My partner and I are not particularly well-off. We pay our bills on time, mostly, and are happy. But we’re unlikely to ascend out of lower-middle class anytime soon. I was raised in a working-class home and I have lots of poor relatives with poor kids. And, well, without getting into boring personal baggage–who *doesn’t *want to provide a better life for their child than they had themselves?
So. Higher education is obviously an important component to class. I expect (based on family history) that my kid will be relatively brainy. A recent thread here talked about boarding schools, and I discovered that Exeter provides free tuition to kids from households with less than $75k annual household income. What other financial “life hacks” are there to provide a better standard of living for kids in families with, say, sub-$50k household income?
Besides education, which you mentioned, teach them financial skills. Give them an allowance, and teach them to save and invest. Then teach them that static dollars don’t really matter; what matters most is the flow of money. Is the flow of money in greater than the flow of money out? This is where inflation and interest get really important, so make sure they know all about those topics. Poor people don’t think this way. They think “How much money do I have right now, and what do I spend it on?”
Teach them delayed gratification: if you forgo something pleasant today, you can have something much more pleasant next week. Self discipline ties into that. The most successful people in the world know how to hunker down and work their asses off for a distant prize. Nobody told Bill Gates “If you write me an operating system, I’ll give you $60 Billion.” It took around a decade for dropping out of college, starting a company and programming for 16 hours a day to pay off.
Granted, “a higher socioeconomic class” and Bill Gates may be light years apart, but you get the drift. Hard work, discipline, education and an understanding of the time value of money is key to improving one’s status.
Teach them self respect, self esteem, positivity, pride, work ethics, compassion, and good social and communication skills so they can succeed and be happy regardless of socioeconomic class. A particular education or career doesn’t make a person important to others. Anyone can be important.
Do volunteer work, and bring them along. Teach them to always be doing for, or at least giving to, people who have it harder than they do. Many a rich person will never be described as “having class” because they have no sense of noblesse oblige.
Also, invest in etiquette and dancing classes. Knowing how to dance properly, and introduce, eat, and navigate a difficult conversation will be an enormous asset.
Encourage good posture and a firm handshake from an early age, so that they do both comfortably by the time they reach the intern stage.
I was always a blue collar worker in what would be the equivalent of about $50,000 today. Starting from a young age we encouraged our kids to play in sports leagues with kids who were likley college bound. We gave them music lessons and as often as possible took them to mueseums and such. We didn’t tolerate laziness or procrastination when it came to school work. I was possibly too lenient in the chores dept and teaching my son the more manly trades, he is learning now though so all is not lost.
As long as we’re straying far afield from the financial hacks requested by the OP, I’ll add: teach them to speak clearly and avoid idioms and pronunciations that peg them to a lower social class. (I’m not implying you don’t already do so, OP!)
Seriously, if you grow up saying “I seen” when you mean “I saw,” you’re basically wearing an Ed Hardy t-shirt that you can never remove.
A lot of first generation asian immigrant families seem to produce a disproportionately high number of second generation children who are successful academically, career wise and financially.
However it was my understanding that a reasonable number of those kids end up with issues due to it (anxiety, depression, feeling like their identity is lost, chronic stress, family alienation, etc).
Don’t be dysfunctional parents. Hold your major battles far out of earshot. Don’t spank. Don’t cuss at them when they screw up. Don’t neglect them or give them too loose of a leash. Minimize traumatic stress in their lives. Teach them non-cognitive skills
I know this will be hard to do if you do the boarding school thing, but maybe raise them in such a way that they never realize how “poor” they are. Listening to people reflect on their hard-scrabble upbringings, it always seems to me that the ones who turn out okay were the ones who didn’t know they were poor. They went to school barefoot, but so did all the kids. You don’t resent what you don’t know exists. But in this day and age of mass media, it would be very hard to raise a child to be this oblivious. So I don’t know if this is even doable.
And in direct opposition to this, don’t isolate them culturally. Take them to all the free museums, zoos, festivals, library events, etc. that you can think of. Show them the world outside of their immediate neighborhoods and they’ll have aspirations.
Encourage them to join the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps skews towards well off high achievers, and you are practically forced to make close friends with your training group. You’ll come out with better connections and more career focus than you could imagine.
Teach them to invest. Smart but broke families quite rightly focus on saving, which makes a lot of sense. But they often miss teaching how to make money work for them, and when your kid has their new upper class friends they’ll want to know the concepts and vocabularies.
There are a lot of very prestigious, no-fee summer programs for very bright kids. These are much better regarded than your average pay-for-play enrichment program. Find these and apply.
Every time the kid wants something, say no and claim it’s because you can’t afford it. The kid will conclude that life without more money than you have now is a relentless slog of deprivation. Sending them to any circumstance where others enjoy the things they lack will fan the flames of desire for a lucrative future.
I’ve read some of your other posts and you seem fairly well spoken, actually I am surprised that you are not in a different tax bracket. That sounds like a horrible thing to say, but that was honestly what I first thought. So, based upon this misjudgment my opinion should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Due to the petulant, misguided, wanderlustful ways of my youth I’ve had lots of various experience with people of various backgrounds - pretty much runs the gammut from very poor to very rich. I would say that going from lower middle class to middle middle isn’t that big a leap, and even lower middle to upper middle is not an insurmountable difference.
I think that going from middle to upper class the values start to change quite considerably. For instance. the middle classes tend to emphasize personal achievement, but once you get to the upper classes family background and family wealth start to matter more. The middle classes tend tend have less respect for inherited wealth and are much more respectful of the self-made person; this is not necessarily the case with the upper classes. This is a broad generalization, and I believe a much longer conversation could be had about that. Really from my experience though, the differences are kind of superficial to a certain extend; they are cultural differences. And also, keep in mind that certain things are, for all intents and purposes completely closed off from people who do not come from the right background when you start getting into old money high class.
But once you get beyond the cultural differences, people are people from my experience. If your child is socially gifted they will be able to move in different circles without a huge problem. They will be able to get along well with people of different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. So basically, from what I have observed in life I would agree with the advice trucelt, purple clogs, wesley clark, and monstro have already given. Also “Class” by Paul Fussell might be an interesting read - a bit dated though.
Make it very clear to your children that they are expected to go to college. Don’t talk about “if”, talk about “when”. Discuss where they want to go. Eventually, make it clear that if you can’t afford to put them through school, that they’re expected to do it for themselves.
Make it clear that you expect them not to do dumb-assed things like dropping out of school, getting knocked up/knocking someone up, getting arrested, etc… Expect that they won’t do that BS, and make it clear that it’s their problem, not yours, if they do.
Also make it clear that with the expectations comes your part of the bargain- for my parents, it was that they’d house me in the summers and over the vacations, and they’d help me as much as they could with tuition, room and board. Co-sign on student loans if it comes to that.
People don’t go anywhere without high expectations, and more often than not, people try to live up to high expectations.
Not at all, I’m incredibly flattered. I’ve always been pretty open on the Dope about my bad childhood and ensuing mental health issues. I’m not uneducated–I actually used academics as a method of escapism until I had a breakdown of sorts in my early twenties. I have ongoing issues with self-sabotage and a lack of confidence. I’m getting better, but the choices I’ve made and the experiences I’ve had can’t be unmade/unexperienced at this point.
Anyway, that’s a short summary of a longer and much boringer story.
I don’t intend to fling my kid from lower-middle class into the stratosphere with yachts, coke parties, and multi-millionaires. But, going by the numbers, it would be nice if I could put them on track to earn $75k+ (current dollars) on their own. So lower-middle to middle or upper-middle would be great!
Having high expectations matters, a lot. I’ve said that more than once on the board. Even more important is surround your kids with other kids who have the same levels of expectations put on them. Peers are probably one of the best indicators of a child’s future success.
You can have high expectations all you want, but if they are surrounded by kids and parents who don’t give a shit ten to one that will eventually be their attitude.
Teach fiscal literacy - how to balance a bank account, how to budget, how to save and invest, how to delay gratification, when credit use is or isn’t appropriate.
Expect academic excellence.
In addition, please give your kid a normal name. Don’t make up some silliness, or substitute an “i” for a “y” at the end of a girl’s name, or give a super-trendy name. (Braydon/Kayden/McKenzi/Nevaeh/etc.) A classic name like, say, Rachel will generally get the call for an interview, vs. something that no one can pronounce. Tiffani/y or (I swear to Og that I saw this name just yesterday) Justus are probably perfectly cute for a tiny child, but as adults, they sound like a stripper and her meth-dealing “Old Man.”
I suppose some probably are. Don’t assume that because someone lacks financial assets that changing this must be their top priority or that it should be.
People that actively want to change their circumstances are far more likely to succeed at doing so than people that have no complaint with the status quo. If someone is smart and wants something badly enough, they are far more likely to succeed than someone who goes to a few soccer camps or art museums.
I’m not saying that socioeconomic class-climbing is a worthy goal, just that creating the desire to do so in the child is the first step most likely to achieve this. If the kid is happy and content, where is the motivation?
Excellent point. If all your child’s friends are going to college, you’d better believe that they’ll accept it as a fact of life that they will too, and won’t want to be left out or thought of as different or sub-standard.
