Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
The underlying thread is perhaps the importance of the economics of life targeted at a generation that has no concept of reality and expects hand-outs and bail outs from doting parents and the like.
Quite recently my step sons gave me a beautiful porcelain money box and I took a trip down memory lane and remembered three specific events.
At seven years old, I had my first ceramic money box in the shape of an animal and I began to stash away a tidy sum of unused pocket money.
One day when my mother and sister were leaving for Kuala Lumpur for an event which I cannot remember now, I excitedly asked my sister to get me a teddy bear if she saw one. I had seen teddy bears in books but never had one. The one that I fancied was the Made-in-China one which had bright orange fur and moveable arms. When my mother and sister returned from Kuala Lumpur, I was overjoyed when the very same bear was thrust into my hands.
But the joy was short-lived as my mother quipped, ‘Now who is going to pay for that?’
I knew from the severity of her voice that there was no two ways about it. So I went to my money box, removed the rubber stopper and counted RM21.00 in coins. The bear cost RM13. Much as I loved the bear it was heart rending to have to part with that huge amount of money that had been saved over a long time. So I handed the money to my sister who had paid for it only to be told that she and my brother had split the cost of the bear and I did not have to pay anything for it. Not only did I have the bear but my savings were also intact. That was the ultimate child’s dream.
At eight years old, I had eyed a pair of Shirley Temple’s Mary Jane at a BATA shoe shop. A stipend of RM6 was given for pair of new shoes each year and if I wanted anything fancy, it was understood that I had to pay the difference in price. I paid the difference of RM7.
I am glad that I learnt the value of money and economics.
At nine years old, I learnt the meaning of disciplined giving. The Christian faith teaches that the believer tithes one-tenth of what he has. So I acquired a second money box in the shape of a plastic shoe. Only this time there was no rubber stopper at the sole of the shoe.
For every ringgit I had I put away ten sen into the money box. When December came, I gave the shoe to my sister and asked her to take it to the church because my mother did not allow me to go to church then as she was not a Christian at that time. The money was to be given to the missionaries and to the children in faraway lands who needed it more that I.
I had read in a book where some children had to wait a whole day for a benevolent person to give them a cucumber to ease their hunger pangs. I had read another story where a mother had to put rubber bands round a milk bottle to serve as markings so her three children knew exactly how much milk each was entitled to.I felt great joy handling over that shoe that was very laden with coins.
Needless to say, when I studied economics in Form 6, it was like a familiar friend. When I taught economics in Kluang High School, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/the-economics-of-life-1.51928
