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Learning the value of money

Giggly

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Dave Barry said his dad taught him a lot about money, such as if you want to have any, don't be a Presbyterian minister.

Hahahahaha!

There's a crucial difference between people who simply love their job, and those who love to go to work, and they will probably take away different lessons from the experience. Teenagers who fall into the latter category are very fortunate, well-poised for success in life*, though they may have to be made intellectually aware of what money represents in terms of personal sacrifice for other people (so no, they may not value the money they've earned as much as other teenagers). I would assume teenagers under 18 who fall into the former category to be freakishly rare (who enjoys flipping burgers or washing toilets for its own sake?), but the experience might actually inhibit career ambitions for such people, though they may learn to live within their means.

Could the reason you were unsettled by the parental lesson be due to its 'one size fits all' nature?

*This is something I've had to realize on an intellectual level; I feel no sense of pride, accomplishment or self-worth from any work I don't enjoy, only relief when its over mingled with resentment that my precious time on this earth was wasted. I recognize a work ethic as a virtue, leading to higher levels of personal happiness and higher societal standards of living, its just not something I've ever understood at an emotional or intuitive level.

Interesting thoughts and thank you.
 

Mole

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So does wearing an expensive watch, or dating the capt of the football team. We don't mistake these activities for "work" either.

There are two things -

The first is that I am not mistaking gym for work, rather I am reframing gym as work.

Secondly, I would be pleased if you would analyse why you constantly disagree with me.
[MENTION=9811]Coriolis[/MENTION]
 

Mole

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I recognize a work ethic as a virtue

The Protestant Work Ethic is a religious belief which combined with Capitalism gave us the Industrial Revolution.

But the Industrial Revolution is over in the West, while the East is in the middle of a rip roaring Industrial Revolution.

So for us the Protestant Work Ethic has had its day and is being replaced in the Service Economy by creativity and presence.
 

cafe

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Fashionable clothes? You have obviously never watched me do yard work. No, I don't chop wood and ride my bike places for a living, I do it just because that is how I live. Same as I cook my own meals, mend my own clothes, and paint my own house. No one pays me to do those things either.
Those are kind of 'crunchy people' things which can have to do with status, if you do those things when you don't have to. Like, if you can afford a natural gas or electric furnace, a car, new clothes, etc but you do stuff that is more labor intensive as a lifestyle choice, it does say something about your status.
 

Thalassa

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No, you don't teach the value of money by making the work as unpleasant as possible (though you can, I mean I suppose in some way that helps build discipline rather than "value of money") ...you teach it by making things the person wants off-limits, otherwise.

For example, when I was in high school, if I wanted to drive a car, I had to pay my own car insurance. I would not be allowed to drive, as a teen, unless I paid for my car insurance.

Therefore, something desirable was put off-limits unless I paid for (part of) it, myself.

I think my grandparents did this to a lesser extent when I was in elementary. Like if I wanted a special thing, and it wasn't clothes, and it wasn't Christmas or my birthday, or a random whim of their authority to grant me the thing, I was to buy that particular thing with my allowance, which I gained through doing things like unloading the dishwasher or helping with the house cleaning.

I think even wealthy people can teach their children the value of money, obviously, or there would be no distinction between the classes in "old money" and "new money."

People with "old money" are likely to teach their children the value of saving and investing, and put restraints on their spending, like not allowing them to have a huge inheritance until they're 25 or 30.
 

Coriolis

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There are two things -

The first is that I am not mistaking gym for work, rather I am reframing gym as work.

Secondly, I would be pleased if you would analyse why you constantly disagree with me.

[MENTION=9811]Coriolis[/MENTION]
Perhaps because we are different people, and have different perspectives??? I'm not sure why you find this so unusual, or unacceptable, or even threatening. You also conveniently overlook the many times I have agreed with you, and said so.

Those are kind of 'crunchy people' things which can have to do with status, if you do those things when you don't have to. Like, if you can afford a natural gas or electric furnace, a car, new clothes, etc but you do stuff that is more labor intensive as a lifestyle choice, it does say something about your status.
Just what would that be? It actually says more about how picky I am, about my living environment and the things I use. It may be more labor-intensive for me to mend clothes, for instance, but it is far more convenient (not to mention cheaper) to do that than to find a tailor, drop the things off and get fitted during business hours, pick them up during business hours, etc. As for new clothes, I don't like most available styles, so when I have something I do like, I make it last. My motivations are quality, customization, convenience, and sometimes cost. If someone wants to make status hay out of that, they are entitled to their perspective, but the extra layer is entirely of their own making.
 

cafe

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Just what would that be? It actually says more about how picky I am, about my living environment and the things I use. It may be more labor-intensive for me to mend clothes, for instance, but it is far more convenient (not to mention cheaper) to do that than to find a tailor, drop the things off and get fitted during business hours, pick them up during business hours, etc. As for new clothes, I don't like most available styles, so when I have something I do like, I make it last. My motivations are quality, customization, convenience, and sometimes cost. If someone wants to make status hay out of that, they are entitled to their perspective, but the extra layer is entirely of their own making.
It says you aren't poor and probably not super-close to being poor. Like, first off, you can afford to be picky about your living environment. If you had been evicted from your last place because you couldn't pay the rent, you'd have to take what you could get. Also, if you were poor, your clothes probably wouldn't be worth repairing and it's unlikely it would occur to you to hire a tailor. You would probably go to the Free Store at Catholic Charities and paw through what they had and wear what you found even if you didn't like it a lot and it didn't fit terribly well. Cost is really the only concern and not real cost, but short term cost, because it doesn't matter if something is a better deal if you just don't have the money.

It's like two different families that I know.

One family was in the local paper last year for not using their air conditioner. They both have PhDs, she works at a women's college and he is a stay at home dad. They have two elementary school-aged kids. They're sacrificing their comfort for the sake of the environment.

The other family is a single mom, her four kids, her mom, her disabled brother, her ex-bf, and a twenty-something guy she knows that needed a place to stay. The house they rent doesn't have central air. If she can't afford to buy some window units before it gets to be 90F with high humidity, people aren't going to think she's being eco-friendly or making a lifestyle choice. She isn't going to be in the paper, but she might find herself talking to some social workers about neglect/dependency.

Both sets of kids are going to be baking their asses off. But the kids of the PhDs aren't going to face the possibility of going into the foster system. That is because of their parents' status: they can afford to do shit like that. People might think they're nuts, but they still get to be considered good parents.

Or, like if there are two different people riding bicycles. One is wearing spandex and a helmet and the other one is wearing black pants, black tenis shoes, and a solid-colored polo. The first one is probably making a lifestyle choice. The second one doesn't have a car to drive back and forth to their minimum wage job.

And, there is this friend of my daughter's. Her mother is a prof at a very good engineering undergrad school. The girl is thin and pretty and I know her family is well-off. She came over to my house the other day with really strong body odor. At first, I thought "That can't be A____!" But soon, it was obvious that it was. I didn't think that she was dirty or that her family had run out of soap. I thought, "It's probably one of those hippy things. She doesn't want chemicals on her body." Just like I don't think she's going meat-free because the only food she has in the house is ramen. If she was poor, she wouldn't really have people thinking smelling nasty was a lifestyle choice. They'd think she was dirty.

That's, I think, what Victor means about status.
 

Cellmold

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Valuing money to me is not the same as valuing the things you buy. Some might disagree with me but I think money provides some level of security and freedom. Things you buy are different. For the most part, the money is either gone or spent on something that depreciates. You can spend money on a wonderful vacation and enjoy it as well as have a lifelong memory. I believe experiences are some of the more worthwhile things to invest in. You can also buy stuff. Stuff in my opinion has less value. You get a short boost when you first get it. There are exceptions. I live well below my means and save a lot. I also splurge at times on things that many would think are quite wasteful but it is rare for me to spend a lot on something that I don't use. I have had a nice convertible for the last five years and I love driving it now as much as when I got it, so it's really the experience I bought and not as much the thing. I've definitely gotten value out of what I spent on it.

I am somewhat in alignment to this, since I spend most of my money on hobby materials of personal value that will give me good experiences or have repeated use. However ive also always had a notion that money is the physical embodiment for something very fundamentally...dangerous about humanity. Perhaps built into our psyches.

I could roughly dub this greed, but it also has something to do with driving barriers between people and creating ridiculous ideas of what success actually entails. A possessiveness that can be quite frightening, in a way that other creatures on this planet don't engage in, oh they have territory, but the disputes are all dealt with in the manner of instinctive codes that they understand implicitly.

Human beings merely make shit up and call it a law, or a right, or a border...or a country. At the same time I have to say this is convenient for the arm-chair whingers like myself, sitting in the comfort of homes and using technology built upon our own domineering materialism.

So hypocrisy, thy name is myself, but still the thought lingers and it is probably for a good reason. I sometimes wonder if money doesn't really just accumulate humanity, a hidden force working behind the scenes, that we have given life to in our own ignorance.
 

Coriolis

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That's, I think, what Victor means about status.
It certainly reflects the economic realities of the various people's lives, which I suppose you could call their socioeconomic status. When I think of people doing something for status, though, I think of people motivated by a desire for others to think well of them, or to view them in a specific way (wealthy, educated, cultured, etc.) In your examples, though, the people's choices reflect either economic necessity, or personal values, none of which seemed at all like keeping up with the Joneses or looking for social approval.

As for poor people and mending, my parents told me stories about their parents and the depression, and mending clothes and even making them was the order of the day, as was repairing most everything else to extend its useful life as long as possble. They also had crazy quilts, braided rag rugs, flour sack dresses, and lots of other homemade stuff, and learned many useful skills through making and fixing them. Being poor doesn't make you stop caring about customizing your environment. It just means you have to be very resourceful and clever in doing it, and won't wind up with the same results as Happy Rockefeller. Granted, not everyone, rich or poor, is up to the task.

Bottom line: not all lifestyle choices are made to enhance one's status.
 

Lark

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Someone I know told me that he had been working since the age of 15 because his father told him that if he wanted anything he had to work and buy it for himself to learn the value of money.

This made me think about how exactly one would learn the value of money that way.

It must be assumed that when you work, you suffer, and that suffering is what makes you learn the value of money. So work must be unpleasant, painful or not enjoyable and that is why you value the things you buy with the money you earn from your work so much. Consider the time/blood/sweat/tears/sacrifice etc. you've put into working in order to make that money, you would never waste it, right? Nor would you be careless with the things you buy?

But what about people who love their job, or who love to go to work? Would they not value the money they make from it?

I don't know, there's something slightly disturbing about all this and I can't quite put my finger on it.

I agree, its not good to make work and suffering synomyous, work should be an outlet for the productive, active, awakened individual, not something you do under duress or in desperation to secure your survival.

This version of appreciating money feeds into the maximal rather than optimal consumer model too, the more money, the more consumption options, the more freedom.

There's a big difference between saying, if you want something you've got to work for it and questioning why you want something in the first place, instead of saying do you need money? Do you have to work?

Its going to be time you wont get back, there were parts of the world in which it was the habit of workers, skilled and hard working workers, that once they had earned enough they wouldnt work anymore, whatever the incentive.

All of which is pretty different from the work ethic these days, I sort of think people need to work wiser and be happier than work harder and longer.
 

Mole

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A scriptorium is a factory for making manuscipts.

So manuscripts had all the status of factory produced products.

And it was only when printed books were invented that manuscripts rose in status.

And manuscripts rose in status because they became unnecessary.

And just as manual scripting of manuscripts rose in status, so manual work today has risen in status because it is unnecessary, and so is enshrined in high tech, upmarket gymnasiums.
 

Mole

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Its going to be time you wont get back, there were parts of the world in which it was the habit of workers, skilled and hard working workers, that once they had earned enough they wouldnt work anymore, whatever the incentive.

All of which is pretty different from the work ethic these days, I sort of think people need to work wiser and be happier than work harder and longer.

Yes, it was the Protestant Work Ethic and Capitalism that made it a virtue to live to work rather than work to live.
 

cafe

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It certainly reflects the economic realities of the various people's lives, which I suppose you could call their socioeconomic status. When I think of people doing something for status, though, I think of people motivated by a desire for others to think well of them, or to view them in a specific way (wealthy, educated, cultured, etc.) In your examples, though, the people's choices reflect either economic necessity, or personal values, none of which seemed at all like keeping up with the Joneses or looking for social approval.

As for poor people and mending, my parents told me stories about their parents and the depression, and mending clothes and even making them was the order of the day, as was repairing most everything else to extend its useful life as long as possble. They also had crazy quilts, braided rag rugs, flour sack dresses, and lots of other homemade stuff, and learned many useful skills through making and fixing them. Being poor doesn't make you stop caring about customizing your environment. It just means you have to be very resourceful and clever in doing it, and won't wind up with the same results as Happy Rockefeller. Granted, not everyone, rich or poor, is up to the task.

Bottom line: not all lifestyle choices are made to enhance one's status.
I'd say it's more reflective of one's status rather than to enhance one's status and that skills are sometimes used because they have been learned, not learned because they are used and when you have certain skills, they may be a result of your status. If, during the depression, sweatshop labor from impoverished countries made it cheap or free to replace things, they'd have likely done things differently, especially if sewing was not a skill virtually every female was taught at a young age. IMO, you've got to be more than resourceful and clever when customizing your environment when there are bedbugs going around: you've got to be lucky.
 

lowtech redneck

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Yes, it was the Protestant Work Ethic and Capitalism that made it a virtue to live to work rather than work to live.

Most people are going to spend the majority of their waking adult hours working (for profit or otherwise) in any conceivable culture or economic system; having a work ethic simply means that they will be happier and more productive in their work, leading to greater individual happiness as well as greater material benefits for all. Hence, a work ethic is a timeless virtue, at least until we have an economy based on genies or replicators.
 

Lark

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Most people are going to spend the majority of their waking adult hours working (for profit or otherwise) in any conceivable culture or economic system; having a work ethic simply means that they will be happier and more productive in their work, leading to greater individual happiness as well as greater material benefits for all. Hence, a work ethic is a timeless virtue, at least until we have an economy based on genies or replicators.

Yeah but there's a difference between meaningless toiling or working to earn money to subsist and being really productive.
 

Mole

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Most people are going to spend the majority of their waking adult hours working (for profit or otherwise) in any conceivable culture or economic system; having a work ethic simply means that they will be happier and more productive in their work, leading to greater individual happiness as well as greater material benefits for all. Hence, a work ethic is a timeless virtue, at least until we have an economy based on genies or replicators.

Oh please! The Protestant Work Ethic is a religious doctrine only a couple of hundred years old.

The Protestant Work Ethic is a religious docrtrine of Protestant Predestination.

And Protestant Predestination is a doctrine of the Elect.

And the doctrine of the Elect says that private prosperity is a sign from God that an individual is one of the Elect and predestined for Heaven.

And the corollary of the doctrine is that hard work will make you prosperous. And indeed hard work is a virtue in itself, and so we live to work.

To learn more about the Protestant Work Ethic a good place to start is, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", written by Max Weber in 1905.
 

Coriolis

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I'd say it's more reflective of one's status rather than to enhance one's status and that skills are sometimes used because they have been learned, not learned because they are used and when you have certain skills, they may be a result of your status. If, during the depression, sweatshop labor from impoverished countries made it cheap or free to replace things, they'd have likely done things differently, especially if sewing was not a skill virtually every female was taught at a young age. IMO, you've got to be more than resourceful and clever when customizing your environment when there are bedbugs going around: you've got to be lucky.
The first part of the highlighted is certainly true. But having the option to buy new clothes whenever one wants, or to run the air conditioner or to find a better apartment is what indicates someone's socioeconomic status, not whether they choose to avail themselves of those options. As you say, it comes down to how broad a spectrum of realistic choices one has. Which choice one makes among available options says more about one's values, as well as one's upbringing/"education" (meaning here the sum total of what one has learned). Some poor people buy the cheapest clothes they can find in places like Walmart or the dollar store. Others instead find used clothing of much higher quality at a thrift store, understanding it costs no more, will last much longer, and be more presentable. Some people take whatever apartment they can get, and leave it as it is. Others quickly put their own stamp on it, even if they have to pull fabric scraps and half-dead houseplants out of the trash to do it. It helps to be lucky; it helps even more to be alert to "luck" and able to capitalize on it. There are poor people who are very good at this, as well as rich people who are not.

As for the second part of the highlighted, the word "may" is critical. I don't know why someone would learn a skill if not to use it. Skills are often passed down in families because the family has had to use it. Sometimes this need disappears as the younger generation grows up, due either to greater income or technological developments. There are many reasons for learning skills, making it hard to generalize about status or motives. My own reasoning often goes like this: I want a specific thing. I shop around for it, and realize that the ones available for purchase don't meet my wishes in some way. I research how difficult it would be to make it, or modify one that can be purchased. If I can learn that skill, I do so in order to make my customized item. I often do save money, but I always get a more suitable product.
 

Mole

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The minimum wage in the USA is exploitation of the vulnerable.

The minimum wage in the USA reflects the Protestant Work Ethic.

The minumum wage in the USA reflects the Protestant belief that money is proof of God's favour.

And the minumum wage reflects the bourgeois Revolution of 1776 and the triumph of Capitalism.

We have had no bourgeois Revolution, and rather than the Protestant Work Ethic we have Utilitarianism. And as a result we pay a living minimum wage.

Of course it is more expensive to live in Austalia than the USA, but we are happy to pay more so our fellow Australians get a living wage.
 

Cellmold

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The minimum wage in the USA is exploitation of the vulnerable.

The minimum wage in the USA reflects the Protestant Work Ethic.

The minumum wage in the USA reflects the Protestant belief that money is proof of God's favour.

And the minumum wage reflects the bourgeois Revolution of 1776 and the triumph of Capitalism.

We have had no bourgeois Revolution, and rather than the Protestant Work Ethic we have Utilitarianism. And as a result we pay a living minimum wage.

Of course it is more expensive to live in Austalia than the USA, but we are happy to pay more so our fellow Australians get a living wage.

You know Victor i'm always learning the value of you.
 
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