Written by There is one thing that I would look back on my upbringing and improve upon although I do not have regret, this one thing I could have improved…..
That one thing is “Learning the true value of money while I was still a child”
Growing up with this philosophy would have made a huge difference in the speed at which I could have made the decision to focus on charity and not rely on an income.
……. I survived, learnt my lesson and now I worry about our own children and also the children we educate.
As an adult if I work for a company then every piece of software I purchase now is Subscription based, even hardware vendors of Laptops, Desktops, Storage, Compute, Network and Printers is going Subscription for what benefit to the user? Even printer ink or printer usage!
The ongoing commercial onslaught toward subscription and micro-transactions has completely changed our (as well as our children) understanding of object persistence and value – I stop paying and my service/data/game objects are no more….
We must teach our children that the premium ($$$) avatars in their games mean “less” than the player with their “no frills” gear who played hard to make the most of the game.
This will be a good first step towards paying for what you want/need rather than what you might want (or feel you need) in the future, I have lost count of the number of times I have heard from our children, “but dad its only $5″…… $5 is still better in our children’s pockets than to an app maker for something with no tangible benefit or use.
At home we teach our children this value, our kids do not do Micro transactions for in game items, we pay for two subscriptions: Apple iCloud for storage and Netflix and probably would not pay for these if there was an alternative for our needs.
We teach our children to plan before spending, research and hold off on any purchase decision until you are sure that they still want the same item – most of the time they do not and they have more money saved because of it.
Because by doing this we help them learn a couple of things:
1. Mum and dad are tyrants (hopefully not this ?)
2. That something you really want or need will still be there when you are ready to purchase it
Oh, the Secret to make money?
Don’t buy the next device as soon on release date, don’t purchase subscription services “just in case” and lead by example, so that your children understand that convenience is not something they should pay for