What Two-Dollar Water Has to Do with How I Want My Kids to Think About Money

 

I forget if I've told this story or made this point in this space before, so apologies if I'm repeating myself. My thoughts about how I want my kids to think about money were crystallized the other day when my friend who I was golfing with decided to stop by the clubhouse at the turn to get a bottled water for the back nine.

Let me back up. Without saying too much (since talking about money is a bit uncouth in my culture), my grandparents on both sides grew up poor because everyone was poor during that era. Both sides ended up doing quite well for themselves, but raised their kids (my parents) within that attitude of scarcity and thrift. My parents, in turn, immigrated to America, and so the frugality taught to them during their upbringing morphed into their own version of frugality, namely living way under their means to prioritize opportunities for my sister and me (namely education).

Now that I am myself a parent, and doing pretty good for myself financially, I certainly want my kids to learn how to live within their means, and in general to value frugality and snub ostentation. It would be horrifying to me, based on my own upbringing and channeling that of the generations that went before me, to be wasteful and haughty with money.

But, in calibrating where one should be between a miser and a profligate, I'm finding it hard to accept and enjoy the financial freedoms that I and my parents and grandparents have worked so hard to make possible. And here's where that bottled water comes into the story.

In my entire childhood, I do recall a relatively active albeit infrequent circuit of baseball stadiums and zoos and museums. We were out and about enjoying the accoutrements families often putter around in. Yet I do not remember one instant in which we purchased something from a concession stand or gift shop. There was something particularly off-putting for my dad, who controlled the family purse-strings, to overpay for food or drink or toys or souvenirs, when we could either do without them or procure them elsewhere for far cheaper. 

Water was a particularly egregious rip-off if purchased at the moment. Water bottles could be filled up at home for practically nothing, making the mark-up in his mind for paying even a trivial amount an astronomical number that was never justified.

For my golfing partner to throw down a couple of Washingtons for an ice cold bottled water to hydrate amid a long hot day on the course is what the rest of the world calls normal, even prudent. For the Huangs, failure to bring your own water meant stewing in that lapse of preparation, the penance taking the form of being parched for the rest of the day with further flagellation (by self and others) when recounting the lapse upon returning home.

I slightly exaggerate for dramatic effect, but you get my point. I can afford two-dollar water. But I struggle to allow myself the "luxury." 

I hope my kids are diligent enough to pack their own water when they go golfing on a hot day. But I hope that if they forget, they will act like my friend and drop a couple of bucks to stay hydrated. They're allowed to, because they will have earned it, and they will be honoring the hard work of all the people that went before them that helped make possible their opportunity to earn it.