A Calling, Some Cash, and Some credit
As Eric was leaving for a movie with several of his friends, his father handed him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to have fun. He spent it all that evening, knowing there was plenty more where that came from. His father was not wealthy, but since he had grown up without much, he had vowed that his children would have whatever they wanted.
Jenny did not have as much money as Eric, but she could not understand why some people worried so much about it. Her mother seldom worked, but the welfare checks came regularly. It seemed stupid to her for a person to spend time doing a boring job when all you had to do was let the government pay you.
Learning to work is only half of economic independence. The other half is learning to use money. Eric and Jenny are learning neither. As parents you need to teach your adolescents what work means, what they need, and how to manage money.
By the Sweat of Your Brow
At one time work was praised as a right and a duty—a way of serving God. This was the foundation for the Protestant work ethic so prevalent in the United States in the past. However, today many adolescents make fun of this old ethic which promotes hard work. They do not want to become “workaholics,” caught up in their work as some people are in their alcohol.
Even some Christian adolescents have a negative view of work. They read Genesis 3, where work is mentioned along with sin, and they believe that it is a result of breaking God’s commandments.
Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Gen. 3:17-19)
However, a closer examination of the early chapters of Genesis leads to a positive view of work. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15). This was before sin entered the world. Work was a part of original creation, before sin had affected it.
Not only did Adam and Eve work, but God also worked. “By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done” (Gen. 2:2-3). God certainly would not do something that was a result of sin. Work was a part of God’s activity in creating the world. The ability to work is part of the image of God in which we were created.
We were commanded to work in imitation of God. We usually interpret the fourth commandment as demanding rest on the Sabbath. However, it was a command to keep the Sabbath holy, and the elaboration of it began, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Ex. 20:9) just as God did. It was a command to work as well as to rest. People need a balance of work and rest, not just rest.
Part of the problem in our culture is that much of our work is in imitation of the machine, not in imitation of God. God’s work was creative, and much modern work is not. Craftspeople of the past could express their God-like creativity as they made things. The assembly-line worker of today does the same thing over and over again, another cog in a giant machine. Rather than concentrating on productivity, we need to concentrate on creating jobs that have a positive effect on the people doing them.
Blind Choices
Too few people have a vocation at the end of their adolescence. Usually they start on careers, enter occupations, or take jobs. Although these words mean roughly the same thing, they come from different roots. A “vocation” refers to a calling, a call to perform a certain function. “Career” comes from a word meaning road or racecourse. An “occupation” is something that engages (occupies) a person’s time and attention. A “job” is something one has to do, a chore or duty.
One of the most common majors among college freshmen is “undecided.” With no sense of call, many adolescents ask the wrong questions when choosing their lifework. Their questions usually are “what’s-in-it-for-me” questions: questions about salary, fringe benefits, working conditions, hours, vacations, retirement plans, and so on. After they choose their jobs, they find that the benefits are large enough, but the jobs are too small.
Worthy vocations often have low pay. The work is hard, useful, and of public concern. People in important vocations seldom complain about money. When you hear people complaining about the pay, you know that they do not see their jobs as important enough. Since they do not feel useful, they want more money.
Work used to be public, often associated with the home. People knew what nearly everyone else in the community actually did in their work. Today work is separated from the home and is private. It is done at the office, the factory, the shopping center, or the farm away from home. Adolescents may have never actually seen anyone really doing the kind of work they think they want to do. Work is not done in the presence of children and adolescents, so they make blind choices of vocations.
I Need That!
A hundred and fifty years ago most people considered their necessities to be food, clothing, and shelter. A couple could start a marriage on about $100 plus wedding gifts. The man usually received a horse, farm implements, and seed. The woman received a bed, a cow, and kitchen utensils. Relatives put up a house and stable, and in a few years the couple was prospering.
Today so many things are “necessary” for life that people must stay dependent for many years before they can marry. In June 1982, Good Housekeeping magazine and the Association of Bridal Consultants published a list of “basic necessities” (their words) needed to set up housekeeping now. The lowest estimate of the cost was $6,025. If you bought better quality items, the cost was $30,479. That did not include food, clothing, house, or car.
Included in the list were two washcloths, two bath towels, two pillows, a table lamp, a frying pan, a saucepan, and a salad bowl. However, also included were crystal (wine and water goblets) for eight at $240 ($1,100 for higher quality), a five-piece china setting for eight at $216 ($2,262 for higher quality), and a five-piece sterling-silver set for eight at $2,592 ($6,640 for higher quality). These were in addition to a five-piece everyday dinnerware set for eight, three-piece glassware service for eight, and stainless-steel flatware for eight.
All of these were listed as “basic necessities” for setting up housekeeping. Our culture has come a long way from food, clothing, and shelter. Food, clothing, and housing were not even included in the list above. A recent newspaper article pointed out that six-to-sixteen-year-olds spend about $45 billion a year on “essentials” (their word), such as “albums, candy bars, comic books, soda pop, and jeans.”
Buy Now, Pay Later
Since teenagers cannot work to earn money as they did in the past, they often do not have the chance to learn how to handle it. The best way for them to learn is to actually earn money and spend it for their needs. They never get the chance to learn the value of a dollar, no matter how low it has dropped because of inflation.
Borrowing money has also changed in recent years. At one time people borrowed money to raise capital, money used in trade, manufacture, or business. The purpose of borrowing was to raise capital to make more money. Then the loan would be repaid from the profits. Farmers borrowed money for seed and repaid the loan at harvest time. Merchants borrowed to buy inventory for their stores, then repaid the loan when they sold the goods.
Today however, consumer credit in the form of installment buying is widely used. This borrowing is quite different from raising capital or even borrowing to feed the family until harvest time. Most of this borrowing is simply a matter of not wanting to wait for something. This means that people are paying for the use of money that is not used to make money. Since adolescents cannot get credit cards, they often have trouble using them later.
In eighth grade Jeff started on a two-week trip with the youth group with nearly twice as much money as anyone else. Two thirds of the way through the trip he was borrowing money from others to eat. As a high school senior he wanted a new stereo but did not have the money. He borrowed $600, hoping that his tax refund would be that much. The last time I saw him he was graduating from college $26,000 in debt and ready to begin working—at the bottom of the salary scale.
Jeff is not unusual. With college costing $5,000--$10,000 a year, it is not at all uncommon for graduates to begin their working lives $25,000--$30,000 in debt. Money is easy to borrow while in college, and adolescents who have never learned to handle borrowing often find themselves deeply in debt.
Pay Now, What Later?
In the preface to his three-volume work, Children and Youth in America (Harvard University Press) Robert Bremner, Professor of History at Ohio State University, said that before 1865 Americans could not support the luxury of a prolonged youth. Young people had to assume the responsibilities of adulthood. We may again be entering a time when we cannot afford this luxury.
It may seem odd to bring up retirement when discussing adolescence, but it may be a major factor in ending adolescence. We invented Social Security and retirement about the same time we did adolescence, and it is unlikely that we can afford both very long. I will talk only about the retirement part of Social Security, although it is a much larger program than that. Required old-age insurance began in Germany in 1889. Similar laws passed in England in 1899, in France in 1928, and in the United States in 1935.
As originally passed, our Social Security system was modeled after good private retirement plans. It was to be financed on a fully funded basis with taxes invested in trust funds. The money people paid was to be invested for them to use when they retired, and each person’s benefits were to depend on the total taxes he or she had paid into the fund.
Unfortunately, changes began almost immediately. In 1939 Congress abandoned the fully funded basis for a pay-as-you-go basis. That is, the taxes paid in were not invested, but given to people who had already retired. Benefits were started early, tax increases were delayed, and benefits were no longer linked to total contributions. This was the beginning of the largest pyramid scheme in history. People thought they were getting something for nothing, but only those who got in early actually did.
Many other changes had to be made to keep the pyramid from collapsing. More and more people were required to pay into it, and each person was required to pay more into it. However, in spite of all that Congress has done, Social Security is still in serious trouble. The problem is that the pyramid has matured. From this point on everyone in it will lose money.
Using a pyramid scheme, we have been able to support people during the first and last eight years of their adult lives. We support people during childhood and adolescence, have them work for forty years, then support them for ten or fifteen years during retirement. We probably cannot continue to afford this. We cannot maintain our standard of living and support people during twenty years of their adult lives. We will probably have to shorten both retirement and adolescence.
What Can Parents Do?
Since the culture makes it difficult for teenagers to learn to manage money, it is up to you, as parents, to teach your own adolescents.
Choosing a vocation. In spite of the connection between work and sin in Genesis 3, work is generally presented in a positive light in the Bible. Like the rest of creation, it has been affected by sin, but it is not sinful. It is an expression of the image of God in each of us. It is basically good.
The Apostle Paul commanded people to work. “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28). In fact, he told the Thessalonians to ostracize those who did not work.
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us…For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat…If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. (2 Thes. 3:6, 10-12, 14-15)
Of course, our invention of adolescence with its child labor laws makes it illegal for most teenagers to keep this command. As parents, however, you can see that your teenagers view work as good, as a reflection of God’s image in us as human beings.
This “theology of work” should be part of what you teach to your children and adolescents about how to choose their vocations. In our culture, you are not likely to choose your adolescents’ vocations. However, as in marriage, you must teach your adolescents how to choose. Help them ask the right questions about choosing a vocation. Of course, everyone needs enough money to live, but there are much more important questions to ask. The value of the work itself is more important than the monetary benefits. How many ministers, missionaries, and teachers would we have if financial benefits, hours, and working conditions were the major considerations?
I listened as one teenager described her job of collecting bees to get their venom. She said, “I feel like I’m helping someone, maybe even saving a life. Selling hamburgers just didn’t cut it with me.” There is nothing wrong with feeding people—Jesus fed them fish—but this young woman was considering the right questions. She was not going to catch bees all her life, but she wanted even her temporary adolescent work to be of value.
This is important not only for the choices they make during adolescence, but also for the choices they will make as they change work in later life. Few people now spend a lifetime in one type of work in our culture. They need to make good choices as they move from one type to another. If your adolescents do not learn how to make good choices now, they will not be able to make good choices later.
Spending money. Your children and adolescents also need to learn to save and spend money wisely. The best way for them to do this is to actually save and spend it. At first they will need much help from you, but by mid adolescence they should be doing it on their own. Parents use several different ways to teach spending and saving.
Howard and Marilyn use an allowance to teach their teens. They give their teens five dollars each week. The teens are responsible for certain things. They must buy all school supplies and all the “extras” they want. They are not responsible for major expenses, like food and clothes, but have to budget their money to meet the minor ones that occur, such as birthday gifts and dates.
Ida and Burt do not like the idea of giving money for no work. They make their adolescents work for the “allowance.” Instead of just having them work around the house as a part of the family, each teen is paid for what he or she does. For example, Bert Jr. gets $10 for mowing the lawn and Lila gets $12 each time she cleans the house.
Rusty and Trixie do not give any money to their adolescents even for work. They tell their teens that they have to work somewhere else for their spending money. The teens then find part-time jobs outside the home to earn their spending money. They mow lawns, baby-sit, and shovel snow.
Finally, Irene and Rodney give their adolescents much larger amounts of money, including money for food at school and for clothing. Each of their teens gets fifty dollars a month and it has to be used for lunches on all school days and for all their clothing. Parents and teens agreed on a reasonable amount and the teens get the fifty dollars each month when Rodney is paid. They keep the money in their bank accounts and collect the interest on it. If they spend the money on other things, they just do not get new clothes when the others wear out or are too small.
Whatever method you use, it is important to keep the goal in mind. Remember that you are teaching your adolescents to manage money. You are not only meeting their needs but are also teaching them how to meet those needs themselves when they leave home in a few years.
Another important issue is the use of the family car. This is an added expense when an adolescent starts to drive. Herb’s parents made him pay the added insurance costs when he wanted to become a regular driver of the car. This was no small expense since adding a sixteen-year-old male doubled the insurance rates. Helga’s parents let her use the car whenever she wanted, but charged her ten cents a mile. Ennis could use the car whenever he wanted, but had to pay for gas used. Whatever arrangement you have, treat your adolescents as adults and expect some pay for the use of the car.
Teenagers should each have their own savings and checking accounts to learn how to manage money in the bank. Adolescents are not too young to be giving to the church regularly. Patterns they begin as children and teenagers will continue through life. They should pledge to the church and contribute regularly, even if it is only a few cents a week or a few dollars a month.
Teach them how to get good value for their money. When thirteen-year-old Adrian wanted a new ten-speed bicycle, his parents pulled out Consumer Reports to find which bicycle was best. They thought he should learn not to waste money on cheap products—and not to buy expensive ones if reasonably priced ones were better. Doug and Estelle buy their teens good quality clothing for school, but if the teens want “fad” or “prestige” clothing, they have to pay the extra for it themselves.
Our teenagers know all about our family expenses. Our checkbook and bank statements are not secrets “for parents only.” We believe adolescents need to know what it costs to live. They thought $13,000 a year for a starting salary sounded like great wealth until they found out how much heat, lights, insurance, food, house payments (or rent), clothing, and cars cost.
Borrowing money. Since teenagers usually cannot get credit cards from someone else, you may have to teach them about installment buying yourself. Clark wanted a guitar, but did not have the money. His parents agreed to lend him fifty dollars if he would repay it at two dollars a week. He eagerly agreed, but soon found that six months of “easy” payments was no fun. His parents charged no interest, but they demanded payment each week when he got his allowance. He learned a valuable lesson about living in our consumer-credit culture.
As good parents they did not “have mercy” when one of his favorite rock groups came to the local arena in concert. They remembered that they were teaching a lesson. The important thing was that he learn to make payments on time, even when he wanted something else. They insisted on every payment when it was due. Teens must learn not to overextend themselves so that they cannot repay what they borrow. Clark got to hear the concert by borrowing from a friend, but he had to skimp to pay that back.
Sue wanted to borrow from a bank to buy a used car. Her parents agreed that the car was a good one, and she could use it to drive to work. They found this a chance to teach her comparison shopping for loans. Sue quickly became confused by all the different kinds of loans available. Some sounded good, but when Dad pointed out the annual percentage rates, she decided on a simple interest loan. Mom and Dad had to cosign the note, but they made sure it was Sue who made the payments to the bank when they were due.
When Ed and, Bev had to borrow money, they made their teenagers a part of it. They let their teens see the steps they took to get it and how they paid it back. When they had to cancel a weekend at the beach because of paying back the loan, they let the teens know why it had to be canceled. They felt was important for them to see that debts had to be paid.
Simplifying life. Since it is unlikely that our adolescents will have the standard of living we have, we should begin to prepare them for a simpler lifestyle. We can go this by living more simply ourselves. We can use our air conditioning less or not at all. We can grow food in our gardens and have our adolescents help us both grow and preserve it.
We all need to prepare ourselves for a simpler lifestyle. In 1950 there were sixteen workers paying into Social Security for every one drawing benefits. Thus each worker was paying only one-sixteenth of a Social Security benefit. By the time we retire, there will only be three (or possibly two) paying into the system for every one drawing benefits. That means that each worker will have to pay one-third (or one-half) of what each retiree receives. It is unlikely that workers will pay that large a tax.
Realistically, this means that we do need to make some plans for retirement. Newscasters and reporters are beginning to talk about the rise of private pension plans and the demise of Social Security. We need to be aware that the system cannot go on as it is now, but will be changed. We need to take steps to prepare for the future ourselves.
2005 Update
The cost of things has gone up in the last 20 years. I could find no comparable data for “basic necessities” to begin married life. However, data about the cost of college is readily available. The College Board’s annual, Trends in College Pricing 2004, is available at www.collegeboard.com. For the current academic year (2004-2005) in public colleges and universities undergraduate tuition and fees average $5132. Adding room and board, the average cost for a year of public education is $11,354 (this does not include books, clothing, transportation, incidentals, etc.) For the current academic year in private colleges and universities undergraduate tuition and fees average $20,082. Adding room and board, the average cost for a year of private education is $27, 516 (this does not include books, clothing, transportation, incidentals, etc.)