Consider At Least One New Year's Resolution

With the economy in a state of recession and major corporations needing bailouts, the financial condition of our country will trickle down to the average Joe. Yet the shopping malls are bursting with people purchasing forty-two inch plasma screen TVs with surround sound, iPods, cell phones with limitless access to the Internet and laptop computers.

What's going on? We are convinced that we are entitled. We deserve to have everything our parents have , or everything you view on TV or in a magazine. Our only problem is that we're not sure how we're going to pay for it.

We only need one New Year's Resolution: I am not entitled to everything I want. In his book 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School, Charles J. Sykes labels today's generation: a modern day wealth-without-responsibility aristocracy.

We have more access to food, clothing, gadgets, cars, jewelry, clothing, shopping malls and credit cards to pruchase it all than any previous generation. Are we entitled to have all of it just because we have the money or the credit limit to cover our purchases?

Today entitlement has taken on a whole new meaning. There's a major collision between our entitlement mentality and the ignorance of how money works. For example, Sykes estimates that teen spending will top $190 billion this year or next. This figure eclipses the gross domestic products of many countries where people have to go to work to earn money.

Hand-in-hand with the entitlement mentality is the lack of any motivation to go out and get a job. Most of the money spent by teenagers comes from their parents. Fifty-eight percent of teens say they get their money from Mommy and Daddy. Twenty-one percent report having part-time jobs.

What are we teaching our children with this entitlement attitude?

- Kids can have whatever they want without ever having to pay for it. Once these kids grow up and start thinking about marriage, they're in for the shock of their lives. Regardless. many parents continue to give their sons and daughters hefty sums of money and keep their children dependent on them. This is highly unhealthy since young men and women are growing up without a sense of financial responsibility.

- Kids are unable to delay their gratification. In repsonse to a lack of delayed gratification, the rising debt for college graduates is on its way upward. Young men and women expect to live the way they were raised and they refuse to wait. They want it now - the house, the cars, the lavish vacations and everything else. However, what kids today forget is that parents worked for years to get to their level of income. A college degree does not automatically hand in a standard of living that matches that of the parents. There're still many years of hard work ahead.

- Kids are enabled to be financially illiterate. Young men especially are being raised without a sense of finances - what it means to save money, invest money and not get into serious credit card debt. A lot of young men are not ready to become the financial head of their household. They're not sure how to handle a checking account, to manage credit card debt, to invest in money for a pension and to purchase a car or a home loan.

One New Year's Resolution can change a lot. Work hard to achieve success and do not expect advancement out of entitlement.

[from The John Tesh Blog by John Tesh]