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Prodigal Sons & Material Girls
by Nathan Dungan
How Not to Be Your Child's ATM
It really is a jungle out there. According to David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family, children see 1.2 million advertisements a year and it's no wonder that with such a panorama of products, they are consumed by the desire to become consumers, spending every dime they can lay their little hands on.
Why are so many ads targeted at youth? Because the 18 and under crowd themselves spend $150 billion annually in the United States, while influencing their parents to spend five times that amount, or another $750 billion, as time-strapped parents open the purse strings to alleviate their guilt over not spending quality time with their children. Instead of becoming savvy consumers, kids are becoming savvy when it comes to getting their parents to spend money, or give them money for the things they want.
Walsh calls them “hyper-consumers”, because they have no idea how to manage money, and delayed gratification is a concept as foreign to them as the concept of crossing a road safely is to a squirrel.
That's where Prodigal Sons & Material Girls: How Not to Be Your Child's ATM by financial advisor Nathan Dungan, comes in.
The book opens with the story of Melissa, who after cruising through her teenage years with what her parents thought were good money management skills – she regularly saved her allowance and her earnings from a part-time job and seemed to put a lot of thought behind the money she did spend – went off to college and quickly applied for and received 20 different credit cards, which she promptly maxed out by upgrading her wardrobe and keeping up with the in-crowd.
According to Dungan, the problem is at least in part due to today's kids not learning the value of a dollar, and an even poorer appreciation for anything less. He cites a recent survey where 58 percent of kids said they wouldn't bother to stop and pick up change on a sidewalk if it was less than a dollar.
The other part of the problem is Madison Avenue's unfailing efforts to get kids to spend. Dungan writes, “Stephen King couldn't have come up with a creepier scenario: Advertisers plant junior spies among our kids, enlist cartoon characters, pop stars, and professional athletes to gain their trust, exploit children's fear of being left out, disguise their messages as something other than advertising, and pay off school officials to let them get perversely close to children during the school day.”
It's the start of a spending legacy that can haunt them for years to come. By 1997 there were more people declaring bankruptcy than graduating from college, with people aged 25 and under representing the fastest growing segment of those declaring bankruptcy.
Dungan even goes so far as to say that most of today's kids have become “shopaholics.” That's right, our 10-year-olds already have a monkey on their back – a full-blown addiction to spending – and the drug of choice is often Nike, Mary Kate & Ashley, the Gap, or some other brand name that has been drilled into the must-have section of their brain.
The author also warns against credit-card-company-sponsored debit cards like PocketCard, Visa Buxx, CobaltCard, and M2card, calling them “a learner's permit for a credit card.” Instead of helping children gain money management skills as the credit card companies purport, they teach children that getting what they want is as simple as flashing their plastic, the very sort of abstract thinking that gets most people into financial difficulty.
To help your kids see through commercialism, Dungan suggests pointing out that they become human billboards by deciding to buy certain brands, only instead of the company paying for the advertising, they are paying the company. He also recommends shifting the focus from wanting everything they see, to learning the value of money by encouraging them to donate a portion of their allowance to charity. Often when kids compare the feeling they get from supporting a cause that's important to them, to the feeling of buying a toy that is broken or boring within a week of purchase, there is no comparison and they learn the true value of money.
From there he goes on to offer a host of great ideas on how to encourage kids to share, save and spend wisely.
Prodigal Sons & Material Girls is a compelling read and gives us food for thought about our children's financial future.
Title: Prodigal Sons & Material Girls
Author: Nathan Dungan
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471250694
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 10.00
Reader's Votes: 2
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