.
I am the way with regards to money because my parents were good examples. At the same time, I feel like I would have done even better with finances if I had a class in high school.
It could be the parents’ fault if you’re younger, but as you grow, it kind of is part of becoming an adult – learning about a family. Historically (at least according to the book The Millionaire Next Door) children of parents with poor financial skills continue the trend. I think it’s sad (but gives me hope) that most people don’t start looking for financial information until they’ve dug themselves into a deep hole – but, you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? I like the idea of teaching finances in school – it was a personal finance class I took in college that got the ball rolling for me personally.
(sorry – followup to the above post – I spaced. I wanted to write “learning about finances” not learning about “a family” on the second line – don’t know what happened there.)
The problem only is if you use the blame to escape responsibility. I think there is use in searching your history, and answering the question “why?”. Fault != responsibility, though a lot of people forget that. No, maybe it isn’t your fault. For instance, hypothetically, “It isn’t my fault, I had cancer and couldn’t get decent insurance and am now in $40k of debt.” Well, no, now it isn’t your fault, but you’re still stuck with it, for right or wrong. There’s a lot of things that are at fault for why I’m in as much debt as I am, myself and my bad choices among them, but it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to pick up the pieces but me.
Flowers… @};-
Jasmin
You been reading too much of my blog, just kidding.
I rave about these points a lot.
Responsibility and how people expect others to do shit for them and they blame them when things go wrong. Also, by expecting others to do things for them, they give up their power.
Parents, yes they are morons with managing money and am I glad I am realizing this now.
Seriously, my parents use their refinanced mortgage as an ATM machine because “there is no other way of getting things done”
These things being renovations.
Are you kidding me?
Let’s take an extreme example of viewpoint number 1 – should children of murderers be pardoned from killing because they learned it from their parents? No! So, even though our parents have a huge influence on us, I think we are ultimately responsible for what we do, not them.
@Steve It’s honestly a shock to me as to why the education system is not teaching the young people about personal finances at an early age. In my high school we had to take religion, French, and career studies but nothing about personal finance.
@Jeff Learning about finances is apart of growing up but unfortunately not everybody grows up. Some people will have the same bad habits their whole life.
@Jasmin I agree that blaming others is just to away to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Life will not always work out as you envisioned it to. People that want to become truly successful in life will adapt to any and every situation, not complain about it.
@Tom Wow you are pretty harsh with your thoughts on your parents’ financial habits. Have you tried talking to them in a non-judgmental manner? or maybe you could get them to read some personal finance books/blogs that will open their eyes.
@richerandslimmer That’s a pretty extreme way to get your point across lol. Yes despite the murder reference I agree that at the end of the day each individual is responsible for their own actions.
Is it really harsh, or the truth they can’t take? Instead they choose to live in an illusion.
Seriously, if I was so harsh, we wouldn’t have over 90% of people struggling, in debt.
I have tried and I keep trying but its very small steps, but at the end of the day, I need to worry about my own situation because in the end it will all fall back on me, if I don’t take control (of my situation, for the future).
*smile* It wasn’t exactly what I tried to say, and also thank you.
What I see the problem being is that responsibility and fault have become linked in people’s heads. Who is at fault only rarely has anything to do with who is responsible for the situation. Fault is just about cause and effect. What caused what, when. And as I said, I do think there can be a time and a place for fault-finding. It’s good to look into our history and see, yes, mom and dad functioned this way, which lead me to make these conclusions about how the world works, which leads to me doing this. Yes, this disaster happened, and these are the ways in which I wasn’t prepared for it, and then this happened.
The other problem is that blame is such a loaded word. It has all kinds of negative personal connotations. If you’re to blame then you’re BAD. *blink* Well, no… who said that? But that’s how we treat them, that’s how they treat themselves. You’re to blame, you had it coming! Well, *shrug* maybe or maybe not. Maybe we’re all just undereducated. You can’t fix a problem you don’t know is there, and really sometimes it takes a disaster before people know there’s a problem. There’s nothing WRONG with that, people make mistakes, but it’s still your fault; you’re still to blame. They shouldn’t be judged harshly for not knowing. But they are, and we do, and they do, and so they’re so afraid of the word that they run from the situation, they run from the knowledge, and they run from the responsibility because THEY THINK THAT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY MEANS ACCEPTING BLAME and accepting blame means they’re bad people. You see how it gets all twisted? It’s not the same thing! Responsibility != Blame != Evil incarnate. And that’s the idea we need to change as much as anything. I have no idea where it came from. Our grandparents surely weren’t like that, they were such a pragmatic folk…
Anyway, I hope I clarified myself a bit.
Flowers… @};-
Jasmin
@Jasmin Sorry for getting the wrong idea from your original comment. Both comments are excellent with some very good points. Thank you for stopping by Studenomics and taking the time to share your thoughts. I hope that you become a regular here at Studenomics!
*grin* Not a problem. You just hit one of my reflexive rant-points, since I saw you make that very mistake in your entry. Using blame and responsibility interchangeably, and it makes me sad. This may end up being the first entry in my own PF blog that I keep trying to convince myself to make.
Thank you for always having such insightful entries, and yes, no worries, you’re in my feedreader.
Flowers… @};-
Jasmin
@Jasmin Thank you for sharing your honest opinion, I really do appreciate it. I look forward to reading some of the interesting debates you will get yourself into around Studenomics! I hope you do start your own personal finance blog because you could definitely spark some heated debates.