Should I Want My Kids To Suffer Financially?

I recently wrote about one child's wolfing down buckets of blueberries, which I consider to be a luxury fruit, and how it triggered in me a desire to have my kids experience certain financial milestones on their own path to financial literacy.

Here's where it gets complicated. Although I used the term milestones it was a poorly disguised euphemism for financial suffering. Commenters Steveark and Gasem rightly called me out on the fact that it seemed somewhat sadistic (even arbitrary) to yearn to impose financial discomfort on the next generation.

Shouldn't I want them to experience a life easier than my own? Aren't many of the sacrifices I have espoused, like cutting back at work and being more available at home, in service of being more present for them?

Why, in other words, do I possess this perverse streak of financial sadism when it comes to my own kids? I suspect there's an element of wanting them to appreciate what they have.

I clearly recall the sense of irritation I felt on a family road trip, long ago. I was playing a flawless game of electronic football on a Colecovision handheld set while my younger brother and sister looked on admiringly. My parents, who had planned out a delightful family vacation, tried in vain to insist we look out the car windows and appreciate the trees of Sequoia National Park.

Despite their good intentions, I did not appreciate the landscape so much as resent the intrusion. Why would my kids respond any differently to my own hopes that they appreciate how good they have it?

Steveark commented:

I’m not sure deprivation is a necessary step if you are already frugal and self sufficient when you graduate from college.

Gasem agreed:

I doubt your financial “lessons” will transfer to your kids. You can try but likely they will blow you off.

So far, he's correct.

Yet there are universal social experiences that they'll likely encounter with or without any ill will on my part. Reader frugal potato recalled a time when he ended up at a fancy restaurant with friends who ordered recklessly expensive items while he limited his pain to a $12 baked potato. The experience taught him about his own comfort with spending on fine dining in a way no parental lecture will ever do.

All of which underscores the point that attempting to recreate my own financial journey is a fool's errand. In a follow up article attempting to extract wisdom from a book on cultivating values in kids born into privilege, I got another rightly deserved earful.

From Gasem:

My teenage life was NOTHING like their lives and it would be foolish to try and impose how I managed my life on them as if it has some relevance.

and

They grew up with some privilege. So what? They did not grow up entitled. Somehow they both learned to not be in debt, live within their means and make the choices which fill their lives with meaning. Their choices would not fill my life with meaning, but my choice to not impose my values upon them does fill my life with meaning.

Drawing that distinction between privilege and entitlement is a big one.

If I were pressed to define the terms, privilege would be how far ahead of everyone else's starting point you begin the game, while entitlement would be the sense you deserved rather than lucked into the privilege you were granted.

A close friend is a committed libertarian, and except for a fixed amount he intends to contribute toward college educational costs, his kids will be on their own to sink or swim as they head into the future.

In contrast, I hope to create generational wealth that helps children and grandchildren to both avoid educational debt and have access to funds early in their lives and careers, although what they use it for may not resemble what I might choose (downpayment on a multifamily complex where they live in one unit and manage the others?).

It seems the preoccupation with wanting my kids to appreciate their advantages is less about their being unappreciative and more about my inability to learn when it's time to relinquish control, or accept that I no longer wield it.

Learning to trust that the moral compass I had a say in helping them construct will be sufficient to allow them to navigate safely out of my harbor seems to be the toughest part of watching them grow older.