My mother was shocked to find out my kids had a rough idea of how much my husband and I made. She probably thought I had no idea how much she and my father made when I was a kid. I didn’t know exactly - but I probably would have been better off if I had more information. Not necessarily the exact amount of money- but it would have been nice to know when I was 12 that I didn’t have to worry there wouldn’t be any food next week (if that was true). Because after all, we wore hand-me-downs and were allowed four slices of bologna for lunch so I certainly knew we weren’t rich or middle class but I had no idea if we were “barely making it poor” or “the electricity might be shut off” poor.
Part of the reason my kids had a rough idea was because I wanted to avoid the reverse - I didn’t want them to think we couldn’t afford their private high school/public college tuition because in other ways we lived below our means. I wanted them to understand that we lived below our means precisely to be able to afford those tuitions.
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Our daughter, now a teenager knows what we make annually because now, she has a concept of the value of money. She loves making it and getting it, but hates to part with it .
I still have no idea how much money my parents have. I think part of the reason they are secretive about it is that they want to maintain their autonomy: if they decide they want to help any of us out financially (or not) they don’t want us to be deciding whether or not they “can” afford it. I think there’s a general sense that the kids knowing how much money they have may make us feel like we can judge their decisions.
I taught freshmen who would blurt out stuff about their parents’ finances I’m sure the parents didn’t want to know. Real-life example: “My parents have maxed out 12 credit cards!” Furthermore, if you don’t want anyone to know your finances, telling your kid may mean your kid mentioning it to a friend even if you tell him not to (because BFF’s don’t count and besides, Bryce said what HIS parents make), and then it’s out there.
You can teach your kids how to manage their finances, live frugally, and save for things they want without telling them what you earn. My parents did. I’m glad I didn’t know what they made. I probably would have worried.
I’m a state emplpyee. Anyone can look up my salary on the web. I don’t think it has any impact on my life. I don’t know if anyone has bothered and i cant imagine my kids caring.
I’m sure a lot of parents don’t want discussing their finances with their children because they don’t want their kids to start arguing about they spend their money.
You know stuff like “How you can’t buy me concert tickets instead of getting a manicure this week”. Stuff like that. My siblings had deal with that their children a lot; it drove them up the wall.
We did not discuss income specifics until they were college aged, though our reasons are slightly different from those mentioned upthread.
This is apparently rare in America, but mizPullin and I live substantially below our means. Giving one concrete example: At our current income, we qualify for a home mortgage that’s 4.5 times the appraised value of our current home. One of the consequences of this is we’ve “sorted” ourselves into neighborhoods/schools at a much lower income stratum. Jealousy can be a huge problem, so we didn’t want the kids blurting out numbers to their school chums.
I don’t become hostile, but demur and resort to white lies to avoid the problems. As I mentioned above, jealousy can become a problem and gets worse among competitive men. Although quite frugal in most areas, we spend extravagantly on experiences and fun, and have no problem buying lots of expensive toys. When the kids reached high school it became more apparent we were the only family with a cabin cruiser, a private airplane, RV, etc. Other fathers can be bothered by this, and I always eased the tension by claiming these belonged to older relatives who were letting us use them.
As they started college we explained our finances in more detail, and it allowed us to show them that what seemed like large amounts of money would in fact, not go far if spent wastefully. At this time we began explaining the profligacy practiced by most of the country, and showed them the surprising sums of invested money needed for even a modest retirement.
For a lot of people, there isn’t a significant difference. I am also a state employee and both my salary rate and my actual earnings are publicly available on a website. (You can look me up specifically by name,it’s not just the rate for my title that’s available)There’s a $3000 or so difference due to “location pay”. If my husband were also a state employee, you could find our total income within a couple of hundred dollars.
For teenage kids, I suspect the problem is that if you make good money you don’t want your kids hitting you up for trivialities, and if you don’t make good money you are a bit ashamed.
What we tried to do was teach our kids how to spend money. People with big incomes can be in lots of debt and people with moderate incomes can save. Whether something is worth getting or not doesn’t depend on your income, though you might not be able to afford good stuff if your income is low.
Now that they both are married with good jobs we’ve told them how much we have, partially so they don’t have to worry about our retirement. But there was never a good reason to spell it out before.
Anyone who knows me well enough can figure out how much I make. The base salary for my position (non tech) at a well known company is about $140,000 before bonuses and stock among other benefits. Also own a few side businesses which pay nicely. I live in a moderately nice place (my idea of interior design is bad lol) and I drive a nice car. Own nice suits for work, but most of my other clothes are whatever. I didn’t have a real concept of money and taxes despite learning about them until my first summer job at 16. After high school my first job paid like 22 or 26 part time and at the time I thought that was “ballin’” and I was a total idiot for thinking that when I look back. I can’t remember how I spent my money then, but probably ice cream because I had such a thing for cold treats in those days.
I don’t like spending my money like an idiot and would prefer putting most of it away for the future. If I had kids, I’d probably be open with them and explain the value of money to them. My parents did and they worked in various fields of medicine so I knew that hard work may bring you money in the future, but you also have to be smart or else you’ll live paycheck to paycheck regardless of how much you make.
I think the coolest benefit of my job is that my PPO is fully paid for and I don’t pay a dime to it. I care more about that than anything else to be honest, especially with current insurance prices outside of an employer.
Should note that my average work week is 40-60 hours and fairly stressful. So the large bonuses and performance pay (among other benefits including heavily discounted employee stock purchase, etc.) makes up for it.
Other people are not likely to know your base salary. And possessions are an imperfect indicator. You may have a bunch of suits, but your typical Silicon Valley exec doesn’t wear them unless meeting with high government leaders. I’ve always driven cars into the ground even though I could afford new ones much faster than I bought them.
Nothing wrong with having a nice car, but the average observer can’t tell if the driver got deep into debt to buy it or paid cash for it without concern.
You’re right. I should clarify. If I tell you my position and you google it, it’ll give you a good idea of how much it is. Right on the car, too. I used to own a Lexus. Nothing terribly fancy but I liked that car more day to day than what I drive now, which is ‘sportier’ which can be jarring at times. Prior to that I had a nice Accord which I put on like 90K miles in less than 7 years. It was a grad gift from my folks and I loved that thing.
SV execs are strange people. I’ve met a handful of them. Not super important or famous ones, but companies most people including myself never read about. They’re a special breed of people and work differently than most of us.
The way I operate is that I’ll buy something nice but I try to be good with my money elsewhere. Cars are a depreciating asset, but if I don’t get something fancy now, i may regret it later in life. And it gets hard(er) to buy something expensive when you’re married and have kids. Though at my rate, I’m destined to be single for a while longer.
Though I know people my age making similar salary or more if they’re in tech and not living somewhere expensive, but still live paycheck to paycheck because they never understood the worth of a single buck. I’d worry about them, but I have my own issues to deal with in life. My next step is probably buying a house. Which, honestly, I’m more excited about than finding a soulmate for life. So, in other words, I’m pathetic. Or a hopeless romantic depending on the time of day you catch me being moody.
By the time I was in HS, I knew what my father made. When my kids were teens, I don’t know if we ever discussed it explicitly, but I would have told them if they were interested. They certainly knew when they were in college and I was filling in FAFs. They know now because when they came to town for my wife’s 80th, we made an appointment with our financial advisor and brought them along so they could meet each other and also know exactly the state of our finances. On the other hand we do not know their finances. But I never asked. It is true that I am embarrassed to ask.
My parents did not have discussions with me. They talked with each other about their jobs, and their discussion was orders-of-magnitude more interesting than the gossip that passed for conversation when I was in residence at college, but neither or them was able to have a conversation with us, or particularly interested in doing so.
I think that talking about how much they earned was just a subset of that. They didn’t think it was a particularly interesting subject, and they didn’t think I would have anything particularly interesting to say about it.
We don’t tell our kids what our income is because we don’t want them thinking they know what we can and can’t afford and therefore second-guess us when we choose not to buy something they want. We don’t need to justify our budgetary priorities to them. We’re the adults, we set the household priorities. If they know the family income, then every purchase that doesn’t agree with them becomes an hour-long discussion. SO not interested.
My kids are still too young to grok what any specific salary number actually means, but I’ve explained to them that some people make more and others a lot less, and tried to show them what difference that makes in their lives. When they get older I don’t intend to keep it a secret – ever since I learned about how the salary taboo was bad for employees, I’ve tried to be more open with my friends and coworkers about it. It’s not like everyone doesn’t have their own guesses anyway, and I think at actually helps put people at ease to know for sure. Plus I work in the government realm, so I’m used to a good number of people having their salaries be a matter of public record, and it doesn’t seem to hurt anything.
I think a lot of the rationale presented in this thread about how kids will go blathering about it at school is just a backwards justification for the existing taboo. My kids figured out early on who gets to go on skiing holidays 3 times a year and who takes staycations.
My parents were divorced, and took very different approaches here, so I experienced both.
My dad and stepmom never discussed finances. Even applying for college, I didn’t see their tax returns. I was in my 30s before I ever heard what they made. I had a relatively small allowance, with almost all purchases had to be approved by them
My mom at some point in my early teenage years showed me the whole household budget. She showed me a tax return with her annual income (and I did the exact same Bart Simpson math to conclude that she was a millionaire), then she showed me the mortgage and all the budgeting, and we talked about it. She didn’t do this until I was old enough to understand that this was private family business. And I never told anyone.
I had a pretty large allowance (much larger than any but my richest friends), but from that allowance I had to buy a lot of things like clothes and school supplies that I think most kids’ parents paid for directly. It taught me to budget and prioritize.
She said that she had been very frustrated in her early life because her mother had never taught her how to budget or run her finances, and she wanted to make sure I didn’t make the financial mistakes that so many do in their early adulthood.
I plan to go the route my mom took as soon as I believe my kids are ready.
I have talked to some friends about salary. I think the salary taboo is a societal negative, but it’s stable and hard to break in a one-sided way. That is, if you talk freely about your income and others don’t, you are in some ways at a disadvantage.
A few years ago some friends and I made an interesting sort of game of it to break the ice. We all wrote down what we made, then we all wrote down guesses of what the others made. It led to an interesting conversation and I highly recommend it.
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